Movies Censored by Estado Novo on MOTELX

The 18th edition of the Lisbon International Horror Film Festival MOTELX, which will take place from 10th to 16th September at the Cinema São Jorge, this year marks the 50th anniversary of the Carnation Revolution, with the screening of the series “A Bem da Nação – Horror Films Banned by the New State”.

The cycle consists of four censored works, namely Brunello Rondi’s Il Demonio (1963), John Gilling’s The Plague of the Zombies (1966), Richard Fleischer’s 10 Rillington Place (1971) and Jaromil Giresse’s Valerie and Her Week of Miracles (1970).

According to the festival’s organisers, between 1944 and 1974, only 23 horror films were shown in Portuguese cinemas, “16 were banned outright and only one was released uncut.”

This year, in the Perdido Room section, the festival presents Guilty (1980), a film by maestro and composer Antonio Vitorino D’Almeida that is “one of the first examples of fiction after the events of April 25, about the colonial war.”

This year, eight films are competing for the Méliès Award for Best European Short Film: Antes do Nascer da Lua by Mário Patrocínho; Chameleon by Thiago “Ramon” Santos; Canto by Guilherme Daniel; Esteril by João Pais da Silva; The Hunt by Diogo Costa; Nuclear Energy by David Falcão; How Much Does a Body Weigh? by Gabriel Neri; and The Hunt for the Unicorn by Miguel Afonso.

Ten films will compete for the MOTELX Award for Best Portuguese Short Horror Film 2024: After Link (Catarina De Cézanne); Holophot (Camilla Ciardi); Menor que Três (Dan Martin, Sofia Pessoa Padua, Mariana Cabecinha and Cláudio Monteiro); The Night Stalker (Paulo Leite); Stop Looking at Me (Carolina Aguiar); Penrose (Alessandra Roukos and Maria Teresa Teixeira); The Procedure (Chico Noras);