Sonica Ekrano is a festival entirely dedicated to documentary films about music. More than simply bringing together films about musicians or musical genres, it seeks to showcase works that find in music a privileged way of understanding people, places, communities and moments in history. At a time when an abundance of content does not necessarily mean a diversity of perspectives, we continue to champion films that have never, or only rarely, been seen in Portugal, opening space for cinemas, geographies and narratives that so often remain outside the most visible cultural circuits.

The films in this year's programme remind us that music never exists in isolation: it always emerges from a territory, a community and a particular way of listening to the world. From the mountains of West Papua to the villages of Sardinia, from the streets of Birmingham, Alabama to northern Ghana, from rural Ireland to the streets of Bamako, from Guinea-Bissau to Hyderabad, from Istanbul or Barcelona to the small towns of central and northern Portugal, music appears as memory, ritual, resistance, identity and encounter. Even when focusing on major figures such as Hermeto Pascoal, Sun Ra, Erik Satie or Mogwai, this programme seeks to understand not only who these artists are, but also the places, the people and the circumstances that shaped their journeys.

Over the course of nine days, the festival presents Portuguese premieres, a Competition Section whose winner will once again be decided by the audience, programmes dedicated to documentary shorts, and a series of Special Selections spanning different geographies, historical moments and modes of creation. These are films that reject easy nostalgia, hagiography and straightforward biographical chronology, choosing instead to approach music as a lived experience and a transformative force.

Sonica Ekrano also continues to champion the music documentary as a territory of discovery, because it is so often away from the media spotlight that some of the most important stories are shaped, both in the present and in pasts that have taken decades to be fully recognised. It is within this space of curiosity, listening and encounter that the festival seeks to exist.

Above all, may this fifth edition be a celebration of music's capacity to build community, preserve memory and open new ways of looking at the world. Because before it is heritage, entertainment or industry, music remains one of the deepest ways we have of understanding who we are.