The annual awards of the AmadoraBD festival, recognizing the production and publication of comics in Portugal, were announced in Amadora today, with Luís Louro receiving the award for best Portuguese comic, valued at 5,000 euros.
Luís Louro receives this award while celebrating 40 years in the comic industry, previously honored with a cultural merit medal by the Lisbon City Council.
The author of ‘O Corvo’ and ‘Alice’, co-author of the series ‘Jim Del Monaco’ and creator of ‘Os filhos de Baba Yaga’ (2024), currently has a retrospective exhibition at AmadoraBD, featuring drawings and sketches from those albums, having received the Honorary Trophy at this festival in 2024.
‘Os filhos de Baba Yaga’, released in April by the publishers A Seita and Arte de Autor and sold out its first edition, deviates from Luís Louro’s more humorous style, presenting a survival story of eleven orphaned children during World War II.
This year’s awards included a posthumous Honorary Trophy to screenwriter Filipe Duarte Pina, “for the quality and relevance of his work for national comics,” especially for the album ‘BRK’, illustrated by Filipe Andrade, and ‘Macho-Alfa’, with drawings by Osvaldo Medina.
Filipe Duarte Pina passed away last July at the age of 46.
On November 1, there will be a tribute to Filipe Duarte Pina at AmadoraBD, with the launch of the fourth volume of ‘Macho-Alfa’, according to publisher A Seita.
In the remaining awards of AmadoraBD 2025, the Revelation Prize was awarded to ‘Tales from Nevermore’ by Pedro N. and Manuel Monteiro, with an honorable mention for ‘Borboleta’ by the Portuguese-French Madeleine Pereira.
The award for best fanzine or independent publication went to Ana Margarida Matos for the work “Tuas Palavras Minhas”, produced in the context of a BD artistic residency between Portugal and Belgium.
‘O meu irmão’, a biographical story by French author JeanLouis Tripp about his brother’s death, won two awards at AmadoraBD: Best Foreign Comic and Best Edition, under the label Ala dos Livros.
The jury for this edition included Hugo Pinto (representing the municipality of Amadora), Paulo Monteiro (author, publisher, and President of the Portuguese Comic Club), and Rui Cartaxo (researcher and comics specialist).
The organization states that Paulo Monteiro abstained and “did not even attend the vote” in the “Fanzine/Independent Publication” and “Revelation Prize” categories, as ‘Tales From Nevermore’ is co-signed by his son and some competing fanzines were edited by the institution he leads in Beja.
The 36th Amadora Comic Festival began on Thursday and concludes on November 2, with the main hub located again at Parque da Liberdade, hosting most of the exhibitions, autograph sessions, book launches, and the commercial zone.
AmadoraBD also takes place outside Parque da Liberdade, with two retrospectives of the visual work of Alice Geirinhas and Dinis Conefrey at the Artur Bual Municipal Gallery and an exhibition by Filipa Beleza at the Municipal Bedeteca.
