Cinepolitical: A Monthly Brief on Documentary Film
Festival line-ups, a Nordic market slate, and criticism that returned to prisons, Palestine and Iranian memory in our July coverage.
July was a month of line-ups and open calls. Sarajevo and Prizren published their competition programmes ahead of an August that puts both festivals in the same fortnight, Nordisk Panorama released its slate for September in Malmö, and Thessaloniki opened submissions for an edition still eight months out.
Our reviewing arrived from Slovenia, Palestine, Libya, Armenia and Iran, alongside a further review from the Durban Talent Press programme. In commentary, we marked the passing of Marjane Satrapi.
News
Sarajevo names its documentary competition
The Sarajevo Film Festival selected 22 documentaries from 305 regional submissions, with thirteen features and eight shorts plus one title screening out of competition. Programmer Rada Šešić described a body of work that carries political urgency at intimate scale, moving between documentary and fiction and drawing on animation, archive and poetic method. More than half the films come from women directors and producers.
Nine films hold their world premiere in Sarajevo. The Heart of Sarajevo for Best Documentary Feature is Oscar-qualifying and carries €4,000 from the Government of Switzerland. The documentary slate sits inside a wider Competition Programme of 51 films chosen from 1,215 submissions. The 32nd edition runs 14 to 21 August.
The festival also handed its Human Rights Day slot, the single annual berth reserved for a title that carries a post-screening discussion with directors and subjects, to the world premiere of All We Have Is Us. Alina Juárez and Juan Francisco Donoso shot for five years across two extraction frontiers linked by the same buyer, following opposition to Rio Tinto lithium projects in the Atacama Desert and in Serbia’s Jadar Valley.
DokuFest reaches 25 years
DokuFest unveiled 104 competition titles for its jubilee edition, drawn from a record 3,687 submissions and spread across eight sections. Artistic Director Veton Nurkollari framed the programme as a response to a troubled world, pointing to films shaped by war, environmental collapse, police militarisation and melting glaciers. The festival runs 7 to 15 August in Prizren.
Nordisk Panorama sets up Malmö
Nordisk Panorama announced 52 projects for its Forum and Market from more than 130 submissions. Michael Madsen returns with The Ark, nineteen years after pitching Into Eternity at the same event. Max Kestner follows Life and Other Problems with Living in the Shadow of the World We Could Have, while Faroese director Maria Tórgarð brings Knots to the Forum. Several Work In Progress titles carry earlier pitches toward completion, among them Mohammed Fares Al Majdalawi’s Out of Place, first pitched in 2021. Forum Manager Lena Nitsch described a slate reaching from intimate personal work to sharper investigation beyond the Nordic region. The Forum runs 20 to 22 September, the Market from 18 September.
Thessaloniki opens for 2027
The Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival opened submissions for a 29th edition running 4 to 14 March 2027. Early bird entry closes 18 September 2026 at €40, with the final deadline on 30 November at €60. Immersive and XR projects run fee-free until 8 January. The Golden Alexander in the Feature Length International Competition carries €12,000 and automatic Oscar-qualifying status.
Films
Much of July’s criticism concerned people held inside something they did not choose, whether a prison, a border, an illness or a national silence.
When I Get Out returned to Dob, Slovenia’s main male prison, where Metod Pevec filmed psychodrama sessions every Thursday for a year and a half. Melita Zajc found the film’s humanist approach yielding decidedly non-humanist insight, particularly once the inmates’ conversation broke down over the question of what normality is.
For Life followed a Palestinian woman’s attempt to smuggle her husband’s sperm out of prison in pursuit of motherhood. My Father and Qaddafi received a second consideration in our pages, with a Libyan diplomat’s wife and his now-grown daughter each retracing his 1993 disappearance in Cairo.
Loss took a quieter form in Here, Elsewhere, a grieving documentary poem addressed to an Armenian land cut off from its own past. If Pigeons Turned to Gold, a Czech debut, treated addiction as a disease reshaping family and memory rather than as moral failure.
Rehearsals for a Revolution moved across five portraits spanning half a century, turning private loss into public memory and showing how Iran’s resistance movements keep returning after each crackdown. Bára – Diary of a Rockstar went beyond portraiture of a famous singer toward an account of how public success unsettles private relationships, especially for women expected to apologise for ambition.
From the Durban Talent Press programme, Michelle Abuti wrote on FOSTA, following Thulani Headman from gang conviction in the Cape Flats to a decentralised music economy built in Langa township.
Books
Francesca Borri reviewed Assal Rad’s Don’t Say Palestine: How the Media Manufactured Consent for Genocide, published by Vintage. A leaked New York Times memo on words to avoid gives the book its title and its argument, that newsroom language has done more than any weapon to determine what the world believes about Gaza. Borri sets Rad’s screenshot archive of headlines against the precedent of Iraq and the benchmark of Ukraine, where the same events acquire subjects, verbs and accountable parties.
Commentary
Borri also wrote our tribute to Marjane Satrapi, who died on 4 June, a year after the passing of her partner. The piece argues that Persepolis changed the image of Iran by describing Iranians, and that the overlooked half of Satrapi’s work, her account of the West, confirms how right she was about it.
From Norway, Parvana Guliyeva sent a reflection on the Grimstad International Short Film Festival and its Human Dignity and Survival in Times of Conflict programme. Writing as someone shaped by war and displacement, she reads Free Fish, The Donkey of October 7th and The Recce through what each left behind with her, finding dignity in the decision to keep caring and remembering rather than in heroism or victory.
Coming up
In August we are back at the Sarajevo Film Festival for the 32nd edition, 14 to 21 August.
Managing Editor Steve Rickinson returns as tutor for the 5th Verzió Young Critics Workshop, running 16 to 20 November in Budapest within the 23rd Verzió International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival. Applications are open now to aspiring and early-career critics from across Europe, with free festival accreditation, industry access and reimbursement of travel and accommodation available for four participants. The enrolment fee is €50. The deadline is 31 August 2026.
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