This Year's Films
A Fox Under a Pink Moon
Directed by Mehrdad Oskouei & Soraya Akhlaghi
Subtly textured self-portrait of Soraya, an Afghan free-spirited 16-year-old artist in Iran who has been trying for five years to flee to Europe—chillingly capturing everything on her phone while pouring all her fears and worries into extraordinary works of art.
Achiever
Directed by Charlie Traisman
When Alexa finds she can no longer orgasm due to her new antidepressants prescription, she embarks on a desperate journey to get off by any means possible, only to find herself “getting close” through an unexpected connection.
All Rivers Spill Their Stories to the Sea
Directed by Jeanie Finlay
The North-East of England: Fisherman Stan Rennie has worked the same stretch of coastline, where the river meets the sea, for over fifty years; the trade has been in his family for centuries. So when a vast tide of poisoned crabs and lobsters washes ashore like a biblical plague in the wake of a new Brexit-fuelled development along that same coastline, Stan’s world is turned upside-down overnight. Have the sins of the industrial past come back to haunt the present?
Are We Still Married?
Directed by Kit Steinkellner
Over the course of one night Laura must decide if she will invite her husband Jack, who has recently been turned into a vampire, back into their house.
Best Day Ever
Directed by Ben Knight, Berne Broudy
Best Day Ever follows the stories of adaptive mountain bikers Greg Durso and Allie Bianchi as they navigate the relentless challenges of their disabilities and embrace the tremendous support, friendship, and joy they find in their rural Vermont riding community. Allie and Greg navigate disability and regain independence with humor, attitude, and grit on mountain bike trails that dismantle ableism, build community, and become a blueprint for trails anywhere.
Birds of War
Directed by Janay Boulos, Abd Alkader Habak
The love story of London-based Lebanese journalist and Syrian-based activist/cameraman over thirteen years of revolutions, war and exile.
Black Zombie
Directed by Maya Annik Bedward
A journey through cinema and history reveals how zombies evolved from Haitian spiritual traditions into Hollywood horror, exploring their deeper cultural significance as powerful symbols of resilience.
Blood & Guts
Directed by Carlye Rubin, Katie Green Co-Directed by: Tina Grapenthin
The lines between real life and reel life blur in this intimate portrait of the Adams family – an unconventional clan of independent horror filmmakers. Blending vérité documentary footage, personal archives, and scenes from their own films, Blood and Guts paints a raw and tender picture of creative collaboration, free-range parenting, and the chaos of family life lived on and off camera. As they race to complete their final family film before their youngest daughter, Zelda, leaves for college, parents Toby Poser and John Adams must confront the inevitable shift that comes with letting go – redefining not only how they see themselves in the world, but who they are as artists when the kids leave the frame.
Boobs
Directed by Nicola Leddy
Boobs’ is a bold and deeply intimate short documentary that reclaims the narrative around representation of women’s bodies in Ireland.
After years of therapy confronting her struggles with body image, Irish artist Geraldine Carton embarks on a bold project – to paint 100 nude breast portraits from the female perspective — embracing the spectrum of race, gender identity, disability, age and sexual orientation. This is a radical step in a country which has had a long history of conservative attitudes towards women’s bodies. Through the honest stories of the women who step forward to be painted, Boobs becomes more than a documentary—it’s a call for visibility, a platform for resilience, and an uprising for radical self-love.
Cheyenne
Directed by Taimi Arvidson
For the first time in a century, rough and rowdy cowgirls compete in a life and death rodeo event to be crowned the world champion of women’s bronc riding. CHEYENNE follows the journeys of these athletes as they make their way through a yearlong rodeo circuit, culminating with the finals at the storied Cheyenne Frontier Days. With their lives on the line and the odds stacked against them, our characters give us full access into the thrilling world of rodeo, both on and off the broncs. Their journeys are grounded in their adrenaline-fueled lives as bronc riders, but also unveil a far greater narrative about the human condition and the lengths we go to to heal and survive.
Comparsa
Directed by Vickie Curtis and Doug Anderson
Comparsa fully immerses audiences in the intense world of Ciudad Peronia, Guatemala, where sisters Lesli and Lupe use art to inspire local youth and heal deep wounds. After 41 girls are killed in a State-run “Safe Home” and the government refuses to act, the sisters respond with a community comparsa—an exuberant street performance featuring towering puppets, fire-breathing stilt walkers, and thundering drums. With brave vulnerability, they expose a system that permits and commits violence against women, and they open up about surviving violence in their own home.
Their youth movement takes to the streets, confronting corruption and reclaiming public space for women and girls. Rooting their efforts in joy and community care, they find healing along the way. Built on a 17-year relationship between the subjects and the film team, Comparsa offers a stirring portrait of sisterhood, peacebuilding, and the transformational power of art.
Eructation
Directed by Victoria Trow
The world record for loudest female burp is 107.3 decibels. Kaylee wants to beat it.
Far From Home
Directed by Kristi Tethong
One family and the Tibetan nation are bound together by love, identity and their fight to resist erasure. As TC Tethong – former deputy to the Dalai Lama – loses his memory, rediscovered archives reveal an unexpected love story with a Canadian named Judy, and their life-long struggle to keep a homeland alive in a South Indian jungle. With rare reflections from an aging Dalai Lama, personal and collective histories intertwine in an endless longing for a home out of reach. As time erodes memory, will the fight for Tibet also fade?
Finding Our Voices
Directed by Maggie Hartmans & Brittany Hart
Through the transformative power of art, survivors of sexual abuse reclaim their voices, rebuild their lives, and find healing in this intimate and deeply personal documentary.
Free Joan Little
Directed by Yoruba Richen
FREE JOAN LITTLE tells the story of the 1975 groundbreaking case of Joan Little who was the first woman in U.S history to be acquitted for using deadly force to resist sexual assault. Joan was a Black incarcerated woman in North Carolina who killed her white prison guard who was trying to rape her. Little’s murder trial became a cause celebre bringing together prominent advocates, black power activists , white feminists and anti-death penalty activists while catalyzing a nationwide discussion on sexual assault. With rare archival footage, contemporary interviews and the folk anthem that carried her cause, FREE JOAN LITTLE captures the spirit of resistance that made history.
Jane Elliott Against the World
Directed by Judd Ehrlich
A rural Iowa schoolteacher becomes a national voice against racism after leading a controversial 1968 lesson in discrimination with her all-white third-grade class. Now nearly 90, she refuses to hold back amid today’s fights about race, history, and power after a lifetime of speaking out.
Liminal
Directed by Brennan Vance
Ukrainian soldiers wounded in war come to America for a chance to rebuild their lives and limbs, before returning home to rejoin the resistance.
Lost & Found
Directed by Wiktoria Kwoka
A teenage burglar breaks into the home of an elderly man, not expecting to find him there. To her surprise, she interrupts the man in the middle of a suicide attempt. Startled by her presence, the man makes her an offer – he will let her go free if she helps him finish what he started.
Love Apptually
Directed by Shalini Kantayya
Love Apptually follows a French journalist’s journey from early fascination with Tinder to uncovering the deeper truths embedded in its algorithm. Through her investigation, the film explores how a multi-billion-dollar tech industry is quietly reshaping desire, intimacy, and the most intimate of human pursuits: love.
Marga en el DF
Directed by Gabriela Ortega
Marga’s life takes an unexpected turn at five months pregnant during a surprise visit to Mexico City.
Mary Oliver: Saved by the Beauty of the World
Directed by Sasha Waters
If poetry had a pop icon, it would be Mary Oliver – celebrated bestseller, Pulitzer Prize-winner, lover of dogs and the beauty of nature. This moving documentary features interviews and readings by John Waters, Stephen Colbert, and Oprah Winfrey.
Modern Whore
Directed by Nicole Bazuin
Modern Whore is a hybrid documentary that reimagines popular depictions of sex work through the lived experiences of writer, performer, and sex worker, Andrea Werhun. Based on her book Modern Whore: A Memoir, Andrea grapples with social stigma and reclaims her narrative in a series of funny, heartbreaking, and surprising stories.
Monster Slayer
Directed by Catie Skipp
Monster Slayer is a short animated documentary that follows LA artist and dancer Stephanie “Monty” Montgomery after she’s sexually assaulted at the strip club where she works. When the system fails her—ignored by management and dismissed by police—Monty turns to the one tool she has left: her art. Through a bold public act of protest, she transforms her trauma into a visual reckoning, reclaiming both her story and her space. Using Monty’s own drawings brought to life through animation, the film immerses us in her experience and exposes the broader culture of silence, stigma, and systemic neglect that so many survivors, especially those in sex work, face.
Norheimsund
Directed by Ana A. Alpizar
A girl’s long-distance romance with an older Norwegian man promises to pull her and her mother out of their austere life in Cuba, but her dreams are shaken when she realizes he isn’t as idyllic as he seems.
World Premiere Venezia 82, Mostra Internazionale d’Arte Cinematografica – Orizzonti Short Films Competition 2025, Italy, Sundance Film Festival 2026
Panther Pat
Directed by Ashley Brandon
In 1970, a schoolteacher crashes into the brutal world of professional football, shattering its gender barrier.
Praestens Dilemma/The Priest’s Dilemma
Directed by Maureen Payne-Hahner
HELP ME HELP THOSE THAT I MIGHT HURT.
A woman, Veronika, struggles with her moral convictions as a priest, a mother and a best friend when she is confronted with the inevitable forcing her to summon the courage to commit to the adage that to be clear is to be kind, to be unclear is to be unkind; no matter the consequences.
Rapinoe
Directed by Rebeca Hunt
A never-before-seen look at the internal life of the iconic soccer star, RAPINOE chronicles Megan Rapinoe’s journey from childhood to record-breaking career, all while deeply anchored by her convictions in social justice. This biographical documentary is at times therapeutically intimate, and jawdroppingly spectacular at others. A generational athlete known for kneeling alongside Colin Kaepernick during the Black Lives Matter movement, advocating for equal pay in women’s sports, and championing the LGBTQ community, Rapinoe’s legacy transcends far beyond the soccer field.
Reggae Girlz
Directed by Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy & Trish Dalton
In a David vs. Goliath saga, the Jamaican women’s football team, affectionately known as the “Reggae Girlz,” rise from obscurity to challenge global giants France and Brazil in the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup, defying all odds and capturing the world’s imagination with their unyielding spirit.
Saving Etting Street
Directed by Dena Fisher and Amy Scott
SAVING ETTING STREET, a documentary feature by Dena Fisher and Amy Scott, follows carpenter Shelley Halstead as she trains a group of three young, Black women in construction skills by rehabbing vacant and abandoned houses in West Baltimore, challenging generations of racism and sexism in housing. The mission is to transform a distressed block on Etting Street into a community of Black women homeowners, helping build generational wealth and stability in a neighborhood plagued by poverty, crime, and neglect. When tensions arise within the diverse group of young women she’s teaching to build and a suspicious fire destroys one of her buildings, Shelley is forced to rethink her vision of community.
Seized
Directed by Sharon Liese
When the small town of Marion, Kansas, is thrust into the international spotlight after a police raid on the Marion County Record and the death of its 98-year-old co-owner, a fierce debate ignites about the abuse of power, journalistic ethics, local journalism, and the United States Constitution.
Siren: The Voices of Shelley Beattie
Directed by Irene Taylor
Unpacks fascinating story of Shelley “Siren” Beattie and her complex legacy entwined with beauty, mental illness and love.
State of Firsts
Directed by Chase Joynt
A portrait of Sarah McBride’s historic run to become the first trans Member of Congress, the backlash that ensues, and her fight for change amidst intensifying political extremism.
Steal This Story, Please
Directed by Tia Lessin and Carl Deal
Amy Goodman has reported some of the most consequential stories of our time. Steal This Story, Please. is a gripping portrait of a journalist whose unwavering commitment to truth-telling spans three decades of turbulent history.
Tampons & Taxes: Or How to Play the Ole Boys Club and Win
Directed by Emily Harrold
STOPPING THE TAX is a short documentary film following the only 6 women in the South Carolina State Senate as they work together across party lights to fight for the state’s sexist period products tax to be overturned – ultimately using a comical trade to get the tax repealed.
The Baker’s Hotline
Directed by Emily and Dave Schuman
At a hotline for baking emergencies, a small team fields calls from strangers in crisis, only to discover that behind each kitchen catastrophe lies a tender, messy slice of someone’s life.
The Big Cheese
Directed by Sara Joe Wolansky
What is a “cheesemonger?” It’s like a sommelier, but for cheese. It’s less pretentious and more punk rock. In Europe, cheesemongering is a vaunted, prestigious career — but in America, cheesemongering usually means working minimum wage behind a grocery store counter.
Adam “Mr. Moo” Moskowitz wants to change things by coaching an underdog American team to victory at the Mondial du Fromage — the Olympics of cheese — in France.
Our ragtag, tattooed Team USA has never won against the European cheese goliaths. Will this be the year?
The Dads
Directed by Luchina Fisher
As anti-trans legislation and hostility escalate in the United States, a group of dads, building a nascent movement to support their trans and gender expansive kids, are forced to make an impossible choice: stay and fight or flee the country.
The Delivery Line
Directed by Nance Ackerman
Inside makeshift tents on the US-Mexico border, across the resource-scarce areas of northern Nigeria, and in the encampment parks and shelters of Toronto, the high-risk neighbourhoods of Colombia, and the remote mountainous regions of Afghanistan, courageous midwives are risking their own safety and wellbeing to attend to expectant mothers. Through astounding access to these precarious environments and to the dedicated women working with scant resources and minimal support, director Nance Ackerman captures the ever-evolving risks and high stakes of each place as the midwives navigate care with traditional medicine and enduring native healing practices. A triumph of expansive, urgent storytelling with a global focus, The Delivery Line makes visible the undervalued work of some of the most compassionate people working in the direst of circumstances and foregrounds the profound sense of purpose and joy they derive from their critical, lifesaving work.
Water Cooler
Directed by Emma V.F.
The Trump administration has turned immigration courts into deportation traps. As ICE agents wait to arrest their targets outside of courtrooms, their banal conversations clash with the severity of their actions. This documentary short — filmed in New York’s Federal Plaza from November 2025 through January 2026 — captures the virulent callousness of ICE agents detaining migrants who are trying to stay in the country legally.
When a Witness Recants
Directed by Dawn Porter
Combining the potent artistic forces of author/journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates, filmmaker Dawn Porter (Gideon’s Army, John Lewis: Good Trouble, Luther) and the HBO brand, WHEN A WITNESS RECANTS tells the powerful story of three Baltimore teenagers — later known as the Harlem Park Three — were wrongfully convicted of killing a middle school student and spent 36 years in prison. Their convictions rested on negligent police work and testimony from other children who were effectively coerced into corroborating a fabricated narrative in court. Through archival footage, animation, taped depositions, and present-day prison interviews, WHEN A WITNESS RECANTS reveals how an indifferent, unrepentant judge failed to intervene, even as a community struggled to process the unthinkable.
Wild East
Directed by Maia Wikler
Romania is home to 70% of Europe’s last primary forests. As IKEA logs them near extinction, environmental activist Gabi Paun risks his life to stop it.
Yo (Love Is a Rebellious Bird)
Directed by Anna Fitch and Banker White
After losing her good friend Yo, filmmaker Anna Fitch spends a decade obsessively building a detailed 1/3-scale version of Yo’s house. It’s just big enough for Anna to squeeze through the door and inside lives a 20in puppet of Yo. When the pair met, Yo was 73 and Anna just 24, but over almost two decades of friendship, they form a deep bond that defies the gap in their ages and experiences. The film juxtaposes intimate vérité of Yo’s last year with Anna’s creative interpretations of Yo’s dramatic life stories. Born in Switzerland in 1924, Yo lived life on her own terms, defying expectations around sexuality, mothering, aging, and even death. As the film blurs memory, time and invention, it also reveals the power of artistic creation to channel–and share–grief and love.