Organisers of Cinéma du reel have announced the 37 films that are selected for Competition in 2026. The films “will once again showcase contemporary documentary in all its diversity, as world, international or French premieres,” the festival writes. The 48th edition of the Paris-based event runs March 21-28.
“The programme reflects formal developments and experiments in the documentary field in the context of the history of cinema. These rare and previously unseen films, which challenge us to consider the state of the world today, can be discovered in the cinemas of the Latin Quarter,” the festival further underlines.
COMPETITION PROGRAM 2026
- AN INCOMPLETE CALENDAR by Sanaz Sohrabi, Canada, Iran, Turkey, Venezuela | 77’ | World premiere
- AND IF THE BODY by Toby Lee, United-States | 27’ | International premiere
- AND THE MOON SETS OVER THE TEMPLE THAT WAS by Justin Jinsoo Kim, South Korea | 70’ | International premiere
- ANOTHER EARTH by Ben Russell, France | 11’ | World premiere
- BAISANOS by Andrés Khamis Giacoman & Francisca Khamis Giacoman, Chile, Palestine, Spain | 14’ | French premiere
- CASTING FOR A FILM, IHSAN’S DIARY by Lamia Joreige, Lebanon | 48’ | French premiere
- FROM HERE TO THE APPLE TREE by Cyprien Ponson, France | 102’ | World premiere
- THE COW’S COMPLAINT by Mahdy Abo Bahat & Abdo Zin Eldin, Egypt, France, United Kingdom | 95’ | World premiere
- CRAU by Charles Moreau-Boiteau, France | 47’ | World premiere
- LANDLESS CHILDREN by René Ballesteros, France, Chile | 97’ | World premiere
- LABORE NOBILE by Juliette Achard, France, Belgium | 73’ | World premiere
- EL LEÓN by Diana Bustamante, Colombia | 14’ | French premiere
- LEVERS by Rhayne Vermette, Canada | 93’ | French premiere
- THE WATERLINE by Olivier Zabat, France | 115′ | World premiere
- LOCAL SENSATIONS by Tulapop Saenjaroen, Thaïland | 25’ | French premiere
- LONDON by Sebastian Brameshuber, Austria | 117’ | French premiere
- THE LONGEST NIGHT by Phuong Thao Nguyen, France | 7’ | World premiere
- LOOKING AT YOU LOOKING AT ME by Max Bowens, United-States, Australia, France | 37’ | International premiere
- MARIA A PIEDI NUDI by Rebecca Digne, France | 41’ | World premiere
- MATTER OF BRITAIN by Peter Treherne, United-Kingdom | 103’ | French premiere
- NARRATIVE by Anocha Suwichakornpong, Thaïland, Japan | 49′ | French premiere
- THE NIGHTSEEKERS by Kavich Neang, Cambodia | 25′ | French premiere
- ONE EQUAL LIGHT by Maïder Fortuné & Annie MacDonell, France, Canada | 14’ | World premiere
- ONCE AGAIN by Skander Mestiri, France | 26’ | World premiere
- RELICTO by Guillermo Quintero, France, Colombia | 97’ | World premiere
- BACK BEFORE 3 P.M. by Gaël Lépingle, France | 74’ | World premiere
- THE RIB OF THE GREATER BAY AREA by Zhou Tao, Hong Kong | 70’ | French premiere
- MODERN ROSE, HUANCOR, PAKATNAMU PREMONITION, THREE SHORT FORMS by Louidgi Beltrame, France, Peru | 25’ | World premiere
- THE SERPENT IN BONANJO by Max Mbakop & Lilia Kilburn, Cameroon, United-States | 13’ | World premiere
- SHOT REVERSE SHOT by Radu Jude & Adrian Cioflâncă, Romania | 22’ | French premiere
- SLET 1988 by Marta Popivoda, Germany, France, Serbia | 22’ | French premiere
- SUBURBIA, THERE AND BACK by Damien Cattinari, France | 56’ | World premiere
- BLIND SONG by Stefano Canapa & Natacha Muslera, France | 63’ | World premiere
- I CROSSED THE DESERT WITH A GUN IN HAND by Laurence Garret, France | 78’ | World premiere
- THE WEARY HOURS OF TWO LABS ASSISTANTS by Burak Çevik, Turkey, Germany, Croatia, United-Kingdom | 22’ | French premiere
- WINDWARD by Sharon Lockhart, United-States, Canada | 70’ | French premiere
- WITH LOVE AND RAGE by Bojina Panayotova, France | 43’ | World premiere
Other highlights of the 48th Cinéma du réel include:
- Luke Fowler: Rejecting historical, aesthetic, and narrative constraints, celebrating the margins with Luke Fowler. Born in 1978, he is a central figure in the Glasgow art scene. A central part of his production focuses on the portrayal of radical figures, such as avant-garde composer and political activist Cornelius Cardew, psychiatrist R.D. Laing, and Marxist historian Edward Palmer Thompson.
- Jumana Manna: What colonisation does to bodies and territories with Jumana Manna. Palestinian filmmaker and visual artist. Her films explore how forms of power — economic, political, colonial — condition human and plant life, marking landscapes and bodies. Her cinema reveals the paradox between a reality in ruins and life that continues to regenerate.
- The Palestinian people and their resistance: In collaboration with Jumana Manna, a programme designed to help viewers ‘learn to see’ the Palestinian people and their resistance, and explore a part of their history.
- Festival Conversations: In 2026, Festival Conversations #7 will focus on ecofeminism: an intersectional, decolonial, and anti-capitalist struggle. It will draw on the work of philosopher Emilie Hache (author of De la génération. Enquête sur sa disparition et son remplacement par la production), with the participation of film historians Teresa Castro and Becca Voelcker, among others. A program of films – with Five Years Diaries by Anne-Charlotte Robertson and the Indian group Yugantar (Sudesha) and others – will echo Festival Conversations #7 focused on ecofeminist thought and action.
- First Window: a selection of filmmakers’ documentary debuts, in partnership with Mediapart, to sound out the future of documentary filmmaking.
- Popular Front(s) is a daily rendez-vous, every evening at 7:30pm, for a screening of a recent film – in some cases a world premiere – followed by a meeting with the director and a guest personality to provide festival-goers with “food for thought on the form, the thinking behind the film and the relationship between cinema and our capacity for action,” the festival writes. “With the conviction that cinema makes us clear-sighted, each year Popular Front(s) explores a part of our contemporary reality, our questioning, through films that bear witness to the activism of citizens and the filmmakers who capture them.”
