Nick Cunningham

Laura Poitras and Mark Obenhaus’ feature doc, which world-premiered at Venice, explores the investigative journalism career of Seymour Hersh, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who covered the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War and the Abu Ghraib torture scandal during the Iraq War. The filmmakers talk to US filmmaker Kirsten Johnson.

In the short doc Classroom 4, thirty students - 15 of whom are imprisoned, 15 coming from a local college - engage in a fifteen-week course on the history of crime and punishment in the US, all as part of the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program. What emerges is a moving and uplifting study in human connection and a deep acknowledgement of shared values, despite the radically contrasting circumstances of the participants. Director Eden Wurmfeld, professor Reiko Hillyer and student Nick Fiveoaks discuss the Oscar-shortlisted film with BDE.

Ten international films are in the long list in the Documentary category, while four documentaries are long-listed in the Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director or Producer category. Round two voting runs to January 20, with final nominations to be announced Tuesday 27 January on the BAFTA YouTube channel. The winners will be revealed Sunday February 22.

BDE talks to Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing about their Oscar short-listed feature doc Folktales, set in Arctic Norway and chronicling a year in the lives of three students at a folk high school in Norway. No family. No social media. Just classmates and sled dogs by way of companionship. “I did not know I was going to come out of this experience so changed, so touched. I had this incredible life experience that is part of me now,” says Grady.

BAFTA-winner Felipe Bustos Sierra’s documentary about one of Scotland’s most spontaneous and successful acts of civil resistance in recent memory will open the festival’s 22nd edition on 25th February. Executive-produced by two-time Oscar® winner Emma Thompson, Everybody To Kenmure Street will world-premiere in World Cinema Doc Comp at the upcoming Sundance FF.

Award-winning director Nanfu Wang (One Child Nation, Hooligan Sparrow) talks to Sara Khaki and Mohammadreza Eyni about their acclaimed feature doc about Iranian Sara Shahverdi, who, as the first elected councilwoman of her remote Iranian village, fearlessly breaks patriarchal traditions by training teenage girls to ride motorcycles, and by stopping child marriages. The film is short-listed within the Documentary Feature Category of the upcoming Academy Awards.

The industry arm of Cinéma du réel (March 21-18 2026) “actively supports the distribution, promotion and placement of feature documentaries by linking, at a key stage of the production process, project holders (filmmakers and producers) to industry professionals,” organisers write. The deadline for the Works-in-Progress of ParisDOC 2026 (25-26 March) is January 7 2026.

Twenty-four new projects will be pitched January 28 and 29 2026 in Biarritz. “Without the questions, challenges and dilemmas that documentaries raise, we risk losing some of the essential element in our democratic systems: dialogues, debates and narratives that bridge the divide rather than creating confrontations and information bubbles,” write organisers. “The 2026 Fipadoc International Pitches is our contribution to democracy, so we better can avoid a future of 'democrazy.'”

“Which spaces are open to us? Which ones do we conquer and defend? These are central questions posed by the programme so far,” writes Berlinale Panorama of the first selections for 2026. The Generation team also hail their first selections. “Curiosity, anger and hope, grief and tender solidarity - from Brazil to Taiwan, the programme immerses itself in the lived realities of young protagonists,” they write. Furthermore, eight docs are selected for Berlin Retrospective. The 76th Berlinale runs February 12 to 22 2026.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced December 16 the shortlists in the documentary categories of the 98th Academy Awards®. Fifteen films will now advance within each of the Documentary Feature Film and Documentary Short Film categories. Two hundred and one films were eligible for the Doc Feature category, while 117 films qualified in the Short Doc category.