Nick Cunningham

Esther Bannenberg oversees her second edition as chief of DocSalon, which kicks off February 13, running through to Feb 17. “What excites me most is bringing in the networking dynamics at DocSalon and the Archive Market,” she tells BDE, “to make sure that we facilitate business opportunities as well as strengthen the ties between creatives and industry execs [and] an open informal exchange on all levels, while serving the documentary eco systems to explore which innovations can help to overcome challenges and create new opportunities.” Bannenberg is joined in conversation by Tanja Meissner, Head of Berlinale Pro.

The seventy-four titles, “hand-picked from thousands of submissions from around the world,” features 53 world premieres, 17 international premieres and 4 European premieres. At the heart of the festival are six juried competition sections judged by leadinginternational experts, as well as a €10,000 Audience Award. The program is anchored by the flagship competition section, the DOX:AWARD, which comes with a €10,000 prize for which 12 films will compete.

Organisers of Cinéma du reel have announced the 37 films selected for Competition in 2026. Running 7 to 117 minutes, and sourced from across the globe, 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.

Movies that Matter will “move forward with a single-director structure” as of 16 April 2026, the festival says in an online post. Margje de Koning will take on the role of Managing Director-Trustee. Laurens Korteweg, who has served as Business Director-Trustee since September 2023, will leave the organisation following a carefully planned transition period. The decision has been taken in response to ongoing financial pressure and is aimed at safeguarding the organisation’s future, the festival writes.

Oscar-nominated actress Fernanda Torres talks to Petra Costa, herself nominated for a feature Doc Academy Award in 2020 for The Edge of Democracy, about the latter’s latest work, Apocalypse in the Tropics, nominated in the Bafta Best Documentary category 2026. The film examines the influence of evangelical Christianity on far-right politics in Brazil, especially during Jair Bolsonaro’s term of office (2019-23). In 2025 Bolsonaro was sentenced to 27 years in prison after he was found guilty of orchestrating a coup d'état to overturn the 2022 election results.

In her feature doc Angelica Ruffier recalls a teenage crush she had on a particular teacher, while at the same time dealing with the recent death of her father. “The director, through an amazing craft of acting and directing, gives us a perceptive on womanhood too rarely portrayed in cinema…[she is] a very unique voice who made us travel through generations charged with loneliness with absolute honesty and radical tenderness.”

After nearly fifty years under wraps, the film, which was conceived and shot by the legendary William Greaves and directed by his son David Greaves, spotlights footage from a 1972 gathering of luminaries of the Harlem renaissance. Last month, NEON received 18 Oscar nominations for the 98th Academy Awards, the second highest amount for any motion picture studio.

The film, directed by Kristina Mikhailova, will have its world premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival in the Forum Special section. River Dreams marks a historic milestone as the first documentary from Kazakhstan ever selected for Berlin. “My film is a love-hate letter to Kazakhstan, told through a female gaze, already an act of resistance where I come from,” says director Mikhailova. (See exclusive first look at the film’s official poster.)

CPH:DOX announced February 5 the line-up of artworks and experiences for its 2026 INTER:ACTIVE exhibition, running March 11-22 and centred on the theme of HYPERVIGILANCE’ “The works in this year’s INTER:ACTIVE exhibition expose the collective anxiety of a society on high alert, where we struggle to retain agency over our image, body, and voice,” comments CPH:LAB’s Head of Studies, Mark Atkin.

Visions du Réel announced February 5 that U.S. filmmaker and journalist Laura Poitras will be the Special Guest at the opening of the 24th edition of VdR–Industry, the Festival's programme dedicated to industry professionals. Laura Poitras is the author of a post-9/11 trilogy, which concluded with the Oscar-winning film CITIZENFOUR. Poitras’ latest film, Cover-Up, which world-premiered at Venice 2025, paints a portrait of American journalist Seymour Hersh, who broke a series of major stories, from the Watergate scandal to the revelations of torture at Abu Ghraib during the Iraq War.