Belgrade, the Serbian capital, is once again a key meeting point for the international documentary community as the 19th edition of Beldocs International Documentary Film Festival opens May 20, running to May 26 across multiple venues throughout the city.
This year’s edition presents more than 100 documentaries, short films, VR works and interactive projects across 15 programme sections, reaffirming the festival’s growing position within the European documentary landscape.
The festival opens with Yugo Goes To America, a nostalgic road documentary following a journey across the United States in the legendary Yugoslav-made Yugo automobile. The film world-premiered at CPH:DOX this year. The 2026 programme combines international festival favourites, award-winning documentaries and a strong regional focus, including 17 world premieres, four European premieres, 41 regional premieres and 43 Serbian premieres.
Among the key strands are the International Competition, featuring “bold authors who lay the foundations of a new pantheon of documentary cinematography,” and the Serbian Competition, dedicated to contemporary Serbian nonfiction cinema.
Other sections include Meteors, showcasing radical arthouse and hybrid forms; Fireworks, focused on visually ambitious cinematic works; Prime Time, gathering audience and festival hits; and the curated Beldocs Special programme Hope Is a Discipline, selected this year by Macedonian writer Rumena Bužarovska.
The thematic focus of this year’s edition spans science and technology, migration, ecology, media literacy, and the relationship between humans, animals and the environment, while music documentaries, biographical films and archive-based works continue to occupy a prominent place within the selection.
A major milestone for the festival came earlier this year when Beldocs International Documentary Film Festival became an officially qualifying festival for the European Film Academy Awards documentary category, meaning films screened at Beldocs are now eligible for consideration for the European Film Awards.
“Beldocs 2026 gathers new thoughts on the theme of hope, driven by a lasting passion for creative documentary film,” says festival director Mara Prohaska Marković.
“Hope and documentary share a common ground: both emerge from the complexity of the world, from the harshness of lived experience, and sometimes even from profound despair. By searching for light in moments of darkness, they expand the imagination toward new possibilities that point beyond the troubled present.”
Alongside the public programme, Beldocs Industry continues to expand its regional and international reach through workshops, masterclasses, panels, training initiatives and co-production activities designed to support emerging and established nonfiction filmmakers.
This year’s industry platform includes 20 projects selected for the Beldocs Pitching Forum, four immersive works showcased within the Beldocs XR Academy, eight participants in the Balkan Young Talents programme and three projects featured in Play.Docs, the festival’s section dedicated to documentary games and interactive storytelling.
“In bringing these together, we are asking what it means — across formats, across borders — to document a moment that many would prefer to leave undocumented,” said Andrijana Sofranić Šućur.
“Play.Docs, now in its third year, deepens the conversation between documentary and interactive media. Our industry programme extends this inquiry across masterclasses, talks, panels and co-production forum — examining how truth is constructed, how solidarity is built across divided contexts.”
The industry programme will once again gather filmmakers, producers, broadcasters, festival programmers, distributors, film funds and VOD representatives from across Europe, reinforcing Belgrade’s role as one of Southeast Europe’s increasingly important documentary meeting points.
More information about the programme and screenings is available via the official festival website.
