Sheffield 26

Try! follows four players from four Irish teams to the Mixed Ability Rugby World Cup in Spain, where 32 teams from 16 countries go head to head in fifteen-a-side, full-contact rugby played by people with and without physical and learning disabilities. ““There are so many stories. The biggest challenge for us was trying to find out which of these characters we should focus on because everybody involved in that community, just to get to the pitch, they have to overcome so many obstacles,” director Oisín Mistéil tells BDE.

As we see in the heart-wrenching new documentary, Syrian activist and co-director Wafa Mustafa continues to search for her father Ali, who disappeared under the murderous regime of Bashar al-Assad. “Of course, the fall of the regime is a new beginning for humanity, not just for Syria, but the fight continues,” Mustafa tells BDE. “The only thing that will give me hope is fighting every day for other young women not to lose their fathers because they dared to speak politics, or dreamed of a better reality.”

Simple on one level, but in fact deeply complex, Kristof Bilsen’s The Apologist, world-premiering at Sheffield DocFest, examines the ritual of saying “sorry,” and uses that well-known and much utilised phrase as a starting point on a journey to explore how apologies redefine history and what happens to us as witnesses to the act of atonement.

Cara Holmes’ Lesbian Lines not only tells the story of the helplines that were established in Ireland in the late 1970s, and which continue to this day, it also tells a history of gay and political activism within a deeply conservative country over which the Catholic church held (and continues to hold) considerable sway. “They would hate to hear me say this, but these women are absolute heroes of mine in terms of what they've done for me and for future generations coming up,” Holmes tells BDE, both of the helpline staff and the activists who have brought about radical change over past decades.

Film Harbour has picked up Kristof Bilsen’s new feature doc The Apologist which has its world premiere in International Competition at Sheffield DocFest June 11. The film is produced by Belgian-based Limerick Films, and co-produced with Tangerine Tree (NL), Warboys Films (FR) and Wrong Men (BE). “It’s wonderful to have a sales agent of the calibre of Film Harbour work with us and it feels like a testament to the six years which this multi-layered project to unpick the nuances and challenges of apologising which is so important today,” says director Bilsen.

Rich Felgate's Sheffield DocFest opener We, The Hated is a provocative and intriguing behind-the-scenes look at the work of - and some of the personalities involved in - the British protest group Just Stop Oil, who took part in a series of high-profile protests between 2022 and 2025. Evocatively, perhaps a little clumsily, titled, the film nevertheless wears its heart on its sleeve, especially given that it is directed by the partner of one of the founders of the organisation.

In her short film selected for Sheffield 2026, Netherlands-based Uyghur filmmaker Darya Andijan invokes the ancient myth of Gülem, a forgotten goddess of carpet weaving. The film is highly poetic and personal as it weaves female narratives across borders, all the time set against a background of oppression, and China’s erasure both of the Uyghur language and its sense of identity. “Globalisation is failing us, and people need a different hold on where their home is and what their identity is,” says Andijan.

Netflix announced June 10 the five filmmaking teams, selected from thousands of applications, that will receive funding and professional support during the fourth year of the Netflix Documentary Talent Fund. The filmmakers were selected by a jury of industry experts (pictured above) after pitching their idea for a short documentary films inspired by the prompt, “On the theme of change.”

Chilean Oscar®-nominated director Maite Alberdi will give a June 12 Art of Storytelling masterclass, as well as present her latest documentary A Child of My Own at the 33rd Sheffield DocFest. Chile will furthermore be represented in MeetMarket with three projects: The Weight of Snow (rough cut), directed by Matías Bolla; Inside the Biggest Case on Earth, directed by Renan Flumian, and Isabel Allende: The Documentary, directed by River Finlay. Chiledoc will also host a co-production gathering June 11, with aim of fostering new international collaborations within the doc sector.

In his feature documentary, Nigerian-American filmmaker Ose Oyamendan investigates the highly suspicious death in 1998 MKO Abiola, the charismatic billionaire businessman and media mogul who should have been President of Nigeria. “Going into this film, my first objective was that I am going to take my biases out of it. I am going to take out whatever preconceptions I have,” Oyamendan tells BDE. He was always respectful but, as he further notes, he is an activist who “was brought up to question and fight authority.”