For the 7th year, CIRCLE Doc Accelerator has selected four alumni to present their works-in-progress as part of the Cannes Docs program. The exclusive training programme for women and gender-expansive filmmakers has been a consistent source of films that go on to make their mark on the international festival circuit. “Each work in progress reflects the richness and diversity of our community — distinct voices, bold perspectives, and nuanced storytelling,” says CIRCLE programme director Biljana Tutorov who, together with Petar Glomazić this year won the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize: Documentary for To Hold a Mountain.
The programme has built a strong track record over its seven editions. Lin Alluna’s Twice Colonized picked up the Docs-In-Progress award in Cannes before premiering at Sundance and opening both CPH:DOX and Hot Docs. More recent alumni have continued to make waves across the international circuit: Efthymia Zymvragaki’s Light Falls Vertical had its world premiere at IDFA 2022; Fan Wu’s XiXi premiered at HotDocs 2024, winning the Emerging International Filmmaker Award; Alba Zari’s White Lies premiered at Festival dei Popoli, before having its international premiere at IFFR 2026; Patricia Drati’s Becoming Ema and Rachel Taparjan’s Something Familiar (winner of the Chicken & Egg Vision Award at Cannes Docs) went on to premiere at CPH:DOX 2026. Recently, Faezeh Nikoozad’s In Between, a Place premiered in the Burning Lights Competition at Visions du Réel 2026.
CIRCLE programme director Tutorov comments: “We are thrilled to return to Cannes…Each work in progress reflects the richness and diversity of our community — distinct voices, bold perspectives, and nuanced storytelling. The intersection of the intimate and the political has become a defining thread in many CIRCLE-developed films. It takes courage to challenge established narratives — whether within family, colonial, or other oppressive contexts that history continues to reproduce. I’m happy to see that the space we have created together supports our community towards more visibility and power.”
This year, CIRCLE is also looking ahead, the organisation adds. “Alongside its commitment to bold, filmmaker-centred storytelling, the programme is expanding into new territory—guiding its community through the technological shifts reshaping the industry. Through CIRCLE Digital Empowerment, an online series led by pioneers in the field, CIRCLE stays true to its founding ethos: putting filmmakers first and equipping them with the tools they need to thrive in an evolving landscape.”
SELECTED PROJECTS OF THE 2026 SHOWCASE ARE (commentary supplied by CIRCLE):
- In Amazonas (Spain, Ecuador, Germany), director Clara López Rubio turns her lens on Waorani territory in the Ecuadorian Amazon, where the arrival of a new road and the felling of ancient trees forces a community to reckon with an uncertain future. Two grandmothers stand at the heart of the film: Nancy, who yearns for the possibilities of life beyond the forest, and Huanginkamu, who fights to protect her ancestral land. As López Rubio questions what her own presence sets in motion, the three women begin to co-imagine a world rooted in care rather than power. The film is produced by Laura Dauden (Forward Films, Spain), Isabela Parra (Caleidoscopio Cine, Ecuador) and Anke Petersen (Jyoti Film, Germany).
- Intimate Revolutions (USA, UK, Poland) is a deeply personal, fifteen-year self-portrait by director Julia Maryanska, who spent her American upbringing pushing back against the traditions of her Polish family, documenting her queer, polyamorous life along the way. The birth of her daughter brings her back to Europe to confront her mother and the inherited scripts of womanhood. Together, they come to see liberation not as a destination, but as a negotiation with time, body, and power. The film is executive produced by Marc J. Francis (Speakit Productions, UK), with Marielle Olentine (Tikkun Olam Productions, USA) serving as consulting producer.
- Sisters (Czech Republic, Slovakia, France, pictured), directed by Tereza Bernátková, unearths a remarkable and largely forgotten history: in a remote institution in former Czechoslovakia in the late 1950s, Catholic nuns cared for teenage girls who had been labelled mentally disabled and hidden from society — and one of those nuns kept a camera. Decades later, survivors return to those images, and what they find is both a portrait of resilience and a confrontation with the politics of institutional care, women’s place in society, and inequalities that have proved stubbornly enduring. The film is produced by Dagmar Sedláčková and Natália Pavlove (MasterFilm, Czech Republic).
- Portrait of A (Jordan, Germany, Qatar), directed by Rand Beiruty, follows Andrea, a young Romani woman in eastern Germany who elopes with her boyfriend at sixteen, only to find that leaving him, despite his unfaithfulness, is far from straightforward. Over seven years, Beiruty traces Andrea’s journey through love, betrayal and motherhood, weaving stop-motion animation into an ongoing dialogue between filmmaker and subject about compromise, agency and the choices we make for ourselves. The film is produced by Rand Beiruty and Jude Kawwa (Shaghab Films, Jordan).
