Maverick US docmaker John Wilson will return to DocsBarcelona in 2026 to present his feature debut, The History of Concrete, following its screenings at the Sundance and CPH:DOX festivals. The American filmmaker, who presented his cult series How To With John Wilson at the Catalan festival in 2024, will present the Spanish premiere of the film on May 12, together with a Q&A.
“With his characteristically unmistakable and ironic style, Wilson transforms a seemingly mundane subject like concrete into a fascinating and profoundly human exploration of urban life, the festival writes. “This unique documentary comedy offers a singular portrait of city life and its inhabitants, taking unexpected turns and revealing a humour born of intuition and keen observation. Wilson thus confirms his ability to uncover the absurdity and beauty hidden in the most insignificant details of the city.”
A FOCUS DEDICATED TO THE CITY: DOCS&CITY (plus festival annotations)
The Focus section, which is dedicated to a different theme each year, will this year examine the urban environment. Docs&City will bring together documentaries that explore the transformations, tensions, and imaginaries of contemporary cities in diverse settings such as Gaza, Barcelona, Granada, Tokyo, and Damascus.
“In the programming process, a common thread has emerged in many of the films: a kind of love letter to cities that are questioned or transformed. Films that look at the city from a place of pain, but also from affection, and that document the destruction while reclaiming the bonds and memories that persist. The Docs&City focus aims to understand the city as a contested space, but also as a place of belonging,” explains Maria Colomer, co-director of DocsBarcelona.
Among them is Kamal Aljafari’s With Hasan in Gaza, in which the Palestinian filmmaker and artist recovers three videotapes filmed in 2001 that depict daily life in Gaza, in constant and forced transformation. What begins as a search for a former prison mate from 1989 becomes an unexpected journey from the north to the south of the Gaza Strip alongside Hasan, a local guide.
Through archival footage, the film evokes a human geography marked by loss and the impossibility of reunion, capturing fragments of a past that resonate with new meaning today. With Hasan in Gaza premiered at the Locarno Film Festival, where it received the Europa Cinemas Label award for Best European Film. It has also been nominated for the 2026 European Film Awards in the categories of Best Film and Best European Documentary.
Corren las liebres explores the story of Noa, a transgender Roma woman trying to regain custody of her children while facing eviction in Barcelona. The film portrays the dynamics of survival on the city’s margins and highlights the social and urban tensions that define the Catalan capital. Ros, a filmmaker, documentary photographer, and journalist, has worked in London and New York and has been recognized with three World Press Photo awards and Amnesty International’s One World Media Award.
Quién vio los templos caer, by Lucía Selva, moves between myth and reality to explore the memory and urban transformation of Granada, turning the city into a symbolic and narrative space. The film premiered at CPH:DOX, where it received a special mention from the jury. Selva is a filmmaker and cinematographer trained at ESCAC and the Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola, and is interested in cinematic craftsmanship and the search for new visual languages, combining non-fiction and digital creation. Her video essay In Memoriam was selected for Filmadrid and can be seen on MUBI and Filmin. The documentary tghat Selva is presenting at DocsBarcelona 2026 is his feature film debut.
Japanese documentary Numakage Public Pool, by Shingo Ota, documents the disappearance of a suburban Tokyo public swimming pool, a key social space within the urban fabric, and the collective grief it generates among the communities that frequented it, from families to queer meeting spaces. Ota is a director and artist with a background in philosophy and narratology from Waseda University. His first feature film, The End of The Special Time We Were Allowed (2013) premiered at the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival and was distributed internationally. His work combines documentary and performing arts, with projects such as The Last Geishas. He has been recognized at festivals such as Image Forum and Yubari, and his career is marked by formal and narrative experimentation.
Little Sinner, by Daro Hansen and Thomas Papapetros, is a documentary constructed from over two decades of Hansen’s personal recordings. As a young woman in her beloved city of Damascus, she fell in love with Toke, a Danish exchange student. But when her family’s honour was threatened, she accepted a forced marriage to a Syrian man. With Toke’s help, Daro managed to escape to Denmark. Combining personal archive footage with images shot during the refugee crisis in Lebanon and Greece, the film traces her life’s journey between Damascus and various geographies of displacement, highlighting the urban experience of exile and rebuilding in new environments.
