Sheffield DocFest, the UK’s leading documentary festival, announced April 29 the full 2026 public festival programme, bringing over 100 events to the city from 10-15 June. “The programme celebrates the best in non-fiction storytelling across multiple platforms, including documentary features, shorts, docuseries, podcast live events, immersive and extended reality exhibitions, talks, masterclasses and more,” the festival writes. The 2026 festival theme is Realities in Motion.
Within the 80 feature films and 24 shorts, there will be first-look screenings from the BBC, Channel 4, HBO, Netflix, SKY, Universal, Prime Video, Mindhouse, Passion Pictures, Tigerlily World of Wonder, and more. This year’s selection is curated from over 2,900 submissions and includes 45 World Premieres, 17 International Premieres, 5 European Premieres, and 35 UK Premieres from 64 Countries, the festival notes.
Unifying themes of this year’s selections, talks, and industry sessions are Journalism & Freedom of the Press; Activism & Storytelling; Artificial Intelligence; Indigenous Voices; Games & Play; Climate Crisis & Environmental Justice; Queer Narratives; Archival Work & Historical Memory; and Content for Young Audiences.
Raul Niño Zambrano, Creative Director, Sheffield DocFest comments: “In 2026, we are navigating a world defined by both profound uncertainty and constant transformation. Our theme, Realities in Motion, captures this momentum, reflecting how our lives are continually reshaped by collective action, from climate advocacy and social activism to the enduring power of music. Whether through features, shorts, TV episodes, podcasts, games, talks, or immersive XR experiences, we have curated a programme that celebrates the full spectrum of documentary storytelling. I am deeply grateful to our advisors, consultants, and the entire DocFest team for their tireless work in building a balanced, inclusive programme designed to spark deep curiosity and meaningful dialogue. We can’t wait to share it with our international audience.”
Mimi Poskitt, Managing Director, Sheffield DocFest adds: “Documentary storytelling has the power to open our eyes to the world and help us make sense of the realities around us which is why Sheffield DocFest, now in its 33rd year, continues to evolve alongside the audiences it serves. We are extremely proud of how this year’s programme reflects the dynamic ways people engage with non-fiction storytelling – seeking out immersive, innovative and thought-provoking experiences. It’s also why we decided to launch GEN DocFest, a new strand dedicated to children and families. Not only does this underscore our dedication to welcoming and inspiring the next generation of audiences and creators, but it will also help to ensure the documentary form remains inclusive, accessible and relevant for generations to come.”
The 2026 Guest of Honour is UK actor Maxine Peake whose curated programme will include the introduction of three hand-selected films: The Archivist – examining the importance of archiving British Folk traditions; Nightcleaners – a landmark of British political and feminist cinema following the struggle of female night cleaners in 1970s London, and The Wanted 18, about a Palestinian village whose 18 cows were declared a threat to national security; as well as a deep-dive discussion on working-class representation in cinema; a curated reading; and live music performance.
Queens of the Coal Age: A Live Reading, written by Peake, details the true story of four miners’ wives—Anne Scargill, Dot Kelly, Elaine Evans, and Lesley Lomas—who occupied Parkside Colliery in 1993 to protest pit closures. This reading with special guests showcases their courage and Northern wit in fighting to save mining communities, and revisits a defining moment of working-class resistance in recent British history.
In a festival highlight, Peake will also perform with critically acclaimed Stalwarts of the Sheffield Electronic music scene, the Eccentronic Research Council, making a rare appearance to perform a selection of tracks from their Dreamcatcher Tapes album.
The competition programmes are as follows:
INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION Honouring films that best display strong artistic vision and courageous storytelling. This award is Academy Award accredited.
- Colors of White Rock – Khoroldorj Choijoovanchig / France, Mongolia / 2026 / 82mins / European Premiere In Mongolia’s Gobi Desert, Maikhuu is one of the country’s only female truck drivers, hauling coal across treacherous roads to provide for her family.
- Disciples – Pankaj Johar, Sunaina Kapoor/ India, Germany, Denmark, Norway, Qatar / 2026 / 81mins / World Premiere. On the banks of the Ganges in Varanasi, two boys enter a revered Hindu school where lessons in ancient scripture blur into something more troubling.
- Filthy (Sucia – Per què no vas fer res?) – Bàrbara Mestanza, Marc Pujolar / Spain / 2026 / 82mins / International Premiere. When an actress goes looking for the man who assaulted her, she turns her trauma into art and asks the question nobody wanted her to: why didn’t you do anything?
- Lesbian Lines – Cara Holmes / Ireland / 2026 / 77mins / World Premiere. An intimate portrait of a network of underground telephone helplines established by a small community of Irish lesbians in 1979.
- MKO – Ose Oyamendan / Nigeria, United Kingdom, Canada, USA / 2026 / 108mins / World Premiere. Moshood Abiola wins Nigeria’s freest election, only for the military to jail him. When U.S. diplomats arrive to negotiate his release, he is served tea, and dies.
- The Archivist – Rob Curry, Tim Plester / 2026 / 98mins / World Premiere. David “Doc” Rowe has spent decades preserving Britain’s overlooked folk traditions. Now, with time running short, he faces a race to protect them.
- The Apologist – Kristof Bilsen / Belgium, Netherlands, France / 2026 / 82mins / World Premiere. Through the ritual of saying sorry, a bold journey explores how apologies redefine history and what happens to us as witnesses to the act of atonement.
- Time Machine Maidan (Машина Часу Майдан) – Roman Liubyi, Volodymyr Tykhyy/ Ukraine, Germany / 2026 / 86mins / World Premiere. In this haunting and visually inventive documentary, a spectral voice drifts through time and memory to trace the Maidan revolution and the roots of resistance in Ukraine.
INTERNATIONAL FIRST FEATURE COMPETITION This competition honours the future of non-fiction film and celebrates promising new talent.
- A City in the Forest – Lev Omelchenko, Nolan Huber / USA / 2026 / 98mins / World Premiere. When a police unit in Atlanta moves to raze an urban forest for the country’s largest police training facility, a grassroots movement fights to defend the land.
- Hope is a Word – Maria Galliani Dyrvik / Norway, Italy, Nigeria / 2026 / 82mins / World Premiere. In Nigeria’s Niger Delta, where oil extraction has poisoned the land for decades, poet and activist Nnimmo Bassey nurtures a new generation of writers to fight back.
- Magma (Le Magma) – Mia Bendrimia / France, Algeria, Qatar / 2026 / 88mins / World Premiere. Searching for answers about her Algerian family’s ties to both sides of the Independence war, a filmmaker uncovers a tangle of contradicting buried histories.
- Matininó – Gabriela Díaz Arp / Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic / 2026 / 87mins / International Premiere. In Puerto Rico, a multi-generational group of women confront violence and abuse through a shared creative fantasy rich in colour, mythology and play.
- The Way You See Me (Como tú me ves) – M Sin Título / Mexico, Argentina / 2026 / 85mins / World Premiere. An intimate story about the construction of identity and the consequences of defying gender norms within Mexico’s conservative upper-middle- class society.
- The Wind’s Thirst (La Sed del viento) – Alejandro Valbuena / Canada, Colombia / 2026 / 84mins / World Premiere. In Colombia’s La Guajira desert, three Wayuu guardians resist as a reservoir and wind turbines built on their ancestral land serve corporate interests, not their community.
- The Wolf – Wancheng Gu, Prasad Shetty / India, France / 2026 / 89mins / World Premiere. Yuan, a 60 year old former village mayor in Shanghai, seeks freedom through heartbreak, marriage and LGBTQ+ repression in modern China.
- WOLF – Christian Cargill / United Kingdom / 2026 / 88mins / World Premiere. Tilda Swinton guides us through the life of cult British musician Patrick Wolf, weaving together archive and animation to illuminate a singular artistic journey.
INTERNATIONAL SHORT FILM COMPETITION This Academy Award, BAFTA and BIFA-accredited award honours the best creative approaches in documentaries under 40 minutes.
- 3 Lost In Towers 跳房子 – Jingyuan Liang, Shizhao Ye / China / 2026 / 17mins / World Premiere. After a real estate collapse in a small Chinese city, a man who took his own life lingers as a ghostly presence among the unfinished buildings.
- all that appears solid is built on blood – Izdihar Afoyuni, Gelare Khoshgozaran / United Kingdom, Palestine / 2026 / 11mins / World Premiere. Footage documenting the making of a mass grave in Khan Younis, Gaza is slowed frame by frame, re-shot on film and soaked in human blood.
- Anatomy of a Portrait (Anatomía de un Retrato) – Juan Felipe León / Colombia / 2026 / 23mins / World Premiere. A rural Colombian woman plans to donate her body to science and commissions her own posthumous portrait, in a tender, inventive meditation on life, death and the human body.
- Do You Know That I’m With You – Darya Andijan / Netherlands / 2026 / 23mins / World Premiere. A forgotten goddess of carpet weaving is summoned back to life as a filmmaker pieces together lost memories across the Uyghur diaspora.
- Maybe Tomorrow – Waad Al-Kateab, Wafa Mustafa / United Kingdom, Syria, Germany / 2026 / 40mins / World Premiere. When activist Wafa Mustafa’s father disappears under Assad’s regime, her search for answers becomes a story of memory, identity and resilience.
- Pelo Lindo – Josue Garcia Prado / Guatemala / 2026 / 24mins / World Premiere. A 90-year-old Guatemalan mother reflects on four decades of waiting for her forcibly disappeared son, and the chapel she built in his name.
- Red Elephant – Iqran Rasheed / Pakistan, Belgium, Hungary, Portugal / 2026 / 22mins / World Premiere. LGBTQ+ asylum seekers in Belgium face an impossible ask: prove their identity by reliving the worst things that have happened to them.
- Relic – Sam Howard / Northern Ireland / 2026 / 13mins / World Premiere. High above Belfast, an 85-year-old man holds a holy relic linked to Padre Pio. Every 13th night, devoted locals journey up the mountain seeking a sacred cure.
- Stalin Boys – Bianca Giaever, Ora DeKornfeld / USA / 2026 / 22mins / International Premiere. Four middle school boys in a tiny Texas border town channel an unlikely obsession with Joseph Stalin into a history fair play about tyranny.
- Wild East – Maia Wikler / Romania, Sweden, Austria / 2026 / 36mins / World Premiere. A Romanian environmentalist risks everything to expose IKEA’s destruction of ancient forest, in an urgent, gripping portrait of one person’s fight against powerful corporate interests.
YOUTH JURY AWARD This award is selected by some of the UK’s most passionate young documentary lovers.
- All Rivers Spill Their Stories To The Sea – Jeanie Finlay / United Kingdom, Germany / 2026 / 99mins / UK Premiere. When thousands of dead crabs wash ashore along England’s North East coast,fisherman Stan Rennie finds himself leading a grassroots fight for answers and a future.
- Crocodile – The Critics, Pietra Brettkelly / New Zealand, Nigeria / 2026 / 100mins / UK Premiere. A group of young filmmakers in Nigeria form a homemade collective with smartphones and recycled materials. Over thirteen years, it becomes a story of creativity, ambition and growing up together.
- Landscapes of Memory – Leah Galant / USA, Germany / 2026 / 79mins / International Premiere. An American filmmaker travels to Berlin to confront her family’s Holocaust history, only to be detained at a pro-Palestinian demonstration and charged with antisemitism.
- Past Future Continuous – Morteza Ahmadvand, Firouzeh Khosrovani / Iran, Italy, Norway / 2025 / 76mins / UK Premiere. After years of living in exile from Iran, Maryam installs CCTV cameras in her family’s Tehran home and creates a lifeline to the parents she left behind.
- Replica – Chouwa Liang / Australia, France / 2026 / 90mins / UK Premiere. Three women in China turn to AI lovers to fill the emotional gaps left by loneliness, unfulfilling marriages and the pursuit of independence.
- The Way We Move – Vanessa Joo Dumont, Nicolas Davanel / France, USA / 2026 / 95mins / European Premiere. Amber Galloway has spent her career making live music visible for Deaf audiences. Now she’s training two new interpreters for the ultimate high-stakes debut at Austin City Limits.
TIM HETHERINGTON AWARD Photojournalist and filmmaker Tim Hetherington was committed to humanitarian and social concerns throughout the world. This award recognises films that best reflect his legacy.
- Birds of War – Janay Boulos, Abd Alkader Habak / United Kingdom, Syria, Lebanon / 2026 / 85mins / UK Premiere. Over thirteen years of revolution, war and exile, a Lebanese journalist and a Syrian activist document their love story through text messages, voice notes and footage from the front lines.
- Life Support – Daniele Rugo / United Kingdom / 2026 / 93mins / World Premiere. A group of international doctors breach the blockade of Gaza. What they find is the calculated dismantling of life itself.
- The Long Cuban Night (Cuba y la Noche) – Sergio Fernandez Borras / Spain, Colombia, Cuba / 2026 / 100mins / European Premiere. Captured entirely on phone footage, a group of Cuban artists risk everything to document their uprising against a government trying to silence them.
- Saigon Story: Two Shootings in the Forest Kingdom – Kim Nguyen / Canada / 2026 / 91mins / International Premiere. Two families, one photograph. Oscar-nominated filmmaker Kim Nguyen unpicks the wartime secrets hidden behind Eddie Adams’ infamous Saigon Execution image.
- TCB – The Toni Cade Bambara School of Organizing – Louis Massiah, Monica Henriquez/ USA, United Kingdom, Canada, France, Senegal / 2025 / 105mins / European Premiere
- Friends of Black feminist writer, filmmaker and cultural worker Toni Cade Bambara come together to share her lessons on art, community and resistance.
TALKS
Public talks will be presented across the city bringing together extraordinary voices, artists and thinkers.
Girlbands Forever! charts the highs and lows behind the making of a hit BBC music documentary with All Saints’ Melanie Blatt. Behind the Scenes: Educating Yorkshire with headteacher Matthew Burton, creator David Clews and friends relives heart-warming memories from the BAFTA-nominated series. Visionaries Live with Alice Aedy and Amy Goodman is a live podcast recording with the duo in conversation, exploring the role of storytelling in times of change. Rose Ayling-Ellis: Sign Language Front & Centre explores how placing sign language at the heart of storytelling can, and should, reshape mainstream programming. For Brexit: How Britain Voted Out, Emmy and BAFTA-winning filmmaker Norma Percy will join director Max Stern to discuss the making of their documentary, 10 years on from the Brexit vote.
As previously announced the talks programme also features Miriam Margolyes reflecting on truth-telling across her long career; Oscar-winning director Andrea Arnold offering a rare insight into her creative process; Chris Packham on his career-defining programmes in conversation with the BBC, and a celebration of Sir David Attenborough at 100 with leading filmmakers, activists, environmentalists and presenters Chris Packham, Gordon Buchanan, Lizzie Daly, Nadeem Perera and Dominique Palmer reflecting on his legacy.
PODCASTS
DocFest champions the breadth of the documentary artform and continues its podcast programme with live podcasts launches and exclusive recordings, the festival writes.
BBC Radio 4’s Dead Rabbit with Chris Packham exposes organised crime in the British countryside in the new BBC podcast series with investigative journalists Dan Ashby and Lucy Taylor. Makers of The Road to Redemption Man from The Whickers Podcast Pitch 2025 will share behind-the-scenes insight into the winning journey. BBC Radio 4’s Dear Gilbert, Dear Gordon will mark the first ever live version of BBC Radio 4’s Illuminated. Audible Original Series Launch with Charlie Webster is an exclusive live launch and immersive listen with the award-winning journalist.
ALTERNATE REALITIES
Gaming multi-worlds and immersive storytelling collide in this year’s Alternate Realities, Sheffield DocFest’s XR strand. Explore powerful works that blur the lines between documentary, narrative and gaming, plus get rare insight into pioneering projects still in development, writes the festival.
Sheffield of Stories: by Adam Clarke, in partnership with The National Videogame Museum, will be a festival centrepiece transforming Sheffield into a shared Minecraft world co-created with children and families. Visitors are invited to contribute their own stories and navigate the world through projections and interactive stations.
Infinity Studio: enter the world of real-time VR filmmaking with director Joe Hunting, using immersive virtual production app Infinity Studio to shoot a short scene.
Sound & Fury: from the makers of Grand Theft Hamlet, a hybrid theatrical experiment that reimagines Shakespeare’s Macbeth within the virtual world of a first-person shooter videogame.
The Alternate Realities Exhibition: hosted at Yorkshire Artspace, explores gaming multi-worlds and showcases selected works including Coded Black by Human Studio & Dr Maisha Wester, Elsewhere in India by Antariksha Studio and Crossover Labs in partnership with BFI National Archive.
GEN DOCFEST
GEN DocFest is a new strand for the next generation of doc lovers, covering big ideas, wild stories, participation and space to explore. The programme brings together live performances, hands-on workshops, surprising true stories and plenty of chances to see the world differently.
The festival offers a weekend of alternative education: Laugh and learn with Horrible Histories and Horrible Science: A Thoroughly Horrible Morning! Peek behind the curtain with Behind the Scenes: Educating Yorkshire. See things differently with spoken word poet and activist Sam Browne, who brings a powerful live performance, followed by an open conversation about growing up, masculinity and finding your voice through storytelling. There’s also a Heaven 17 Family Rave.
WILD FUTURES celebrates David Attenborough’s 100th birthday with a day of adventure. Join wildlife presenter and filmmaker Hannah Stitfall (BBC Springwatch and Autumnwatch) for a high-energy journey into the natural world. Enjoy FRONTLINEdance presents: The Explorers in Training! A lively mix of dance, storytelling and music for children under 6, families and young people with disabilities. There’s also Wild Futures: Relaxed Screening of ‘On Humans & Animals’ short programme, Wild Futures: If Animals Could Talk, What Might They Say? craft workshop and a Wild Futures Mini Lantern Parade.
Screenings for all: Toddler Kino and Baby Kino: Special screenings for parents or guardians and babies under one, and toddler screenings for ages 1-4. Book at the Showroom Cinema Box Office. For Schools and Universities Some of our most exciting screenings aimed at school groups (Year 7 to 16+) and students, paired with Q&As on careers in film and TV.
Sheffield of Stories: Build the Sheffield of your imagination in Minecraft, block by block. Open May half term at the National Videogame Museum, Sheffield, and during the festival at Yorkshire Artspace: Persistence Works.
