Visions du Réel returns for its 57th edition (17 – 26 April 2026) with a programme featuring 164 films from a record 75 countries. While the representation of women continues to increase (44 %) compared to 39% in 2025, the Festival will also feature 7% co-directed films, as well as 1% directed by non-binary people and 48% by men. Among the 128 new films presented, 83 are world premieres and 8 international premieres. 58 first films, including 36 first feature-length films, complete the picture, with no fewer than 26 Swiss (co)productions.
“Visions du Réel thus confirms its position as the second most important festival in Switzerland for the launch of new films, and as a key international event for non-fiction cinema,” organisers write. In addition to the four previously announced guest filmmakers, namely the Americans Kelly Reichardt and Laura Poitras, Ukrainian Sergei Loznitsa and Moroccan artist Meriem Bennani, Visions du Réel “will have the honour of welcoming emerging and established talents, as well as prestigious juries, throughout these ten days of the Festival.”
The 57th edition will open with a screening of Cover-Up, the latest film from Oscar-winning filmmaker Laura Poitras, in the presence of Alain Berset, Secretary General of the Council of Europe, Nuria Gorrite, State Councillor, Daniel Rossellat, Mayor of Nyon and Carine Bachmann, Director of the Federal Office of Culture.
“The 128 films selected from the 3700 submissions – a figure that has continued to grow over recent years, and which represents an increase of more than 23% compared to 2023 – bear witness to the great freedom that non-fiction cinema enjoys today,” organisers write.
Comments says Emilie Bujès, Artistic Director: “We are delighted to note that the reputation of Visions du Réel and its films continues to grow, allowing us to continually expand the cinematic territories and realities explored, as well as to reaffirm our ambition to showcase new talent – the number of first films has risen to 58, including 36 debut feature-length films, and the screenings will feature 83 world premieres and 8 international premieres. While some producing countries differ from the filmmaker’s origin or the country where the film was shot for financial or political reasons, the number of countries represented in the selection continues to rise steadily and significantly.”
“Certain regions, such as Asia, particularly stand out in 2026, as well as relatively rare countries like Sudan (in the Burning Lights Competition), Vietnam, Indonesia, Yemen and Palestine – which delights us both from a cinematic and a symbolic perspective,” she adds.
No fewer than 75 countries are represented across all selections – a record “that speaks to the Festival’s international status.”
Mélanie Courvoisier, Administrative and Operational Director, states: “This 57th edition will be packed with new experiences. In collaboration with the City of Gland, the Festival will present an exhibition by Japanese photographer Hayahisa Tomiyasu, with a selection of photographs from his TTP series at the heart of this edition’s visual concept. In addition to strengthened collaboration with the museums of Nyon, the Festival will offer a range of activities aimed at promoting the accessibility and inclusivity of the event: creative workshops for children, writing workshops organised in collaboration with the Jan Michalski Foundation, as well as initiatives to facilitate access for people with disabilities (audio description, Relaxed screenings, audio subtitling) are on the programme.”
In addition, two films – La Voix du troupeau by Matthias Joulaud & Lucien Roux and Nicole Nicole by Lauren Dällenbach – will be available with SDH subtitles, and the Q&As following the screenings will be interpreted in sign language. Finally, performer Alice Fournier will present an installation, on view at the Usine à Gaz, which will evoke the experience of deafness, Courvoisier further points out/
The first guests of the 2026 edition
“In a fractured global context marked by turmoil and uncertainty, Visions du Réel has the privilege of contributing to the national and international cinematic landscape through a diverse and vibrant selection – personal, political and deeply engaged with the world,” the festival writes.
“These quests and explorations are resolutely embodied by the Guests, including Kelly Reichardt, Guest of Honour for this 57th edition. Beyond a retrospective of her films and a curated selection of documentaries chosen by the filmmaker, a special evening will be dedicated to her, featuring a ceremony and the premiere screening of The Mastermind, her latest feature film. A masterclass the following day will be led by critic Raphaëlle Pireyre and presented in collaboration with the Cinémathèque Switzerland, ECAL University of Art and Design Lausanne and the Fondazione Prada.
Alongside her, Sergei Loznitsa, Special Guest 2026, will deliver a masterclass on Saturday 18 April, presented in collaboration with Arte and HEAD and moderated by Emmanuel Chicon, member of the selection committee, and Violeta Bava, member of the Industry selection committee. His work will be the subject of a retrospective featuring a curated selection from his oeuvre, comprising both lesser-known short films and major works, widely acclaimed at the world’s leading festivals such as the Festival de Cannes and the Venice Film Festival.
The Festival will also dedicate a focus to video and visual artist Meriem Bennani, who will also take part in a public conversation with filmmaker and artist Valentin Noujaïm, while her first feature film, Bouchra, which premiered at TIFF, will be screened for its Swiss premiere.
Finally, Oscar-winning filmmaker Laura Poitras will be present in Nyon in a dual role both as an Industry Guest, participating in a conversation on Sunday 19 April, and as part of the Opening Ceremony.
Other renowned guests include Franco-Senegalese filmmaker Alain Gomis, who will present his latest film Dao, which competed at the last Berlinale; the Spanish José Luis Guerin with his latest work Good Valley Stories, recipient of the Special Jury Prize at the most recent San Sebastián Festival; and Nikolaus Geyrhalter, a leading figure in Austrian and international non-fiction, who will present Melt.
On the Swiss front, Tobias Nölle returns to Visions du Réel, following Preparations for a Miracle in 2024, to present Tristan Forever in its Swiss premiere as part of our new “Borderlight” section, fresh from its debut at the Berlinale; Elsa Amiel launches Dentro, her latest film, which will have its world premiere screening; and Peter Mettler delivers his epic film While the Green Grass Grows, two parts of which were awarded the Festival’s Grand Prize in 2023. Finally, John Wilson, Special Guest 2024, will present The History of Concrete, his first feature film, which opened the most recent Sundance Film Festival.
International Feature Film Competition (plus festival comment)
This year, the Jury of the International Feature Film Competition, composed of Rémi Bonhomme, Artistic Director of the Marrakech International Film Festival; Lina Soualem, French-Algerian-Palestinian filmmaker, known in particular for the acclaimed Bye Bye Tiberias; and Brett Story, Canadian filmmaker behind the acclaimed The Prison in Twelve Landscapes, will award the prizes for the International Competition from among thirteen films, including twelve world premieres and one international premiere.
Comprising six films directed by women, the International Feature Film Competition this year also features five debut films, alongside several filmmakers already familiar to Nyon, including Piotr Pawlus (In Ukraine, Special Mention 2023), who presents his new film Death in the Making. Set against the Ukrainian context of the Russian invasion, it this time offers a counterpoint to the media coverage of the war, employing attentive and poetic sequences to document the daily lives of those who remain, suspended in their hope for a new future.
Ross McClean (No Mean City, Special Mention 2025 International Medium Length & Short Film Competition) will present Magilligan, his first feature film, which transposes social drama into a prison setting, offering an intimate portrait of Ryan to powerfully and respectfully examine – and reject – determinism. Set in a decidedly different context, The Night and The Days of Miguel Burnier, by Brazilian screenwriter and filmmaker João Dumans, nevertheless shares a common concern with Magilligan: how does social confinement lead to the invisibility of the marginalised? Closely following a group of friends living in a small mining town in the Brazilian countryside, the filmmaker strives to restore a sense of dignity to those whose lives are scarred by expropriation and deindustrialisation.
From a portrait perspective, Xisi Sofia Ye Chen’s From Dawn to Dawn offers an approach that is at once unique and traditional. On one hand, the Chinese-born filmmaker uses it to gain deeper access to her older brother’s inner life; on the other, she distorts its angles, placing it somewhere at the intersection of gangster film and family exploration.
Alongside them, other filmmakers familiar to the Festival join the International Feature Film Competition, including Jonas Spriestersbach (Animals, Burning Lights Competition 2019), whose latest work Meanwhile in Namibia lays bare the German state’s refusal to acknowledge its colonial past – notably the genocide that took place in Namibia at the beginning of the 20th century – offering, under the guise of solidarity, programmes that perpetuate appalling neo-colonialism and racism. Nine years after his last visit, Jérôme Le Maire (Burning Out, GA) this year presents The Price of the Sun, which admires the resilience of a Berber tribe in Morocco threatened by the installation of a solar panel farm on their land.
Through its use of wide shots – often empty but always meticulously composed – Heat, the new feature film by Swiss director Jacqueline Zünd, borrows from the language of science fiction and its dystopian imagination to effectively convey the characteristic contrasts of the Gulf states, an over-air-conditioned area nestled in the hottest region in the world.
This year, the International Feature Film Competition includes other projects led by Swiss female filmmakers, such as Dentro, the latest film by established filmmaker Elsa Amiel, who has notably worked with Raoul Ruiz, Mathieu Amalric and Noémie Lvovsky. Here, the filmmaker presents a sensitive feature film theatrically staged around Armando Punzo, who works with prisoners from a penitentiary in Tuscany to nurture their capacity to transcend the experience of incarceration. In a different vein, Swiss filmmaker Emma Boccanfuso also explores the relationship between the interior and the exterior. Filmed in a favela high above Rio, Saudades Eternas paints a portrait of Suely, an unflappable matriarch. The film takes on the air of a closed-room drama, exploring with intensity and affection a space that seems almost miraculously insulated from the rest of the world, yet which is nonetheless subject to extreme violence.
The final female presence in the International Feature Film Competition, Viv Li’s Two Mountains Weighing Down My Chest documents her experiences during the pandemic of the alternative queer scene in Berlin, where the Chinese-born filmmaker is based. With a dialectical approach to editing, the filmmaker serves up a comedy firmly rooted in the contemporary.
To complete this international selection, two remarkable works explore the road-movie genre. Humboldt USA, the first feature-length film from the Austro-American filmmaker G. Anthony Svatek, sets out on a journey across the United States, intimately connected with nature. Carried by a voice-over that is both captivating and captivated by its subject, the film closely follows the traces left by the biologist during his time in the United States in the early 19th century. Djeliya, mémoire du Mandé, the second feature film by the Burkinabe filmmaker Boubacar Sangaré, offers a musical journey through the territory of the legendary Mali Empire, exploring the place of tradition in contemporary societies and asserting the importance of orality in the ways we transmit memory.
Films in the International Feature Film Competition
- A Fire There by Marlene Edoyan, Canada, 2026, 94’, world premiere
- Death in the Making by Piotr Pawlus, Netherlands/Poland, 2026, 84’, world premiere
- Dentro by Elsa Amiel, France/Switzerland, 2026, 95’, world premiere
- Djeliya, mémoire du Mandé by Boubacar Sangaré, Burkina Faso/Côte d’Ivoire/Mali/Senegal/France, 2026, 112’, world premiere
- From Dawn to Dawn by Xisi Sofia Ye Chen, Spain/France, 2026, 94’, world premiere
- Heat by Jacqueline Zünd, Switzerland, 2026, 87’, world premiere
- Humboldt USA by G. Anthony Svatek, USA, 2026, 89’, world premiere
- Magilligan by Ross McClean, United Kingdom/Ireland/USA, 2026, 74’, world premiere
- Meanwhile in Namibia by Jonas Spriestersbach, Germany/Namibia, 2026, 120’, world premiere
- Saudades Eternas by Emma Boccanfuso, Switzerland/France, 2026, 94’, world premiere
- The Night and the Days of Miguel Burnier by João Dumans, Brazil, 2026, 82’, world premiere
- The Price of the Sun by Jérôme Le Maire, Belgium/France/Morocco, 2026, 91’, world premiere
- Two Mountains Weighing Down My Chest by Viv Li, Germany/Netherlands, 2026, 85’, international premiere
Burning Lights Competition (plus festival comment)
Dedicated to the boldest forms of non-fiction cinema, the Burning Lights Competition showcases works that probe and challenge language, narrative and aesthetics, blurring the boundaries between genres, formats and devices to break free from established frameworks. The Jury will award the competition prizes from among fifteen world premieres. This year, it is composed of filmmaker Ali Asgari, co-director of the relentless Terrestrial Verses and Higher than Acidic Clouds(VdR 2025), actress and editor Liyo Gong, and film critic Antoine Thirion, who is also a curator at Cinéma du Réel and the New York Film Festival.
Several feature films in the Burning Lights Competition 2026 adopt the filmed diary format, offering radically distinct cinematic experiences. The immediacy created by handheld shooting in Fracture, the debut film by filmmaker Keren Kraizer, mirrors her political engagement and the painful distance that separates her from the politics at play in her country Israel, before and after 7 October. From a completely different perspective, while Nong Nhat Quang’s Baby Jackfruit Baby Guava stages personal and family archives to create a kind of visual diary documenting family dysfunction, Comme un château fort – the debut feature by Belgian filmmaker Lou Colpé – fearlessly looks through the lens of grief to film a house with delicacy and sensitivity, moving between laughter and tears.
Also inspired by a death – in this case that of his father – Hassen Ferhani, a leading figure in contemporary documentary cinema, presents Alea Jacarandas, which gracefully weaves together artistic transmission with the history and memory of Algiers. Time and Tide, the first film from Vee Shi, also turns to portraiture, expanding it beyond the individual to trace family realities across three generations. Finally, La Voix du troupeau, a French-Swiss co-production and the debut feature by filmmakers Matthias Joulaud and Lucien Roux (Ramboy, VdR 2022), follows the life of a deaf-mute farmer based in the Cantal, adopting sensory formal strategies that evoke the experience of deafness.
Other feature films in the Burning Lights Competition treat time as a material, stretching the duration of scenes or constructing shots that foster cinematic immersion. The Illusion of a Quiet Night, the latest feature film from Olga Chernykh, is a beautiful example of this. It offers a 24-hour immersion in Ukraine, across a range of contexts filmed by the protagonists themselves. In another liminal space – though a festive one for some – Jona Honer captures in Club Heaven, at times using a thermal camera, the cathartic and spectacular dimension of a nightclub set against its blind spots: the staff and life between the partying.
Working with time and space, Kukata Miti, the latest feature film by Daniel Kötter (Landschaft, VdR 2023) allows the German filmmaker to examine both the stakes and the ambiguities of the timber industry across Germany, Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The Burning Lights Competition is also characterised by works that explore more hybrid paths, on the edge of genres or combining multiple approaches. Situated somewhere between cinema, documentary theatre and performance, The Case Against Space by Graeme Arnfield offers a reinterpretation of the mutiny that took place during the Skylab space mission on 4 December 1973. Elisa Sepulveda Ruddoff, for her part, weaves a muted thriller in Above the Waterline, intertwining the trajectories of a group of fishermen with those of a militarisation operation encroaching on their environment. At the intersection of the epistolary feature film and political cinema, In Between, a Place by Faezeh Nikoozad emerges from the ambition to expose the violence fracturing Iranian society through the intimacy of a correspondence. Although its context differs from that at the centre of Faezeh Nikoozad’s film – one documenting Iran, the other reflecting the situation in Syria – Almourad Aldeeb’s debut feature film If Only the Year Had 364 Days takes the form of an extended personal journey in which the filmmaker revisits past traumas, addressing in turn exile, imprisonment and torture.
How do you film a revolution remotely? That’s precisely the challenge addressed in the film by Ibrahim Omar, a Sudanese-born filmmaker. Highly open in form, Nothing Happens After the Revolution incorporates elements of fiction into its documentary approach to better capture the essence of the revolutionary impulse. Finally, with Don’t Tidy or Clean My Room, I Like It as It Is, Argentine filmmaker Ignacio Cerio delivers an irresistible comedy: after creating a fictional narrative from a body of images found in a second-hand camera, he sets out to uncover the true identity of the man appearing in them.
Films in the Burning Lights Competition
- Above the Waterline by Elisa Sepulveda Ruddoff, Chile/France, 2026, 72’, world premiere
- Alea Jacarandas by Hassen Ferhani, France/Algeria, 2026, 78’, world premiere
- Baby Jackfruit Baby Guava by Nong Nhat Quang, Vietnam/South Korea, 2026, 104’, world premiere
- Club Heaven by Jona Honer, Netherlands/Belgium, 2026, 78’, world premiere
- Comme un château fort by Lou Colpé, Belgium, 2026, 83’, world premiere
- Don’t Tidy or Clean My Room, I Like It as It Is by Ignacio Ceroi, Argentina/Spain, 2026, 81’, world premiere
- Fracture by Keren Kraizer, Belgium, 2026, 85’, world premiere
- If Only the Year Had 364 Days by Almourad Aldeeb, Germany/Syria, 2026, 78’, world premiere
- In Between, a Place by Faezeh Nikoozad, Germany, 2026, 95’, world premiere
- Kukata Miti by Daniel Kötter, Germany/Indonesia/Democratic Republic of the Congo, 2026, 80’, world premiere
- La Voix du troupeau by Matthias Joulaud and Lucien Roux, Switzerland/France, 2026, 80’, world premiere
- Nothing Happens After the Revolution by Ibrahim Omar, Sudan, 2026, 74’, world premiere
- The Case Against Space by Graeme Arnfield, United Kingdom/France, 2026, 73’, world premiere
- The Illusion of a Quiet Night by Olga Chernykh and collective work, Ukraine, 2026, 70’, world premiere
- Time and Tide by Vee Shi, Australia, 2026, 99’, world premiere
National Competition (plus festival comment)
To award the prizes of the National Competition, Visions du Réel relies on a distinguished jury composed of Cecilia Barrionuevo, co-head of programming at Doclisboa, Nicole Reinhard, director of the Filmpodium in Zurich, and Sofia Tocar, distribution coordinator at Square Eyes.
The National Competition highlights the quality of Swiss production through a selection of thirteen films, including one medium-length film and twelve features, all produced or co-produced in Switzerland. Once again this year, the Competition attests to the excellence of non-fiction filmmaking in the country, not only by welcoming filmmakers already recognised by or close to the Festival, but also by showcasing debut films – six in this 2026 edition – thereby reinforcing Visions du Réel’s reputation as a launching pad for cinema. Among the filmmakers returning to the Festival, Maria Iorio and Raphaël Cuomo will present Was das Wasser erzählt this year, five years after winning a Special Prize for Chronicles of That Time.
Having participated at Visions du Réel on three separate occasions with projects he produced (Ladies in 2018, Ardente·x·sand Garçonnières in 2022), Stéphane Goël, a leading figure in Swiss cinema, returns this time with En terrain neutre, a deeply political and personal feature film co-written with investigative journalist Mehdi Atmani. Strikingly timely, the film examines the concept of Swiss neutrality in order to call it into question.
Politics also lies at the heart of The Roots of Madness, the new film by Edgar Hagen – another established name – which breaks the biographical portrait, here that of journalist Ulrich Tilgner, out of its individual confines to instead view it as a lens onto the chaos fracturing our democracies.
In What Comes From Sitting in Silence, an ambitious feature at the intersection of the chamber piece and the dispositif film, Sophie Schrago films a courtroom in India where women bringing domestic violence complaints are able to speak freely and seek justice. Also shot in a single setting, Der Runde Tisch by Benjamin Bucher and Juliette Menthonnex evokes the cinema of Frederick Wiseman by dissecting the workings of politics, delicately capturing the exchanges and debates sparked by the establishment of a refugee centre in a village, in order to observe how our democratic systems organise themselves. An archival film that uses the materials of Michèle Firk, an internationalist filmmaker who was deeply involved in the Guatemalan guerrilla from 1967 onward, Tricontinentale, lettre à ouvrir au cas où by filmmaker Laura Cazador opens a dialogue with the revolutionary impulses of the activist to create perspective around the limits and possibilities of contemporary engaged cinema.
Several works in the National Competition seem to carve out a more intimate path. One of these is Jonathan Jäggi’s debut feature Common Ground, which follows Lilo tracing the footsteps of her father at the Allmend, an open space managed by the city of Zurich where he spent his final years in solitude.
Why mourn someone who ultimately recovered from cancer? This is the path explored by Rafael Palacio Illingworth in Alma, a work that resembles a fictionalised essay on the experience of losing a loved one.
For their debut feature films, Lauren Dällenbach and Liam Erlach both chose to portray a member of their family. In Nicole Nicole, filmmaker Lauren Dällenbach examines with humour, tenderness and complexity, the co-dependent relationship between her aunt Nicole and Alberte, her grandmother, imagining possible paths to emancipation to soothe their fear of living alone. In First Lap Crash, Liam Erlach devised a framework and approach that both explore sibling love and address, with the requisite sensitivity, his sister’s confinement within her own body due to a chronic illness.
Portraiture is also central to two other feature films, by Sarah Horst and François Kohler. Safe Spaces, Horst’s bold debut feature, follows three women seeking to rethink their relationship with sexuality, both by breaking free from the normative demands imposed by patriarchal cultures and by exploring their sexual desires, examining some of the blind spots of female sexuality – childhood trauma, BDSM culture and the ageing body.
The second film approaches portraiture by highlighting its spiritual dimension, as Eternal Snow, Kohler’s latest film, immerses us into the daily lives of two brothers living at the foot of the Himalayas, set against the backdrop of climate change. These generational concerns also emerge in To the Moon and Back, Elisa Gomez Alvarez’s debut feature, following Ilyasse and Pauline, two scientific prodigies who dream of journeying to the Moon to solve Earth’s problems, while confronting the tension between space exploration and environmental anxiety.
Films in the National Competition:
- Alma by Rafael Palacio Illingworth, Switzerland, 2026, 70’, world premiere
- Common Ground by Jonathan Jäggi, Switzerland, 2026, 89’, world premiere
- Der Runde Tisch by Benjamin Bucher and Juliette Menthonnex, Switzerland, 2026, 41’, world premiere
- En terrain neutre by Stéphane Goël and Mehdi Atmani, Switzerland, 2026, 80’, world premiere
- Eternal Snow by François Kohler, Switzerland, 2026, 90’, world premiere
- First Lap Crash by Liam Erlach, Switzerland, 2026, 73’, world premiere
- Nicole Nicole by Lauren Dällenbach, Switzerland/France, 2026, 81’, world premiere
- Safe Spaces by Sarah Horst, Switzerland, 2026, 104’, world premiere
- The Roots of Madness by Edgar Hagen, Switzerland, 2026, 107’, world premiere
- To the Moon and Back by Elisa Gomez Alvarez, Switzerland/France/Philippines/Qatar, 2026, 85’, world premiere
- Tricontinentale, lettre à ouvrir au cas où by Laura Cazador, Switzerland/Cuba, 2026, 96’, world premiere
- Was das Wasser erzählt by Maria Iorio and Raphaël Cuomo, Switzerland, 2026, 75’, world premiere
- What Comes From Sitting In Silence by Sophie Schargo, Switzerland/France/South
- Korea/USA, 2026, 77’, premiere internationale
International Medium Length & Short Film Competition | Opening Scenes (plus festival comment)
Alongside the three feature film selections, the 57th edition of Visions du Réel also showcases sharp and bold filmmaking on the leaner side of things through the 33 films competing for the International Medium Length & Short Film Competition awards, with these shorter formats offering greater latitude for formal or narrative experimentation.
Comprised of 28 world premieres, three international premieres, and two European premieres, the competition ventures into political and personal narratives, imagined or interior worlds, exploring, among other things, virtual realities, artificial intelligence, surveillance or onboard cameras, and film footage accompanied by voice-over. Bringing together several recognised names in contemporary cinema, the works in the International Medium Length & Short Film Competition strikingly document the vitality of both national and international film scenes.
To award the prizes for the International Medium Length & Short Film Competition, the Festival welcomes an international jury composed of Stavros Markoulakis, the artistic director of Leiden Shorts; Franziska Sonder, co-founder of the Zurich-based production company Ensemble Film; and Róisín Burns, a British director of Irish origin, known in particular for Wonderwall, a short fiction film nominated for the 2026 César Awards.
The Opening Scenes section showcases the best of emerging filmmakers through an exciting selection of 15 debut and student films – 13 world premieres and two international premieres – from all backgrounds. It will be an opportunity to discover, in particular, the best new talent from France, Thailand, Italy, Singapore, China, Palestine, the Netherlands and Switzerland, who are helping to shape the future of non-fiction cinema.
Borderlight | Grand Angle | Highlights | Special screenings (plus festival comment)
Visions du Réel announces the creation of Borderlight, a new section dedicated to feature fiction films that engage with documentary approaches or cultivate a close relationship with notions of “the real” in all its complexity. This year, the selection consists of six films, all presented in their Swiss premieres, including Bouchra, the debut feature by Orian Barki and Meriem Bennani, a visual artist who is the subject of a Festival focus during this 57th edition; Chronovisor by Jack Auen and Kevin Walker, launched at the recent Rotterdam International Film Festival, a fiction based on the extraordinary story of Father Pellegrino d’Emretti and his discovery of the chronovisor, a device that allows the past to be photographed; and Forêt ivre by Manon Coubia, shown at the Berlinale, which is built around the experience of life in a mountain refuge.
Grand Angle showcases feature films that have already captivated audiences at other festivals or are set to make an impact in the year ahead. The section includes two world premieres, one international premiere and ten Swiss premieres in 2026. These feature films, eligible for the Audience Award, include works premiered at Sundance, CPH:DOX or IDFA, and address contemporary social or political issues such as climate change, melting ice or resource expropriation (Melt by Nikolaus Geyrhalter, Dear Ancestor by Nantenaina Lova); unexpected romance (Replica by Chouwa Liang, Birds of Warby Janay Boulos and Abd Alkader Habak); gender transition (Adam’s Apple by Amy Jenkins); and Palestine (For Life by Ahmet Seven, American Doctor by Poh Si Teng).
Alongside these two sections, Highlights showcases some of the year’s most essential film propositions, such as Memoryby Vladlena Sandu or Jaripeo by Efraín Mojica and Rebecca Zweig, presented within Industry 2025. Meanwhile, Special Screenings feature works by reference filmmakers – in 2026, Werner Herzog, Lucrecia Martel, Laura Poitras, and the recently deceased Frederick Wiseman, to whom the Festival pays tribute – or unique projects such as the making of the controversial Sirat, Vacio Luminoso by Uberto Rapisardi, or the series The Oligarch and the Art Dealer by Andreas Dalsgaard, co-produced by Swiss public broadcaster RTS.
