Marking a career genre-shift, Manas is Marianna Brennand’s first fiction feature. Developed from a decade of research into child sexual abuse in the Amazon, this was a real story she knew she could only be told through fiction.
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After moving to Brazil aged 19 to pursue her love of graffiti, filmmaker Sissel Morrel Dargis discovered another of Brazil’s underground art movements. Over the next decade, she became deeply embedded in the world of baloeiros, clandestine artists who, operating from the favelas of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, spend months - even years - building gigantic hot air balloons.
Few ways of making film today offer richer ground for artistic expression, political thought and social critique than decolonial cinema. Here are 13 documentaries that deconstruct colonial narratives, featuring in this year’s edition of the Decolonial Film Festival, of which Doc Weekly is a proud media partner.
Are there any documentaries showing at the Cannes Film Festival in 2025? Historically the genre has always been overlooked at Cannes, but this year’s selection is particularly poor in non-fiction. Here’s a list of all the documentaries showing, across the official and parallel selections.
At Visions du Réel, Doc Weekly interviewed director Denis Côté about his latest film, Paul, which has been garnering a lot of attention on the festival circuit since its world premiere at Berlinale earlier this year. Denis Côté's new documentary follows Cleaning Simp Paul, a man and online persona who's path out of depression and social anxiety has been subservience to dominant women as a cleaner.
Doc Weekly interview Ross McClean for the World Premiere of his short film No Mean City in competition at Visions du Réel, a film that questions that uses the Belfast’s switch from sodium to LED lighting to question the city’s wider transformations.
And the winners of the 56th edition of Visions du Réel are…
When Patricia Franquesa was blackmailed with intimate photos after her laptop was stolen, she faced an impossible choice. My Sextortion Diary is a firsthand account of life under digital ransom, told exclusively through the very technology that ensnared her.
From the 4th to the 13th of April 2025, Switzerland’s only international non-fiction film festival returns for its 56th edition with a rich programme featuring 154 films from a record 57 countries. Here are 10 things to see - and do !
The 47th edition of Paris’ Cinéma du réel comes to a close today as the festival announces the winners from its selection of 37 world, international and french premieres of its competition section.
As with every edition of Cinéma du Réel, we’ve been blown away by the profusion of forms, subjects and artistic experimentation at play in this year's bold programming choices. To help you make sense of this year’s vast selection, here’s our list of films to look out for…
The Paris-based Decolonial Film Festival will be opening its 2025 edition with an avant-premiere of the Oscar-nominated Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat by Johan Grimonprez. Doc Weekly is excited to be the Decolonial Film Festival’s official media partner, boasting a programming committee made up of fifteen anti-racist, diasporic, queer and feminist organisations.
Israel has blocked the entry of all humanitarian aid into Gaza as it demands Hamas agree to a US plan for a ceasefire extension. Just hours later, ‘No Other Land’ by Yuval Abraham, Basel Adra, Rachel Szor and Hamdan Ballal won the Oscar for Best Feature Documentary at the 97th edition of the Academy Awards. The filmmakers criticised US foreign policy and asked that the international community act.
The possibilities within a virtual world are endless. With a vast wealth of experiences, characters and stories available to the player, games such as Grand Theft Auto can be pure escapism. But can they be more than that? Shot entirely in GTA, Grand Theft Hamlet explores the sense of community that such virtual worlds can create and the art that can be born from violence.
You've seen documentaries about video games, their creation, their rise to prominence, perhaps their ever growing impact on the public psyche. But have you ever seen one shot entirely in GTA's Los Santos ? Or one who's script is composed of World of Warcraft gamelogs ? The “machinima” genre is currently having a moment, particularly when it comes to documentary.
Doc Weekly was in Biarritz to interview director Lee Shulman for the premiere of I Am Martin Parr at Fipadoc 2025, a rare portrait of the unassuming photographer who, under cover of an irresistible sense of humour has impacted his art form beyond recognition.
This year Doc Weekly was in Biarritz attending Fipadoc, boasting nearly 180 films from around the world across 5 major competitions including two Oscar nominees for Best Documentary Feature ! Here’s a complete list of this year’s award-winners.
‘They want our ideas, they just don’t want us’. Follow sociologist Patricia Kingori, the youngest black and female professor at the University of Oxford, as she takes us through the bought essay industry, which involves an estimated 40,000 Kenyans writing academic papers for students in the global north.
Doc Weekly is kicking off 2025 with a visit to Fipadoc ! In anticipation of the festival, we’ve been poring through the programme in order to give you our hot tips from this year’s premiering films in the competitions…
The liberal democratic model is at a crossroads. Elections and political unrest around the world have exposed the cracks in our individualist, utilitarian path towards progress. As democracy recedes, people are turning towards authoritarian and theocratic leaders. It is sometimes hard to see this tide turning, but thankfully, documentaries are here to help. Doc Weekly was in attendance at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) to pick out five of the of the most urgent films on the subject, including new 2024 and 2025 releases from Petra Costa and Asif Kapadia.
