MoMA’s annual festival of documentary cinema marks its 25th year with a celebration of important new discoveries in nonfiction film. Ranging from immersive cinéma vérité and innovative essay films to hybrid works that boldly fuse documentary and fiction, the festival brings adventurous voices and thought-provoking perspectives from around the world to New York audiences.
Doc Fortnight 2026 includes 14 feature films and 19 short and medium-length films by both emerging and established directors working across the nonfiction field. Throughout this edition of the festival, filmmakers confront political histories—from the Serbo-Croatian War to recent political protests in Thailand and the lasting reverberations of state violence in Iran—through personal histories, unseen archives, speculative restagings, and reflections on the nature of commemoration. The program further highlights portraits of kin and community bonds through contexts as diverse as family loss, psychoanalysis, and contemporary powwow culture, alongside vivid portraits of place that span Internet-famous vistas alongside the Hong Kong waterfront, a journey through the history and folklore of Portugal’s Alentejo region, and a town in East Sussex whose reenactments of the Arthurian myth of the Holy Grail speak to today’s ecological crises.
The program also features three genre-defying shorts programs and a spotlight on celebrated Cornish auteur Mark Jenkin, whose avant-garde small-gauge films will be presented in their first New York monographic screening as part of MoMA’s Modern Mondays artist cinema series.
Organized by Sophie Cavoulacos, Associate Curator, Department of Film, MoMA, and guest curator Jesse Cumming, with Chandra Knotts, Filmmaker Liaison, and Olivia Priedite, Film Program Coordinator, Department of Film, MoMA.
Film at MoMA is made possible by CHANEL.
Additional support is provided by the Annual Film Fund. Leadership support for the Annual Film Fund is provided by The Contemporary Arts Council of The Museum of Modern Art, Agnes Gund through The International Council of The Museum of Modern Art, the Association of Independent Commercial Producers (AICP), and The Young Patrons Council of The Museum of Modern Art.
