July 16, 2025
DokuFest is excited to introduce this year’s selection of special screenings: a disparate roster of hard-hitting political treatises, playful meta-commentary, and reflections of nations from completely new angles, spanning narrative drama, archival footage and everything in between.
Included in our lineup are two examinations of a national ideology that wildly contrast in form: Alexander Horwath’s Henry Fonda for President (2024) stares into the USA’s soul from the perspective of the titular actor’s life, work, and surrounding iconography, while Kei Pritsker and Michael T. Workman’s The Encampments (2025) excoriates the country’s complicity in genocide, covering pro-Palestinian campus protests with riveting energy.
Additionally, DokuFest is proud to present a rare opportunity to watch Drago Chloupek’s visually striking Through Our Kosovo (1933), a little-seen time capsule of the region’s diverse communities and their interwar life. Expanding outwards, Yervant Gianikian and the late Angela Ricci Lucchi toy with archival footage to traverse the history of the 20th century through the framing device of a 1937 Picasso painting in In Front of Guernica (Director’s Cut) (2023).
The borders between fiction and non-fiction blur with both Caveh Zahedi’s singular, self-reflexive The Trees Were Spelling Love Backwards (2025), which examines an interaction between filmmaker and fan in dazzlingly unexpected fashion, and Canadian auteur Sofia Bohdanowicz’s beguiling narrative feature Measures for a Funeral (2024), which again focuses on the director’s alter-ego of sorts, Audrey Benac, as she explores the past to escape her present.
To round off our lineup of special screenings, alongside our new retrospective shorts program focusing on Wim Wenders, we are delighted to screen the legendary director’s Tokyo-Ga (1983), a fascinating deep-dive into one of his cinematic heroes: the equally talented Yasujirō Ozu.
You can discover our lineup here.
