Documenta Madrid to explore cinema as a living record of the present in its 23rd edition
This year’s programming is structured around the concept of "Taking the Pulse" (Tomar el pulso), a reflection on direct cinema as a way of recording contemporary reality.
The competitive sections maintain a total of 36,000 euros in awards, reinforcing the commitment to auteur documentary filmmaking.
For the opening, an unfinished project by Pier Paolo Pasolini has been recovered and reinterpreted live in an audiovisual experience.
The festival will close with Vial Matadero, an unreleased film by Juan Cavestany produced specifically for this edition.
The graphic identity was created by photographer Nicolás Combarro, whose work explores the relationship between architecture, memory, and urban space.
Tickets will be on sale starting April 30 at documentamadrid.com
Documenta Madrid, the International Documentary Film Festival organized by the Department of Culture, Tourism and Sport, will celebrate its 23rd edition from May 26 to 31, with Cineteca Madrid as the main venue and a program that will also extend to Filmoteca Española, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, La Casa Encendida, and the Goethe-Institut.
Under the artistic direction of Luis E. Parés, who is also the artistic director of Cineteca Madrid, the festival continues to consolidate the curatorial line developed in recent editions. The programming committee, composed of Nuria Cubas, Pablo Caldera, Irene Castro, and Florencia de Múgica, works alongside Parés to shape a proposal characterized by its focus on auteur documentary film, the promotion of Spanish cinema, and a dialogue with the history of film.
'Taking the Pulse': direct cinema as a gaze upon the present
The 2026 edition is structured around the concept of "Taking the Pulse" (Tomar el pulso), a thematic axis that champions the tradition of direct cinema and its capacity to record social and cultural reality immediately. Although this approach has a long history within documentary film, in recent years it had been partially displaced by more essayistic forms. However, in the face of the turbulence of the current historical context, numerous filmmakers have returned to the streets to film what happens around them without mediation. This approach will also be previewed in Cineteca Madrid's regular programming during the month of May, which will host a special cycle to expand on some of the festival's proposals.
Opening and Closing: a dialogue between memory and the present
The opening session will present Rivisitazione dello sciopero, an audiovisual experience based on the unfinished documentary that Pier Paolo Pasolini dedicated to the first street cleaners' strike in Italy in 1970. The original materials of the project—which had been missing for decades—were recovered in 2005, although the original sound recordings were definitively lost. Using these silent images, artists Cosimo Terlizzi and Luca Maria Baldini have constructed a live performance that transforms the original material into a contemporary event.
The festival’s closing will feature the premiere of Vial Matadero, an unreleased film by filmmaker Juan Cavestany made specifically for this edition and produced by Matadero Madrid and Cineteca Madrid. The film offers a look at Matadero as a symbolic space of urban and social transformation, turning this cultural enclave into a mirror of the city's changes.
Competitions: boosting contemporary cinema
The festival will maintain its three major competitive sections: the International Competition, open to documentary feature films and short films not previously exhibited in Madrid; the National Competition, dedicated to works of Spanish production or direction; and Corte Final, a section aimed at Spanish films in the advanced editing stage. In total, Documenta Madrid will grant 36,000 euros in awards, including the Jury Prizes for best international and national film, the Fugas Prize for innovation, the Cineteca Madrid Audience Award, the Joven CineZeta Award, and the Corte Final Award. In addition, there is the Agencia Freak Distribution Award, valued at 6,000 euros, which consists of the creation of the winning film's production files, as well as its distribution at festivals for two years.
Gazes that record their time: retrospectives and special programs
The parallel sections are a central element of the festival's identity. This edition will also be marked by reflections on cinema as a direct record of its time. Filmoteca Española will host a cycle dedicated to the American collective "Third World Newsreel," a militant film movement born in the late 1960s that documented social struggles from within, such as the student movement, Black Power, feminism, and protests against the Vietnam War.
La Casa Encendida will host a retrospective dedicated to British filmmaker Charlie Shackleton, one of the most singular voices in contemporary non-fiction cinema, whose work explores the mechanisms of constructing documentary narratives with humor and formal experimentation, featuring titles such as Beyond Clueless, The Afterlight, and Zodiac Killer Project.
In collaboration with the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Documenta Madrid will present a retrospective dedicated to the Chilean filmmaker Marilú Mallet, a pioneer of autobiographical documentary and one of the first women to consolidate her own filmography within Chilean cinema, with films such as Andahuaylillas and El evangelio en Solentiname. Meanwhile, the ECAM Encounter will be dedicated to German filmmaker Jan Soldat and will take place between Cineteca Madrid, the Goethe-Institut, and ECAM, with screenings and a masterclass that will allow audiences to approach a body of work that explores intimacy, bodies, and power dynamics in contemporary society.
The festival will also present the program "A Hidden Avant-Garde: Slovenian Experimental Cinema," curated by Matevž Jerman and Jerca Jerič in collaboration with the Slovenian Cinematheque, which recovers lesser-known works by figures such as Vinko Rozman, Karpo Godina, and Vasko Pregelj. Among the special sessions is Las aventuras de un operador Lumière alrededor del mundo, in which filmmaker Javier Rebollo will provide live commentary on a selection of films shot by Lumière cameraman Gabriel Veyre, one of the first filmmakers to shoot in different countries around the world at the end of the 19th century. Furthermore, in collaboration with the ECAM Archive, the festival will rescue previously unreleased footage from TVE cameraman and correspondent José Luis de Pablos, a direct witness to some of the great political and social events of the second half of the 20th century.
Documenta Pro and festival activities
The festival program will be completed by Documenta Pro, the professional meeting organized in conjunction with the Madrid Film Office, which, for the fourth consecutive year, will bring together filmmakers, producers, programmers, and industry agents to reflect on the challenges of contemporary documentary film and its production and distribution models. In addition, the festival will host workshops and training activities such as "Instructions to Dream a Collective Film," led by the Espíritu Escalera collective, a creative laboratory aimed at young people that proposes working with personal images and audiovisual materials to build a collective cinematographic work.
'Cineteca Constellation'
As in previous editions, the "Cineteca Constellation" (Constelación Cineteca) program will reinforce the dialogue between Documenta Madrid and other creative spaces within Matadero Madrid, such as Medialab, Intermediae, and the Center for Artistic Residencies. Through screenings, meetings, and project presentations, these collaborations will expand the festival's reach and connect documentary film with other contemporary artistic practices.
Graphic identity by Nicolás Combarro
The graphic image for this edition has been created by photographer Nicolás Combarro (A Coruña, 1979), one of the most recognized authors of his generation, whose work lies at the intersection of architecture, memory, and the history of spaces. Combarro has developed a visual proposal focused on Matadero Madrid, the festival's main venue, exploring its dual condition as a site of memory and a space for contemporary creation. His work thus dialogues with Juan Cavestany's film Vial Matadero, establishing a link between the still image and the cinematic gaze upon this cultural enclave of the city.
A jury of international renown
The jury for this edition will be composed of prestigious professionals from the fields of filmmaking, programming, and film criticism. The National Competition jury will include Hélder Beja, director of Doclisboa; Maite Conesa, director of the Filmoteca de Castilla y León; and Iris Martín-Peralta, curator and film producer. The International Competition will be judged by Argentine-British filmmaker Jessica Sarah Rinland; Laura García Lorca, director of the Fundació Antoni Tàpies; and Christophe Piette, programmer at CINEMATEK, the Royal Film Archive of Belgium. Additionally, the Corte Final section will have a jury formed by producer Rocío Cabrera; the head of Matadero Madrid’s Intermediae program, Aimar Arriola; and Joan Sala, programmer at Filmin and deputy director of the Atlántida Mallorca Film Fest.
With this new edition, Documenta Madrid once again positions documentary film as a privileged tool for observing the world in real time, proposing a direct gaze upon the tensions, transformations, and narratives of the present, and championing cinema as a form of immediate record of reality and as a space to think collectively about our time.
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