The 16th MakeDox Creative Documentary Film Festival will take place from 21 to 28 August 2025, presenting 75 documentaries across five evocative venues in Skopje—including Kurshumli An, the Youth Cultural Center, the Museum of Macedonia, Suli An, and Laboratorium—under the pressing theme “Who cares about reality?”
The festival opens with Bardo by Slovak director Viera Čákanyová and closes with Fiume or Death! by Croatian filmmaker Igor Bezinović, bookending a week that foregrounds urgent, formally inventive non-fiction.
Feature highlights in the main programme include The Helsinki Effect (Finland/Germany/Norway), Punk Under Communist Regime (Slovenia/Bulgaria/Serbia), the Slovenian–North Macedonian co-production The Mountain Won’t Move, and Stefan Malešević’s Soil and Wings. Other notable titles—spanning political history, media, ecology and personal testimony—include Wishing on a Star (Italy/Croatia/Austria/Slovakia/Czech Republic), The Propagandist (Netherlands), Soundtrack to a Coup d’État (Belgium/France/Netherlands), Coexistence, My Ass! (USA/France), as well as Austria’s Favoriten and Cleaning & Cleansing.
The Newcomers (Young Onion) line-up introduces a wave of emerging voices with Viktor (Denmark/Ukraine/France), 9 Month Contract (Georgia/Bulgaria/Germany), Double Trouble (Poland/Germany), Unanimal (France/Sweden), No Other Land (Norway/Palestine), Unbound (Spain/Belgium), and The Travelers (Cameroon/Spain), amongst others.
Adding to the feature slate, North Macedonian director Georgi M. Unkovski’s DJ Ahmet—which premiered earlier this year—brings a local coming-of-age perspective to the programme.
MakeDox expects a strong international presence of festival guests and industry professionals. Awards to be presented include the Onion Award (main competition), Young Onion (newcomers), Sliced Onion (shorts), Onion Seed (students), and the Moral Approach Award, underscoring the festival’s commitment to ethical, artistically ambitious documentary storytelling.
Find the full Makedox 2025 programme – HERE
