Movies that Matter has unveiled the full program for its 2026 edition. Running from 20 to 28 March, the festival will present 95 films, including 10 world premieres, alongside an expanded slate of industry events designed to support filmmakers working at the sharp end of documentary and human rights storytelling.
This year’s opening film, American Doctor by Poh Si Teng, signals the urgency and moral seriousness of the lineup. Screening on 20 March, the documentary follows three US physicians, Palestinian, Jewish and Zoroastrian, who enter a devastated Gaza to deliver medical aid under bombardment.
The documentary competition brings together eight titles spanning land rights, militarism, gendered violence, animal ethics and class struggle. Among the most striking entries are All About The Money, in which the heir to an American fortune attempts to build a communist base in Massachusetts, and Kikuyu Land, a film rooted in anti-colonial struggle and the long afterlife of dispossession in Kenya. Elsewhere, MARIINKA and Traces confront the ongoing violence of Russia’s war against Ukraine, while Kasper Verkaik’s world-premiering Soldier’s Bones investigates hidden US military operations in Vietnam. The jury, comprising Debra Zimmerman, Joëlle Alexis and Tommy Gulliksen, will award a €5,000 prize, with the winning film also qualifying for Academy Award consideration.
The Grand Jury Fiction Competition is equally attuned to questions of power, identity and survival. The selection ranges from Morad Mostafa’s Aisha Can’t Fly Away, centred on a Sudanese caregiver in Cairo, to Tarik Saleh’s Eagles of the Republic, a thriller about complicity inside authoritarian systems. Sergei Loznitsa’s Two Prosecutors revisits Stalinist terror through the lens of judicial impossibility, while Diego Céspedes’ The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo moves into queer adolescence and marginality during the AIDS crisis.
Beyond its headline competitions, Movies that Matter continues to build out a broader ecosystem around justice-oriented filmmaking. Sections such as Activist Lens, Justice Frame and Dutch Focus reinforce the festival’s thematic core, while the Shorts Competition and Education Award speak to the importance of form, access and intergenerational engagement.
The Industry Days are running from 22 to 24 March. With sessions devoted to conversations on mental health in documentary practice, trauma-informed work, archives, impact production and emerging talent, the program reflects a growing recognition that ethical filmmaking also requires ethical conditions of labour. The launch of the NEFTi Competition for displaced filmmakers in Europe and Africa, alongside the new ESTAFET initiative in The Hague, suggests a festival thinking about the infrastructures needed to sustain political cinema beyond it.
Find the full Movies that Matter 2026 programme – HERE
