{"id":433380,"date":"2026-05-05T12:50:07","date_gmt":"2026-05-05T12:50:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/433380\/"},"modified":"2026-05-05T12:50:07","modified_gmt":"2026-05-05T12:50:07","slug":"millennium-docs-festival-director-unpacks-2026-edition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/433380\/","title":{"rendered":"Millennium Docs Festival Director Unpacks 2026 Edition"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tPoland\u2019s Millennium Docs Against Gravity<\/a>, the documentary film festival that takes place simultaneously across seven Polish cities, returns for its 23rd edition from May 7 \u2013 17 with a focus on the audience-facing attitude that has helped it evolve from a scrappy local affair into the country\u2019s largest film festival.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cOur main goal from day one has been to build up a documentary mass audience,\u201d says\u00a0festival director Artur Liebhart. \u201cIt was a very ambitious goal, and I think we are on our way to achieving that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tLast year\u2019s edition racked up more than 180,000 admissions, bolstered by a wide-ranging program that\u2019s not afraid to shy away from the controversial or political \u2014 the event opened with \u201cCoexistence, My Ass!<\/a>,\u201d director Amber Fares\u2019 probing documentary about Israeli comedian and activist Noam Shuster Eliassi \u2014 while also unabashedly striving to put the \u201cfestive\u201d back in \u201cfestival.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe have not [created] this festival for hardcore documentary lovers only. We would like to make it for everybody,\u201d Liebhart explains. \u201cIt\u2019s not only quality films on various subjects \u2014 politics, culture, pop culture \u2014 but also creating a lot of events around the films.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThat approach includes concerts, photo exhibitions, dance recitals and other happenings curated to stimulate conversation around the films on offer. Organizers are also proud of their wide-ranging efforts to support audience members with special needs, with Leibhart noting that every film in this year\u2019s main competition \u201cwill have a full package of technical accessibility\u201d for special-needs viewers in all seven cities to host screenings.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe festival\u2019s 23rd edition opens May 7 with \u201cClosure,\u201d from Polish director\u00a0Micha\u0142 Marczak,\u00a0which follows a father\u2019s obsessive search for his vanished son and its devastating aftermath. The film \u2014 described as a \u201cstunner\u201d<\/a> by\u00a0Variety\u2019s Murtada Elfadl after its Sundance premiere \u2014 won top honors at the Thessaloniki Intl. Documentary Festival in March. The physical festival wraps May 17, with online screenings to run from May 19 \u2013 June 1.<\/p>\n

\n\tHighlights from the main competition include \u201cNuisance Bear,<\/a>\u201d directors\u00a0Gabriela Osio Vanden and Jack Weisman\u2019s Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner; \u201cTime and Water,\u201d the latest from Oscar-nominated filmmaker Sara Dosa (\u201cFire of Love\u201d); \u201cA Child of My Own<\/a>,\u201d from two-time Academy Award nominee Maite Alberdi (\u201cThe Mole Agent\u201d); and \u201cYo (Love Is a Rebellious Bird)<\/a>,\u201d which earned a special jury prize for directors Anna Fitch and Banker White at this year\u2019s Berlin Film Festival.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tWorld premieres include \u201cBodies (of War),\u201d from two-time Berlinale prizewinner Ma\u0142gorzata Szumowska (\u201cBody,\u201d \u201cMug\u201d) and Micha\u0142 Englert, and \u201cCooking Up Democracy,\u201d from pioneering German filmmaker Monika Treut, who returns to a festival she first attended in 2004, during its inaugural edition, when her documentary \u201cGendernauts: A Journey Through Shifting Identities\u201d was among just 17 films screening for local audiences.<\/p>\n

\n\tTreut is one of the filmmakers being feted in Millennium Doc\u2019s new Masters section, celebrating the auteurs of documentary filmmaking, among them Oscar-nominated \u201cI Am Not Your Negro\u201d director Raoul Peck, with a screening of\u00a0\u201cOrwell: 2 + 2 = 5<\/a>,\u201d as well as iconic German auteur Werner Herzog, with his 2025 Venice premiere \u201cGhost Elephants.\u201d Other programming strands include \u201cIn the Name of the Father and the Son,\u201d which features films that push back against stereotypes surrounding masculinity to explore intimacy and family dynamics, and \u201cAll Eyes on Palestine,\u201d a selection of documentaries that address both the current conflict and the events that led to it.<\/p>\n

\n\tPerhaps the biggest new addition to Millennium Docs Against Gravity this year is the launch of\u00a0the Documentary Grand Prix\u00a0for best documentary film of the year by FIPRESCI,\u00a0the international body for film critics. The winner, which was selected through a vote by the group\u2019s members, will be announced at the festival\u2019s opening ceremony. Calling it the \u201ccrown\u201d of this year\u2019s event,\u00a0Liebhart says the award represents a huge vote of confidence from FIPRESCI and underscores the importance of the Polish festival in the international documentary landscape.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tRunning parallel to Millennium Docs Against Gravity is an industry event that will bring more than 200 delegates to Warsaw for a series of masterclasses, workshops and pitching sessions for both short- and long-form documentary films.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe started building our presence in the industry five years ago, and the response was enormous,\u201d notes Liebhart. \u201cBut it was enormous because we had already been positioned as an event dedicated to documentary film which has built an audience in a country of 45 million in Central Europe.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe theme of this year\u2019s event is \u201cSearching,\u201d which Liebhart says points to a collective need to find \u201csense amid the chaos\u201d of current affairs \u2014 particularly as the news is filtered through social media. \u201cWe are trying to show through the lens of filmmakers a world which people can understand,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\n\tLikewise, as our feeds get increasingly clogged by AI slop that makes it impossible to distinguish between fact and fiction, Liebhart insists documentary filmmaking can serve as \u201can anchor where people can find something that they can trust.\u201d This year\u2019s event, he adds, is \u201ca search for understanding all this.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Poland\u2019s Millennium Docs Against Gravity, the documentary film festival that takes place simultaneously across seven Polish cities, returns…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":348216,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[2472,93,61,60,173718,270],"class_list":["post-433380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-documentaries-to-watch","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-millennium-docs-against-gravity","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=433380"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433380\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/348216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=433380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=433380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=433380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}