What would a festival of images that don’t exist look like?

Join us 25 – 31 Jan 2021 for a packed week of online screenings and discussions at the intersections of cinema, politics and human rights.

The 18th edition of Document Film Festival will explore the politics of viewing and the role of cinema in a world of perpetual emergency. We ask what is redacted, erased, and invisibilised in the wake of crisis? And how can we disrupt the dominant flows of images and media that shape our understanding of the world?

All films will be available within the whole of the UK!

Watch this space for the full programme announcement and tickets soon!

We’re delighted to announce full programme details for Document Film Festival 2018, which runs from Friday 30 November to Sunday 2 December. Relocated to the Scottish Youth Theatre for our 16th edition, this year we bring discussions and workshops as well as 40 feature length and short documentary films from around the globe to Glasgow, including 11 Scottish premieres and some of the world’s most exciting prize-winning films.

Through innovative contemporary titles and historical gems this year’s Festival explores the potential of archives and archive film, asking what they can tell us about collective memory and the role of filmmaking in the preservation of culture. From the radical women who transgressed tradition to pioneer a New Arab Cinema, to the Tokyo workers who waged war on the Yakuza, hear previously unheard voices from history that help make sense of the contemporary world, and imagine new futures for it. We also takes a close look at the poetic and political potential of landscapes, and showcase films in which people must rebel against the traumas of their present moment.

Major events include a screening and lecture celebrating the recently passed Egyptian filmmaking icon and ‘mother of documentary’ Ateyyat El Abnoudy; a series of films recovered from and about the lost Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) Film Unit archive contextualised by scholar, researcher and writer Anandi Ramamurthy, one of several events supported by Film Hub Scotland’s Pilot Projects programme; and the Scottish premieres of Silence is a Falling Body, a revealing portrait of the filmmaker’s father constructed from over 100 hours of footage recorded before his death, presented in partnership with Scottish Queer International Film Festival, and Luz Obscura, a deeply-felt film essay on Portugal’s decades-long right wing dictatorship from director Susana de Sousa Dias, who will attend the Festival.

We’re thrilled to welcome filmmaker and artist Louis Henderson to deliver this year’s Superlux Masterclass in conjunction with Lux Scotland, focusing on recent collaborative work Ouvertures, which seeks to find an anti-colonial method of filmmaking. Other confirmed guests include Steven Eastwood, director of Island, a lyrical look at death on the Isle of Wight, and Sara Fattahi, director of Chaos, a devastating meditation on the war in Syria as experienced by three women living in exile which won the Pardo d’Oro Cineasti del presente at Locarno Film Festival this year and has its Scottish premiere at Document. Fattahi, winner also of the FIPRESCI Award at the 2015 Viennale, will lead a free Director’s Masterclass in conjunction with the Scottish Documentary Institute on Saturday 1 December.

We host films from around the world, including Scottish Premieres of Orione and Silence is a Falling Body (Argentina), Babylonia Mon Amour (Italy), Revenir (Australia / Ivory Coast), Meteors (Netherlands/Turkey), Black Mother (USA), and experimental American filmmaker Ben Russell’s Good Luck (France, Germany), which explores the differences and similarities of two groups of men working in the mining trade in vastly different conditions in Serbia and Suriname, shot on Super 16mm film.

Other highlights include a rare chance to see Yama – Attack to Attack, filmed on the frontlines of a war between unionised workers and the corruption of the Yakuza in 1980s Tokyo – a struggle which cost both filmmakers their lives; a back-to-back screening of A.K.A Serial Killer, Adachi Masao’s anti-sensationalist true crime masterpiece and The Anabasis of May…, Eric Baudelaire’s repurposing of Masao’s fukeiron film philosophy; a closing night screening of The Sun Quartet, a psychedelic protest poem made by an anonymous Mexican collective addressing the disappearance of 43 students in Igualo, Guerrero in 2014; the launch of a new publication of Palestinian feminist perspectives in collaboration with Dardishi Festival; and a Critical Forum panel discussion on Bernadett Tuza-Ritter’s shocking modern-day slavery documentary A Woman Captured immediately following a screening of the film.

Festival Programme Producer Sam Kenyon said: “A central theme of this year’s edition is the histories, afterlives and generative potential of archives – looking at what they can tell us about how we understand our individual and collective histories, particularly in relation to some of the seismic political events of the twentieth century. The festival is a place where we can tease out lots of interesting questions around these subjects. We hope that audiences will come and see some wonderful films, participate in workshops, masterclasses and panel discussions, and have lots of engaging conversations.”

Sean Greenhorn, Screen Officer at Screen Scotland said: “Glasgow’s Document Human Rights Film Festival offers audiences in Scotland access to stories from around the world, by Scottish and International film makers, exploring human rights issues and activism on a local and global scale. The festival’s consistently diverse and accessible screening and events programme brings together high-quality filmmaking, with expert speakers, and people who are taking action and bringing about change. Screen Scotland is proud to support the Festival and we congratulate the team on another impressive programme.”

Tickets for all films and events are available now at on our website and will be available to purchase on Festival days (30 Nov – 2 Dec) from the box office at the Scottish Youth Theatre (The Old Sheriff Court, 105 Brunswick Street, G1 1TF). Tickets for all events are either free or priced on a Pay What You Can basis from £0 to £8 (in £2 increments).

Document will call the Scottish Youth Theatre it’s home for the 2018 Festival, a move brought on by the lengthy closure of regular venue, CCA Glasgow. The Scottish Youth Theatre is a fully accessible venue in the heart of Glasgow’s Merchant City area. Partners in this year’s Festival include Creative Interruptions; Dardishi; Lux Scotland; Goethe-Institut Glasgow; SQIFF; Glasgow Short Film Festival; Scottish Documentary Institute; GRAMNet; The ALLIANCE; Good Life, Good Death, Good Grief; Health and Social Care Academy; Scottish Partnership for Palliative Care; Africa in Motion Film Festival; The Glasgow Human Rights Network; Femspectives; and Plantation Productions. The Brunswick Hotel is Document’s Official Accommodation Partner for this year’s edition.

Document is produced by Sam Kenyon, Sanne Jehoul and Richard Warden. The Festival is supported by Creative Scotland and Screen Scotland through the Film Festivals Fund, Film Hub Scotland (this support is made possible through funding from Creative Scotland and Lottery funding from the BFI) through the Pilot Project programme, and the BFI’s Uprising: Spirit of ‘68 programme.