LDNDOCS Festival Announces 2026 Lineup Stacked With Documentary Luminaries And Rising Talents

EXCLUSIVE: Oscar winners, Oscar nominees and Oscar hopefuls will be assembling in the UK capital next month for one of the newest film festivals on the planet.

The second edition of LDNDOCS, set to unfold from November 20-22 in central London, will present “14 new, award-winning documentary features from some of the world’s most acclaimed and exciting documentary filmmakers.” The lineup announced Tuesday boasts two-time Oscar winner Barbara Kopple, presenting her film Union Town; Emmy winner Amir Bar-Lev with The Last First: Winter K2; Emmy winner Stephen Maing and Emmy nominee Eric Daniel Metzgar with The Great Experiment, and Oscar nominee Sara Dosa with her latest, Time and Water.

Scroll for the full LDNDOCS lineup.

Oscar nominee Poh Si Teng will present her directorial debut, American Doctor, while Iranian-born director Pegah Ahangarani will screen her documentary Rehearsals for a Revolution, winner of the L’Oeil d’or prize at Cannes and recently selected as the official British entry for Best International Feature Film at the 99th Academy Awards. LDNDOCS will kick off with Once Upon a Time in Harlem, the award-winning film about an extraordinary reunion in 1972 of surviving members of the Harlem Renaissance. The documentary was conceived and shot by the late William Greaves, and realized over 50 years later by his son, David. David’s daughter Liani (William’s granddaughter) produced the film along with Anne de Mare.

Creative executive and producer Ben Fowlie (Queer Edward II, Boatbuilders) founded LDNDOCS. He previously founded the prestigious Camden International Film Festival in Maine, which recently held its 22nd edition. Regarding the LDNDOCS lineup, he noted, “2026 has been an incredibly exciting year for documentaries, both in terms of the range of the work and also in how nonfiction films are resonating with audiences, especially within a theatrical setting. This year’s program highlights that. It is full of bold, ambitious nonfiction films and filmmakers who are continuing to push cinematic nonfiction in new and powerful ways.”

Screenings for LDNDOCS will take place at the Curzon Bloomsbury Cinema, Bertha DocHouse, and Garden Cinema and will be followed by discussions with the visiting directors and special guests. LDNDOCS says its mission “is simple: to bring extraordinary stories to the big screen, because we believe the future of cinema is cinema. Our goal is to help the documentary form thrive, building audiences one screening at a time.”

This is the 2026 lineup for LDNDOCS:

American Doctor

Directed by Poh Si Teng | USA, State of Palestine, Malaysia, Qatar, Denmark | 2026 | 93 min

Three American medics return home from working in hospitals in Gaza, determined to fight for the patients and colleagues they left behind.

Bleeding Hearts

Directed by Andrew Morgan | USA | 2026 | 97 min

A music-driven love story about real-life couple Zella Day and Jesse Woods, two musicians chasing a shared dream while navigating pressures that could spark their breakup—or their breakthrough.

A Fox Under A Pink Moon

Directed by Mehrdad Oskouei and Soraya Akhalaghi | Iran, France | 2025 | 76 min

Five years, one smartphone, two directors — a long-distance self-portrait of an emigrant’s journey.

The Great Experiment

Directed by Stephen Maing and Eric Daniel Metzgar | USA | 2025 | 100 min

THE GREAT EXPERIMENT is an epic poem in documentary form – a mirror held to a nation at war with its own reflection, asking not who is right, but whether the experiment itself can survive.‍

The Illusion of an Everlasting Summer

Directed by Alessandra Sanguinetti | Argentina | 2026 | 96 min

Spanning more than 20 years, this intimate portrait of two girls, their everyday lives, fantasies and dreams explores their realities and inequalities of growing up female in rural Argentina.

Jean-Michel Basquiat

Directed by Quinn Whitney Wilson and Viridiana Lieberman | USA | 2026 | 95 min

Through untold memories from close friends and family and rare archival imagery, this film demystifies the story of Basquiat and discovers the man behind it all, Jean-Michel.

Khosha: The New Land

Directed by Gakemotho Satau and Zander Booth | Botswana, USA | 2026 | 67 min

Near the beautiful and mysterious Okavango Delta in the heart of Africa, eight members of the Khwe Bushman tribe – descendants of the oldest living human culture – embark on a long journey to find a new homeland.

The Last First: Winter K2

Directed by Amir Bar-Lev | USA, UK | 2026 | 98 min

A historic race to become the first to summit K2 in winter unravels into tragedy, exposing how ambition, ego, and the pursuit of glory can be as dangerous as the mountain itself.

Nuisance Bear

Directed by Gabriela Osio Vanden and Jack Weisman | USA | 2026 | 90 min

A polar bear is forced to navigate a human world of tourists, wildlife officers, and hunters as its ancient migration collides with modern life. When a sacred predator is branded a nuisance, it becomes unclear who truly belongs in this shared landscape.

Once Upon A Time in Harlem

Directed by David Greaves | USA | 2026 | 100 min

A decade after his death, genre-defying filmmaker William Greaves has one last trick up his sleeve with what he considered the most important event he captured on film: a 1972 party he engineered with the living luminaries of the Harlem Renaissance.

Rehearsals for a Revolution

Directed by Pegah Ahangarani | USA | 2026 | 95 min

Through five portraits of relatives and mentors, five expressions of resistance, Pegah Ahangarani sketches her life story. Drawing from personal archives, home videos, street protests footage, newspapers, and recorded voices, she retraces more than 40 years of Iran’s history.

To Hold A Mountain

Directed by Biljana Tuturov and Petar Glomazić | Serbia, France, Montenegro, Slovenia, Croatia| 2026 | 82 min

In the remote highlands of Montenegro, a shepherd mother and daughter proudly defend their ancestral mountain from the threat of becoming a NATO military training ground, stirring memories of the violence that shattered their family.

Time and Water

Directed by Sara Dosa | USA, Iceland | 2026 | 90 min

Facing the death of his country’s glaciers and the loss of his beloved grandparents, Icelandic writer Andri Snær Magnason turns his archives into a time capsule to hold what is slipping away — family, memory, time, and water.

Union Town

Directed by Barbara Kopple | USA | 2025 | 106 min UNION TOWN completes Barbara Kopple’s trilogy on labor rights following her Oscar-winning HARLAN COUNTY, USA and AMERICAN DREAM, two landmark cinéma vérité documentaries.