Open City Documentary Festival

Home - Open City Documentary Festival Celebrating the art of non-fiction, Open City Documentary Festival creates an open space in London to nurture and champion the art of creative documentary and non-fiction filmmakers.

We are excited to launch our 2026 programme! The 16th edition will take place from April 14th-19th at the ICA, Barbican, BFI, Bertha Dochouse, Rich Mix and Close-Up Film Centre.

Featuring 125 films & 16 Expanded Realities projects, our full programme is now live - book now!

opencitylondon.com

we're back! applications are now open for the Open City x Another Gaze Critics Workshop ✍️ more info here >> opencitylondon.com/news/open-ci... @opencitydocs.bsky.social

it was a delight to see Sally Potter introduce her 1970 short Play, as part of @opencitydocs.bsky.social’s ongoing experimental film programme for children, ‘Listen with your eyes’. the kids asked some very sweet questions, which included asking Potter if she got her film camera from Santa!

Day 5 @ Open City Documentary Festival 🥰

Day 4 @ Open City Documentary Festival 🪩

Day 3 @ Open City Documentary Festival 🥰

Full Programme - Open City Documentary Festival Open City Documentary Festival creates an open space in London to nurture and champion the art of creative documentary and non-fiction filmmakers. The festival aims to challenge and expand the idea of...

🎥 @opencitydocs.bsky.social is in full swing! I'll be taking 📷 throughout the festival. Full programme of critical work and conversations: opencitylondon.com/2025-festiva...

Day 2 @ Open City Documentary Festival 🎥

Day 1 @ Open City Documentary Festival ❤️‍🔥

Siticulosa Review: Archeological Journey to Puglia Maeve Brennan’s Siticulosa is a captivating documentary that opens the audience’s eyes to a reality many may not be familiar with.

The Open City Documentary Festival has begun, and the opening film was SITICULOSA! 😍

This Puglia documentary works incredibly well both visually and thematically: read @clotildechinnici.bsky.social's review!

@opencitydocs.bsky.social #OpenCityLondon

loudandclearreviews.com/siticulosa-f...

2025 Open City Documentary Festival: 10 Movies to Watch The 2025 Open City Documentary Festival is back at the beginning of May: this is our guide on 10 movies to watch, from world premieres to retrospectives.

The Open City Documentary Festival (@opencitydocs.bsky.social) begins today! 😍

Read @clotildechinnici.bsky.social's list of movies to watch at the festival, in various venues across London, on 6-11 May! 🤩

#OpenCityLondon

loudandclearreviews.com/open-city-do...

Full Programme - Open City Documentary Festival Open City Documentary Festival creates an open space in London to nurture and champion the art of creative documentary and non-fiction filmmakers. The festival aims to challenge and expand the idea of...

The @opencitydocs.bsky.social festival starts today!

With screenings across the city, workshops and surgeries for film students there's a lot going on - check out the programme⬇️

opencitylondon.com/2025-festiva...

Ian White Memorial Lecture: Esther Kinsky, Entering the Gaze  - Open City Documentary Festival In collaboration with the Ian White Estate, Open City is pleased to present the fourth Ian White Lecture, given by writer Esther Kinsky. This ongoing series celebrates the provocative and enquiring sp...

We’re pleased to present the fourth Ian White Lecture, given by writer Esther Kinsky. In her talk, Kinsky will speak to the ways that films can teach us to abandon our preconceived notions, opening our minds to the gaze of the filmmaker.

📍 ICA
📅 Sun 11 May, 4pm
opencitylondon.com/events/ian-w...

Closing Night: Kouté vwa (Listen to the Voices)  - Open City Documentary Festival The debut feature-length work by Maxime Jean-Baptiste follows Melrick, a young teenage boy, as he spends a summer in French Guiana with his grandmother Nicole. The film traces conversations between Me...

Our closing film, KOUTÉ VWA, the debut feature by Maxime Jean-Baptiste follows Melrick, a teenage boy, over a summer in French Guiana. The film traces conversations between Melrick & his grandmother, revealing the story of her son’s death.

📍 ICA
📅 Sun 11 May, 7pm
opencitylondon.com/events/closi...

The Clock, or: 89 Minutes of “Free Time” - Open City Documentary Festival This programme is a somewhat surreal – or childlike – attempt at telling a story of the 20th century. In a more serious vein, it relates to three different notions of cinematic temporality: it talks a...

The Clock, Or: 89 Minutes of Free Time draws together a wealth of prints from the Austrian Filmmuseum in a somewhat surreal – or childlike – attempt at telling a story of the 20th century and the notion of the cinematic time

📍 Barbican
📅 Sat 10 May, 6:30pm
opencitylondon.com/events/the-c...

Wild Relations - Open City Documentary Festival Ecology and ecological encounters on and with the moving image surface as sites of inquiry throughout this year’s programme. In this panel discussion, moderated by artist-filmmaker Gerard Ortín Castel...

In Wild Relations, filmmakers in this year’s programme will discuss the ecological resonances in their work, be it through commitment to artisanal, small scale practices, or attempts to capture the changing worlds that surround us.

📍 Rich Mix
📅 Sat 10 May, 11am
opencitylondon.com/events/wild-...

Combined Programme: Unstable Rocks - Open City Documentary Festival Unstable Rocks Ewelina Rosinska | 2024 | Germany, Portugal | 25’ | Digital | Sound Filmed with a Bolex camera, Unstable Rocks offers a meditative exploration of the Portuguese landscape, where geology...

Featuring short films by Ewelina Rosinska, Eiko Soga, Sally Lawton & Eva Giolo, Combined Programme: Unstable Rocks presents works which explore journeys, parenthood and landscapes.

📍 Close-Up
📅 Sat 10 May, 6pm
opencitylondon.com/events/combi...

Oyoyo - Open City Documentary Festival Made as Indian-born filmmaker Chetna Vora’s examination film during her studies at the Film and Television Academy in Postdam-Babelsberg, Oyoyo (1980) was shot entirely within a student hall of reside...

Made as Chetna Vora’s examination film, OYOYO was shot entirely in a student dorm in East Berlin. The film captures the relaxed energy of student life & offers an insider perspective on solidarity amongst a transnational community.

📍 Barbican
📅 Sun 11 May, 3pm
opencitylondon.com/events/oyoyo/

Join us to celebrate the launch of MIRAJ’s double issue 13.1/2 and 14.1, making live new research and perspectives on the moving image from its recent issues, through discussion and screenings with an archival twist.

Find out more here 👉opencitylondon.com/e...

@opencitydocs.bsky.social

In The Manner Of Smoke - Open City Documentary Festival Drawing from his experience as a fire-lookout in the Sequoia forests of the Sierra Nevada in California, Armand Yervant Tufenkian constructs a careful study of the visual documentation of forest fires...

We have added a second screening of Armand Yervant Tufenkian’s IN THE MANNER OF SMOKE, a meditation on landscape, images and painting moving between California and the London studio of the painter Dan Hays.

📍 Close-Up
📅 Sun 11 May, 2pm

opencitylondon.com/events/in-th...

Combined Programme: a river holds a perfect memory  - Open City Documentary Festival Notes From Brook House  Alex Nevill | 2025 | UK | 28’ | Digital | English spoken  Airports, detention centres, sea containers. Slow, roaming shots linger on places of passage and confinement, where mo...

Featuring short films by Hope Strickland, Alex Nevill and Rhea Storr, Combined Programme: A River Holds A Perfect Memory, reflects on British geographies and their connections to colonial and post-colonial histories

📍 ICA
📅 Sun 11 May, 1:30pm
opencitylondon.com/events/combi...

Manal Issa, 2024 + The Diary of a Sky - Open City Documentary Festival The Diary of a Sky Lawrence Abu Hamdan | 2024 | Lebanon | 44’ | Digital | Arabic spoken, English subtitles Artist Lawrence Abu Hamdan has a sonic research practice that acts to investigate human right...

Screening together, Lawrence Abu Hamdan's THE DIARY OF A SKY and Elisabeth Subrin's MANAL ISSA, 2024 explore the sonic reverberations of Israeli infractions into, and bombings of, Lebanese airspace in recent years.

📍ICA
📅 Sat 10 May, 3pm
opencitylondon.com/events/manal...

Liveness at a Distance: Concept Touring and Borderline Visible An interview with Ant Hampton.

Coinciding with the presentation of the work at our Expanded Realities exhibition, Ant Hampton will be discussing his project Borderline Visible at the Royal Central School of Speech & Drama.

This event is open to the public with free tickets.

📅 Fri 9 May, 6pm
www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/liveness-a...

A spread of Open City 2025 brochures in a range of colours laid out on grass

🚨 There’s only 7 days to go until Open City 2025 kicks off!

Grab one of our brochures around town or head to opencitylondon.com to check out the programme and book your tickets soon to avoid disappointment ⏰

Les fantômes du hard – Chapters 1 & 2 - Open City Documentary Festival Desire leaves traces – on bodies, in memories, in the flickering frames of old VHS tapes. Les fantômes du hard is a journey through these remnants, an attempt to reconstruct a lost history of hardcore...

LES FANTÔMES DU HARD is a journey through traces of desire, an attempt to reconstruct a lost history of hardcore sexuality in Marseille and the rediscovered archives of the legendary Mineshaft, France’s first hardcore BDSM club.

📍ICA
📅Sat 10 May, 9pm
opencitylondon.com/events/les-f...

Listen with your eyes 3: Experimental Films for Families - Open City Documentary Festival Listen with your eyes is an ongoing series of screenings that aims to create a space for children of all ages to engage with and enjoy experimental forms of cinema. Through a variety of techniques and...

Listen with your eyes is an ongoing series of screenings that aims to create a space for children to engage with & enjoy experimental cinema.

Through a range of approaches, the films in this third programme reflect on ideas of play.

📍Barbican
📅 Sat 10 May, 11am
opencitylondon.com/events/liste...

The Mask - Open City Documentary Festival The Mask is a film about the legacies of revolutionary ideals and a portrait of solitude and societal false selves, moving centrifugally around the life of Philippe, a homeless 23-year old man in Pari...

Presented in collaboration with @sabzian.bsky.social, Johan van der Keuken's THE MASK moves centrifugally around Philippe, a homeless 23-year old man in Paris during the festivities around the 1989 French Revolution bicentenary.

📍Close-Up
📅 Thu 8 May, 8:30pm
opencitylondon.com/events/the-m...

The Elephant – Riso Printing Workshop - Open City Documentary Festival A risograph zine workshop will be facilitated by Burley Fisher Community Press, a micro-press, printing service and self-publishing resource run out of Burley Fisher Books. During this workshop we wil...

The issue will also be explored in a riso workshop at Burley Fisher Community Press. Participants will print a riso edition of the journal & produce a collaborative zine responding to the festival programme.

📍 @burleyfisher.bsky.social
📅 Fri 9 May, 4:30pm
opencitylondon.com/events/the-e...

Non-Fiction 07: The Elephant Launch - Open City Documentary Festival Join us to celebrate the publication of Non-Fiction 07: The Elephant, guest edited by Elhum Shakerifar. Imagined around the Sufi fable of the elephant, the journal proposes documentary as a process of...

Join us to launch Non-Fiction 07: The Elephant, edited by Elhum Shakerifar, with readings & workshops from contributors. @suchmayer.bsky.social & Jenny Clarke will discuss their pieces, Barby Asante will lead a breath workshop & more.

📍Rich Mix
📅 Thu 8 May, 4:30pm
opencitylondon.com/events/non-f...

Moving Statics: the films of Arthur and Corinne Cantrill - Open City Documentary Festival Over a period of fifty years, Australian filmmaking couple Arthur (1938-) and Corinne Cantrill (1928-2025) sought to discover new visual languages and new ways of accessing and rendering landscape thr...

Moving Statics is the first UK survey of Arthur & Corinne Cantrill since the 1980s. Using new visual languages, their work stages “journeys” into unfamiliar terrain, investigating the feedback between environment & art, landform & 16mm film-form, shape & light.

opencitylondon.com/2025-festiva...