The Docs for Sale catalogue 2026-2027 is now live

The Docs for Sale catalogue presents a compelling lineup of films, marked by thematic and stylistic diversity and formal ambition. Several themes resonate across the slate, from explorations of urgent socio-political realities to examinations of historical memory and portrayals of resistance amid growing precarity.  

The fresh crop of films features titles represented by leading sales agents that have world-premiered at major festivals, including Ahmed Hassouna’s Citizen Osama (Venice, The Party Film Sales), Maxence Voiseux’s Gabin (Cannes, Lightdox), Chouwa Liang’s Replica (TiDF, CAT&Docs), and Peter Badel and Chris Wright’s Transition (Locarno, Film Harbour). The lineup also features established names, including Salomé Jashi (An Incomplete Day in the History of Georgia 10.06.93), Helena Třeštíková (Bára - Diary of a Rockstar), Jeanie Finlay (All Rivers Spill Their Stories to The Sea), and Hassen Ferhani (Alea Jacarandas), as well as exciting new voices, such as Nong Nhat Quang (Baby Jackfruit Baby Guava), Bryan Dickie, Dwight Jantzi, and Robert Mentov’s White Tiger Column, and Nicolás Palacio (One Early Morning, the Alligator Swallowed Me).  

The Docs for Sale catalogue upholds its commitment to geographic and gender diversity. Of the 109 titles with women filmmakers in directing roles, 88 are directed by women, and 21 are co-directed. A total of 184 titles are produced by women, including 61 led by women who both direct and produce the work. The catalogue includes 78 IDFA-selected films, 53 sales agents’ slates, and 147 market-ready titles selected by the Docs for Sale team. 

201 films in this year’s crop are seeking sales representation, while 117 are still awaiting their world premieres. Themes of loss, resilience, and identity emerge in Mariam Ohanyan’s Living Against the Odds, which focuses on teachers at the Togh Art School and the consequences of war for Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh. Dreams, hallucinations, and reality blur in Giuseppe Carrieri’s Somalia, a fisherman’s despairing nocturnal quest for a golden shark amid a dire plight. Silvia Rey Canudo’s Angels Street sets us on another unexpected journey, sparked by the filmmaker’s purchase of a flat in a decaying neighborhood on the cusp of gentrification. 

Amid the short films still seeking premieres or sales representation is Laura Kansy’s Hello new body, how are you today?, which blends observation, diary, and animation in a poetic mediation on inhabiting a chronically ill body. Performance and reality bleed into each other in Infanticide as queer filmmaker Veronica Jingyi Wang casts her divorced parents to reenact their family’s life in China. In turn, Raed Duzdar reimagines archive in Gaza 1963, showing rare 16mm footage to its former residents and inviting stories about its vibrant past. 

Carrying on with life is an act of resistance in Juan Manuel Sepúlveda’s Here Where the Fire Burns (International Competition), an affecting account of three Haitian women in a Mexico City migrant camp hoping to reach the promised land. A sense of impending loss permeates Shishir Jha’s timely Rivers of Memory (Envision Competition), capturing seven villages along Odisha’s coast succumbing to the rising sea. An intimate family chronicle is at the heart of Ankita Gusain’s tenderly lensed Six Weeks, 3 Days, and All The Years Before (IDFA Competition for Short Documentary) as the filmmaker reflects on her estranged father in a Himalayan village.  

Weaving in family archives and conversations with its people filmed mostly before October 7, diasporic Palestinian filmmaker Serene Husni returns to her parents’ hometown in the West Bank to craft an aching tribute to it in Jenin & the Nakba Between Us (Frontlight). The camera is also a witness in Sergii Bazhenov’s Every Death Diminishes Me (Luminous), which centers on a Ukrainian filmmaker turned frontline paramedic. Traversing West Africa, Boubacar Sangaré’s Djeliya’s Memory of Mandingo (Best of Fests) draws us into an epic tale that tests a man’s vocation as a griot, a keeper of oral memory.  

Rebellion and activism recur as themes, explored through distinct, idiosyncratic perspectives. Taisiia Kutuzova’s Shut the Fuck up! chronicles the fight of a 16-year-old Serhii against corrupt officials to save his village lake, just before Ukraine is swept into a full-scale war. Marco Giacopuzzi’s Satan’s Children - Metal and Islam charts another kind of defiance, seen in the lives of heavy metal musicians and fans in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Turkey, and Indonesia. 

A number of films engage with historical memory, excavating inherited or contested narratives. Uncovering an extraordinary cinematic espionage story, Saúl Valverde’s series Diary of an Infiltrator accompanies Spanish filmmaker Miguel Herberg 50 years after he embedded himself inside Chile’s far-right ranks. In the author-driven Roots in the Mirror, Turkish filmmaker Can Adiloglu explores history’s survival through movement as he returns to his ancestral village in Georgia, tracing the Armenians’ path in reverse after 1915. In Remains of the Past, Senegalese director Fara Konaté also lays bare a legacy—that of colonialism—following the toppling of a statue of French governor Louis Faidherbe in Saint-Louis.  

Bringing together filmmakers, rights holders, buyers, and distributors, Docs for Sale, IDFA’s international sales and distribution market, takes place on November 14–18 at Het Documentaire Paviljoen. This year, sales agents showcasing their titles include Autlook Filmsales, Andana Films, Java Films, First Hand Films, Filmdelights, Filmotor, Lightdox, Rise & Shine World Sales, and others. Among distributors are the National Film Board of Canada and Pop Twist Entertainment.  

During the festival, Docs for Sale Participant and Acquisition passholders enjoy exclusive access to dedicated viewing booths and the Docs for Sale Lounge. Docs for Sale also offers daily moments to connect with peers and continue conversations outside formal meetings, such as Daily Happy Hours, sponsored by Autlook Filmsales, Millennium Docs Against Gravity, Rise & Shine World Sales, and SEE NL. 

The 2026-2027 Docs for Sale catalogue is live for the entire year until October 30, 2027, through an online viewing subscription. 

Still: Satan’s Children - Metal and Islam, dir. Marco Giacopuzzi