The Docs for Sale catalogue 2025-2026 is now live

This year’s Docs for Sale catalogue presents a robust lineup of films, showcasing diversity of themes, styles, and formalistic approaches. The slate reflects filmmakers’ enduring engagement with broader socio-political and societal questions shaping personal lives, from the fight for climate justice and the impact of war and displacement to evolving notions of identity and belonging. A number of filmmakers also turn their lens toward complex interior worlds, spanning familial bonds and community enclaves as sites of solidarity.

The crop of films features titles that have been represented by leading sales agents and have celebrated their world premieres at major film festivals, and those that are yet to secure sales representation and are seeking premieres, including A Long Way Home, Cinema Under Siege, Object, Out of Frame, Sunset Shadows, and Fire, Water, Earth, Air. The roster features the work of acclaimed directors, including Firouzeh Khosrovani (Past, Future, Continuous), Peter Mettler (While the Green Grass Grows: A Diary in Seven Parts), and Sergey Loznitsa (Paleontology Lesson), as well as promising new voices, such as Lana Daher (Do You Love Me), Daya Cahen (Eyes of the Machine), Zahraa Ghandour (Flana), and Morteza Atabaki (32 Meters), among others.

This year’s catalogue maintains a strong geographic and gender diversity. The presence of women directors and producers is notable, with a total of 130 films directed or co-directed by women and 134 films produced by women, including 70 titles where women filmmakers took on both roles. 84 of the titles are IDFA-selected films, 62 come from sales agents, and 122 have been handpicked by the Docs for Sale team.

Many exciting titles in this year’s crop are seeking world premieres and/or a sales agent. 169 films have yet to secure sales representation, while 107 are looking for world premieres. Poignantly resonant stories run through a number of titles in the lineup. With an observant lens, Oksana Koklonska’s Up in the Air explores the fragility of dreams in wartime, centering on a 9-year-old Ukrainian circus acrobat as the full-scale invasion goes unabated in Ukraine. Meanwhile, Zippy Kimundu’s Widow Champion presents an unsparing portrait of a patriarchal community in Kenya, following an advocate who rallies fellow widows to reclaim their land and rights. Pulling back from close-up stories, Maya Annik Bedward delivers a probing film essay, Black Zombie, taking on the origin of Hollywood’s most lasting horror figure and tracing its connections to slavery and resistance movements.

The slate also features an array of short films still seeking premieres or sales representation. Personal and political entwine in Hao Zhou’s At the Stage When as a rural woman in China, who “married up”, contends with the confines of convention and pro-natal pressures. A tonally different offering comes from Pranav Dawar, who directed Well of Death. In the electrifying cinematic ride, a band of stunt drivers turn death-defying feats into spectacles, yet this road is paved with risk and sacrifice.

Among the world premieres in the International Competition is A Fox Under a Pink Moon. Helmed remotely by Iranian filmmaker Mehrdad Oskouei (Sunless Shadows at IDFA 2019), the film offers an unvarnished, textured portrait of Soraya, a young Afghan artist in Iran who tries to flee to Europe. Debuting in the Envision Competition, Our Body Is an Expanding Star presents an intriguing work by a Mexican directing duo, queer siblings Semillites Hernández Velasco and Tania Hernández Velasco, who journey through their Brown bodies, longing to reimagine themselves in radically new ways, beyond the colonial narratives.

In the Luminous section, Inna Sahakyan (Aurora’s Sunrise at IDFA 2022) is premiering Outliving Shakespeare, a quietly affecting film that follows a theater troupe as they mount a play in a crumbling Soviet-era retirement home in Armenia. Another IDFA-selected title in the slate comes from Patience Nitumwesiga, whose incisive vérité film The Woman Who Poked The Leopard debuting in Frontlight, focuses on Ugandan dissident Dr. Stella Nyanzi.

The personal cost of resistance is at the core of a short film, As I Lay Dying, by Mohammadreza Farzad (Subtotals at IDFA 2022) and Pegah Ahangarani (My Father at IDFA 2023), which will world-premiere in the IDFA Competition for Short Documentary. The camera becomes a palpable witness in As I Lay Dying, capturing the 2009 social protests in Tehran. The Best of Fests title, Clarisa Navas’ The Prince of Nanawa chronicles a boy’s coming of age at society’s margins, after a chance encounter with him on a footbridge dividing Argentina and Paraguay a decade earlier.

Environmental concerns are among the noteworthy themes in this year’s lineup. In Now That We Are Sending You to the End, Blake Knecht draws on tactile filmmaking to create a handmade testament to ecological loss. Just Our Heart by Maartje Nevejan (Couscous Global at IDFA 2009) dives into personal, ecological, and colonial grief. In The Man Who Plants the Baobabs, Michel K. Zongo (The Siren of Faso Fani at IDFA 2015) trains his lens on El Hadj Salifou Ouédraogo, an unlikely environmental hero at 82 years old, who has nurtured thousands of baobabs in western Burkina Faso, long challenged by drought.

Among other highlights in the lineup are explorations of communities as microcosms, providing glimpses into broader socio-political realities. Andreea Dumitriu’s The Line sweeps viewers into the heart of one of Europe’s largest Orthodox pilgrimages in Romania’s Iași, revealing how religious freedom gained after the fall of communism has echoed through people’s search for meaning in precarious times. Meanwhile, Tamar Lando’s Land with No Rider crafts a poetic ode to man’s ties with the land and one another, following cattle ranchers in New Mexico as drought ravages swaths of the American West.

Docs for Sale’s key partners, the sales agents, are presenting their most significant titles of the year, which can be found in the catalogue. The sales agents include Andana Films, Autlook Filmsales, Cinephil, Java Films, The Party Film Sales, JMT Films, Impronta Films, Lightdox, Rise and Shine World Sales, Taskovski Films, Filmotor, Filmoption International, Compañía de Cine, First Hand Films, New Docs, and Filmdelights. Among the distributors showcasing their titles are Dutch CORE, the National Film Board of Canada, Pop Twist Entertainment, Beliane, and Scorpion TV.

During the festival, Docs for Sale will be held from November 15 to 19 in Het Documentaire Paviljoen. Docs for Sale Participant and Acquisition passholders will continue to enjoy exclusive access to the Docs for Sale lounge and dedicated viewing booths reserved for Acquisition passholders. Further networking opportunities will be available through Consultancies and Industry Talks, accessible with a PLUS pass. The 2025-2026 catalogue will be live for the entire year until October 31, 2026 through an online viewing subscription, allowing buyers and festival programmers to pursue exploring sales and distribution opportunities beyond the event.