The 19th edition of Pordenone Docs Fest will take place from 25 to 29 March 2026 at Cinemazero, under the High Patronage of the European Parliament. Each year, the international festival presents the best documentaries offering insight into contemporary issues, selected from hundreds of titles, and has firmly established itself as one of Italy’s leading events dedicated to documentary cinema. Once again, the city will become the “capital of documentary film”, with a festival that continues to grow in the lead-up to Pordenone Italian Capital of Culture 2027, of which Cinemazero is one of the key protagonists.
This year as well, the festival will welcome international guests from all over the world, presenting dozens of national premieres and films selected directly from the most prestigious festivals worldwide or submitted by major international distributors for their Italian premiere in Pordenone, offering a broad, critical, and contemporary perspective on the major issues of our time.
In an era marked by increasingly intense and global conflicts and polarisation, curator Riccardo Costantini announces an edition whose key concept will be “Sieges”:
“Our daily lives are under constant siege by images that appear unmediated, seemingly presented ‘without filters’ and therefore perceived as more credible. We believe the opposite is true, and that what is missing today is a narrative capable of analysing reality with precision and depth—something that great contemporary documentary cinema, which Pordenone Docs Fest has always premiered, can provide. The ambition is that the ‘sieges’ of our time—whether physical and contextualised, from Gaza to Ukraine; social, such as increasingly threatened human rights; or foundational to our communities, with democracy under siege in many countries—can become more comprehensible through the work presented by the festival.”
In the same spirit, this edition introduces a new thematic section, Different Perspectives, designed to address major current issues through a lateral, human, and unmediated gaze. At a time when we are often saturated and numbed by the constant flow of images of destruction and conflict, the section proposes alternative visions—less direct yet deeply incisive—capable of restoring complexity and meaning, and of counteracting the visual anaesthesia that repeated exposure to conflict imagery can produce.
From China comes Confessions of a Mole (a Chinese–Polish co-production), an ironic and original visual diary by director Mo Tan, who becomes the filmmaker she has always dreamed of being while navigating all the contradictions of contemporary Chinese society. Through a deliberately playful tone, the film explores family bonds, love, the need to preserve rigid traditions, and the desire to be fully oneself, offering a fresh, engaging, and often amusing portrait that reveals a deeper reflection on what it means today to be a young Chinese woman who wants to be a “citizen of the world.”
Among the other highly anticipated premieres is the Turkish–Iranian production 32 Meters, a delicate and deeply human documentary that tells the story of women’s emancipation in a rural Turkish village, reaffirming Pordenone Docs Fest’s long-standing commitment to gender issues. The protagonist is Halime, a woman who does not identify with the traditional role imposed on women in her patriarchal community and who, convinced that life offers much more than home and children, decides to organise a women-only target shooting tournament, challenging a millennia-old tradition that allows only men to handle weapons. The initiative meets resistance and opposition, especially from the village’s men, whose approval is considered necessary. With an empathetic gaze and subtle humour, 32 Meters shows how even deeply entrenched ideas about gender roles can be questioned, offering a hopeful portrait of a community in transformation and of a woman determined to change the status quo.
Alongside the most recent works, the festival also looks to the past for perspectives and memories that remain essential for understanding the present. The programme therefore includes two retrospectives, with special events linked to history and its anniversaries, once again connected to the theme of “Sieges”: from the historical sieges of Spain during the Civil War to the most significant and painful contemporary siege, that of Sarajevo.
The retrospective Sarajevo, the Siege: 1992–1996, curated by Alessandro Del Re on the thirtieth anniversary of the end of the siege of Sarajevo—one of the central events of the Bosnian War—presents, for the first time in a complete form, how the siege was depicted on film by some of the greatest figures in international cinema, not only documentary filmmakers, including Jasmila Žbanić, Susan Sontag, Paweł Pawlikowski, Johan van der Keuken, among others.
The second retrospective, curated by Federico Rossin, is titled ¡No pasarán! Rethinking the Spanish Civil War, Ninety Years Later. Marking the anniversary of the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War (1936), it does not focus on films made during the conflict itself, but instead offers an original, layered perspective through works created in the final years of the Franco dictatorship and the early years of the democratic Transition, when the country began critically reassessing its past. These films reflect on mourning, divided memories, disillusionment, and the need to rebuild a civic conscience—an especially timely journey in a historical moment marked by the return of authoritarian impulses in many contemporary democracies.
Both retrospectives bear witness to the culture—and necessity—of peace, which has always been one of the festival’s core objectives.
A central pillar of Pordenone Docs Fest is its commitment to the professional sector, with a rich programme of industry events dedicated to directors, producers, and film professionals. Over five days, participants will have the opportunity to meet, exchange ideas, and reflect collectively on the future of documentary filmmaking, including international panels—supported by the Cinema and Images for Schools Plan of the Italian Ministry of Culture—focused on the crucial role of documentary film in educating today’s younger generations.
Among the recurring themes to which Pordenone Docs Fest devotes particular attention, alongside gender issues, is environmental commitment, embodied respectively in the Manifesto for Broad and Responsible Communication and the Green Manifesto, which will continue to serve as reference points for concrete action. These include, combining the festival’s ongoing commitment to highlighting historically marginalised figures and its focus on ecological practices, a tribute to the memory of Silvia Zenari (on the 70th anniversary of her death, 1956), a Friulian biologist and geologist whose work deserves renewed public recognition. A fundamental figure in twentieth-century natural science research—acknowledged by the Accademia dei Lincei—she carried out pioneering studies at a time when scientific research in her fields was almost exclusively male, and the Natural History Museum of Pordenone is named in her honour.
The festival will also present the first actions of two projects linked to Pordenone Italian Capital of Culture 2027 in which it plays a leading role, closely connected to its long-standing commitments: “Città aperta” (Open City), a pioneering pathway for cultural accessibility developed in collaboration with numerous local organisations, and “La fabbrica dei sogni” (The Dream Factory), featuring high-profile artistic residencies focused on enhancing film, sound, and photographic archives that form the territory’s rich—yet sometimes forgotten—visual memory, from home movies to the extraordinary archives of Cinemazero (Pasolini, Modotti, Fellini, Tarkovsky…).
The festival also renews its social commitment with the “No Sponsor” initiative—an “inverted” sponsorship model in which the festival itself offers free visibility to organisations working internationally for the protection of rights and peace, such as Emergency, Doctors Without Borders, and Un Ponte Per.
Pordenone Docs Fest is organised under the High Patronage of the European Parliament, with contributions from the Italian Ministry of Culture, the Autonomous Region of Friuli Venezia Giulia, PromoTurismoFVG, the Municipality of Pordenone – Department of Culture, and Fondazione Friuli; with the support of Servizi CGN, ITACA Social Cooperative, Friuli Venezia Giulia Film Commission, IDM Film Funding, Trentino Film Commission, Veneto Film Commission, the National Council of the Order of Journalists, AGIS Triveneto, AVI – Italian Association of Videotheques and Media Libraries, CNA Cinema and Audiovisual FVG, Europa Cinemas, and with the support of AFIC, Associazione Il Capitello, Order of Journalists – FVG, and Confcommercio Ascom Pordenone.
It is a flagship initiative of Pordenone Italian Capital of Culture 2027.
