Against the backdrop of Havana's sun-drenched streets and shimmering coastline, "¡Quba!" blazes a trail through Cuba's LGBTQ revolution.

CENTERPIECE FILM This urgent documentary centers around some of the most viral videos of our time, like George Floyd’s murder (seen 1.4 billion times in 12 days, sparking protests in over 2,000 cities worldwide) and the livestreaming of Philando Castile’s killing. These cell phone videos changed the conversation around policing and accountability overnight. Millions watched their footage, but almost no one saw what came next. Once the videos went viral those that did the filming went into hiding to escape online trolls, media attention, and police surveillance — while Silicon Valley benefited from the explosion in user engagement their videos generated.

More than fifteen years ago, the world witnessed one of the most brutal crimes in history—the Maguindanao Massacre, the deadliest attack on journalists. In the fields of Sitio Masalay, 58 people were killed. Only 57 bodies were recovered; one remains missing to this day. For Reynafe Castillo, November 22, 2009, is a day forever etched in memory.

On the hot summer days in the old city of Acre, a tradition connects the generations - children and teens jump from the old city walls into the sea waters below, a test of courage on the path to masculine maturity. Among the black coastal rocks and ancient stone ramparts, each leap is absolute freedom and a breath of fresh air amid the boredom of the long summer vacation. During the endless sweltering days, everlasting friendships are forged around this defining tradition, as the ranks of youth are replenished from generation to generation. The film unveils a nostalgic and stirring world of friendships, dangers and displays of bravery - all anchored in the experience of youthful masculinity atop the ancient city walls.

A son of one of America's wealthiest families creates a communist revolutionary base in rural Massachusetts as a means of disrupting the capitalist system he grew up in but has now come to despise. It's the starting point of an unbelievable journey involving radical ideals, betrayal and exile.

A captivating tale of Yolanda Signorelli von Braunhut, the heiress to the Amazing Live Sea-Monkeys fortune, who is engaged in a David and Goliath legal battle with a large toy company to regain control over her husband’s iconic aquatic novelty. Now dispossessed of her sole source of income, Signorelli von Braunhut lives alone without electricity or running water on the Sea-Monkeys estate along the Potomac River where she struggles to restore the novelty’s reputation by regaining ownership of the Sea Monkeys and re-introducing the secret Sea-Monkeys formula to the world. Yolanda alone possesses the true Sea Monkey secret formula and she alone must free them, not only from their captors, but also from the stain of her husband’s dark legacy.

Anarchy in High Heels tells the story of Les Nickelettes, a women’s satirical musical theater company from 1970s and ‘80s San Francisco. They turned the patriarchy upside down with feminist humor and a spirit of collaboration. The film is a reminder of the subversive power of satire and sisterhood.

The lines between real life and reel life are muddied in the story of the Adams, an unconventional family who makes independent horror films. While they may vomit blood onto one another, lack boundaries and make frequent use of the f-word, they also face what every family must: change.

After 100 years of partial independence, a bold new wave of young Irish artists redefine folk music and reflect over the impact of their colonial history.

Cinema Kawakeb follows a filmmaker’s struggle to capture the fading life of a crumbling cinema in Amman, Jordan. Through the stories of its last two employees and its only loyal patron a homeless scrap collector who lives for classic Indian films the documentary becomes a meditation on loss, memory, and conflict. As the theater nears demolition, the film delves into the roots of its demise, tracing tensions from a family feud to regional and global power struggles.

Premiering at Slamdance Film Festival 2026, Clovers drops us into Asheboro, North Carolina, once labeled the fastest-dying city in America, and refuses to let us look away. Directed over a multi-year stretch by Jacob Hatley and Tom Vickers, the film centers on a quasi-legal strip mall casino and the orbit of people who land there when other structures collapse. What sounds like a gimmick becomes something heavier. The fish tables glow. The slots hum. The days blur. The house always wins.

This documentary follows a busload of anti-prison theater activists 8,000 miles across America performing The BOX, an emotionally searing play on solitary confinement. Guided by formerly incarcerated voices, the journey exposes prison cruelty, uplifts bold visions of justice, and shows how art and collective resistance can challenge authoritarianism and ignite hope for change.

Set in a conservative, mostly white Midwestern community – not far from where Abraham Lincoln once lived as a young man – The Fair looks at American rural life and pastimes through the spectacle of an annual county fair. As we witness rituals of livestock judging, craft competitions, pig chases, and an extended behind-the-scenes look at the fair's beauty pageant, the image of a tight-knit community emerges. Infused with subtle touches of humor, The Fair is an ethnographic look at mainstream rural America where traditional gender roles long predate TikTok "tradwives" trends and where our complicated relationship with animals emerges as a potent undercurrent.

Fast-talking, hilarious, and laden with east-coast charm and curse words, Steve is not your typical party clown. We meet this unorthodox man who can speak nonstop for hours without missing a beat, captivating and confounding his audience the entire time. But underneath the showman persona lives a more complex story. Through his unfiltered narration, we learn how he went from a healthy, happy kid, to a teenager whose own mind started turning against him. After major upheaval in his life, Steve developed severe OCD, struggled in school, and went out on his own, deciding to turn to entertaining others as a way to support himself.

A filmmaker inside Gaza. Another locked out, trying to reach him and failing. What begins as an attempt to make a film across distance turns into something much more immediate—an unfolding record of life under constant attack, captured from within.

Facing a growing far-right extremist movement, Human Shield is an intimate portrait of abortion clinic escorts protecting vulnerable patients as they endure one of the most hostile 30-second walks of their lives. Told through the perspective of three clinic escort leaders, this film investigates the struggle to maintain safety and balance mental exhaustion on the front lines of America’s longest culture war.

Three families with transgender children face an impossible choice in states banning gender-affirming care: stay home and risk their children's well-being or uproot entirely.

In his hardest physical challenge to date, complex, dedicated and irreverent activist Richard Propes fights for the very tour that saved his own life. Can Richard raise a million dollars to offset $155 million in medical debt - when he's never raised more than $20,000?

Mary Dague lost both arms defusing bombs in Iraq. She tried for years to write her story and couldn't. Eighteen years later, she's building a world where that trauma belongs to someone else—narrated by DANI, the artificial consciousness she created to watch over her fictional selves. The film reveals her rebuilding identity through imagination, and asks what happens when the only way to tell the truth is through fiction.

Set in the thick pine forests and marshlands of East Texas, the film embraces the language of Cinéma du Réel and is an intimate, poetic reflection on the hidden side of America, through four people living on the margins, each very different, one from the other, but all united by the deep relationship they have with the land, between the towns of Gladewater, Longview and Kilgore. It explores America, beyond its stereotypes, and shows it in all its complexity through the voice and words of writer Joe R. Lansdale, a profound, iconic voice in contemporary American literature, a native from places able to interpret the profound reasons behind a complex reality, providing an original portrait of contemporary America. Using a powerful, immersive visual style, Giovanni Troilo’s work is both a social document and a lyrical tale, capable of shedding light on human geography, rarely seen at the cinema.

Six Palestinian stand-up comedians write and tour a comedy show exploring the unlikely, often dark humour that surrounds the complexity of Palestinian identity. What starts as a blending of comic traditions to encourage honest and open reflections through the shared enjoyment of laughter becomes an existential imperative to survival and sharing common humanity.

This documentary is a raw, behind the scenes portrait of stand up comedian and Saturday Night Live star Punkie Johnson, as she battles the chaos of life on the road and fights to protect her authentic artistic voice while confronting a spiraling personal crisis.

Remathau: People of the Ocean follows the journey of Nicole Yamase, the first Micronesian and Indigenous person to dive to the deepest part of the ocean, Challenger Deep, in the Marianas Trench. Nicole begins her journey of discovery by diving to the deepest part of the ocean, an area within the Marianas Trench named “Challenger Deep” that lies beneath the territorial waters of her country. When she surfaces, she is met with a storm of media attention. Feeling the immense pressure of being the first Micronesian and Pacific Islander to go down to the Challenger Deep (and only the second woman in history), Nicole begins a deeper dive into her own identity as a Micronesian and a descendent of great navigators. This experience ultimately opens her eyes to the true resilience of Pacific Island people who–despite immense hardship brought on by external forces–continue to draw strength from the cultural practices, languages, and ancestral knowledge that anchor them to their oceanic homeland.

Combining interviews and live cinema, Rising Through the Fray plunges us into the heart of Indigenous Rising Roller Derby, the first international team to bring together Indigenous players from several countries.

The Road to Sydney follows Philippine dance master and choreographer Sydney Loyola, who found refuge in dance after a childhood of bullying in Palawan. Now based in the San Francisco Bay Area, Sydney faces the painful realities of job loss and eviction following her gender transition and affirmation. Through courage and artistry, she embarks on a journey of healing, identity, and reconciliation with her estranged father.

Soul Searchin’ explores the passionate world of rare soul record collectors who devote their lives to finding, preserving, and sharing forgotten music. More than a film about collecting, it is a story of cultural preservation, community, and obsession, following a small group of collectors as they rescue neglected recordings by Black and Chicano soul artists and transform forgotten songs into living history—from California to the world.

After saving his home from a historic wildfire that destroyed his town, a California man opens his doors to displaced families and neighbors, determined to stay rooted in a place that could burn again. Filmed over five years, it captures the bonds, challenges, and tensions that emerge when dozens of people and their dogs live together in the aftermath of disaster.

OPENING NIGHT - Few American demographics are more easily caricatured than Deadheads, those swirling, dosing, hippy-dressed vagabonds. But in his infinitely sweet and wise documentary, director Mischa Richter offers us the Deadheads as complex, self-aware and resourceful members of a wandering commune, one that’s admirable for its kindness and care.

Award-winning filmmaker Min Sook Lee turns the camera on herself in this urgent documentary, searching for memories of her mother, Song Ji Lee, who died by suicide when Lee was just 12 years old.Confrontational and speculative, There Are No Words contemplates how trauma fractures memory as Lee revisits the people and places of her childhood in Toronto, Canada, and Hwasun, South Korea, her place of birth.A looming figure in this search is Lee’s now 90-year-old father, who met her mother while serving in a national intelligence agency under dictator Park Chung Hee in 1960s South Korea. He is her last direct connection to her mother, although he’s an unreliable narrator with a history of abuse who speaks in a mother tongue she cannot fully understand.Through a fabric of real and imagined histories, Lee reveals that some stories must still be told, even when there are no words for grief.

Tiny Hearts follows world-renowned pediatric heart surgeon Dr. William Novick as he ventures into conflict regions saving the lives of children with life- threatening heart conditions, all while battling his own health challenges. Through incredible obstacles and extreme conditions, this documentary captures powerful stories of resilience, hope and the heroic mission to heal the most fragile hearts in the world’s most dangerous places.

Amber Galloway, a trailblazer in sign language interpretation, takes us on a journey into the profound bond between the Deaf community and music. We follow Amber as she shares her skills with struggling new recruits who she hopes will have what it takes to join her at ACL music festival.

Two unhoused men turned community leaders— John and LaMonté —organize their neighbors in the face of displacement, addiction, and a failing social system. Their story is a powerful testament to resilience, solidarity, and the right to remain.