22nd ZagrebDox: Charting the Terrain of Reality

This year, the ZagrebDox International Documentary Film Festival continues to explore the complexity of contemporary life through its carefully curated Biographical Dox, State of Affairs, Controversial Dox, and Audio Dox programs. Moving from global centers of power and political upheavals to intimate personal stories, family traumas, and everyday struggles, the festival reaffirms documentary cinema as a medium that does not simplify reality. Instead, it opens it up, dissects it, and challenges it.

The Biographical Dox Program presents five films that use individual portraits—of sports legends, technological oligarchs, historical witnesses, and people experiencing personal traumas—to illuminate broader social and political processes. Its highlights include Elon Musk Unveiled: The Tesla Experiment by director Andreas Pichler, previously screened at IDFA and the Göteborg Film Festival. Drawing on testimonies from former employees and insiders, the film delves into the complex system behind one of today’s most influential entrepreneurs. Moving beyond conventional biography, it raises urgent questions about responsibility, ethics, and the price of technological development, in a world that has blurred the line between innovation and risk. Asif Kapadia's Kenny Dalglish offers a compelling portrait of the Liverpool and Scotland football legend. Both humorous and deeply emotional, the film traces Dalglish’s extraordinary career at two of Britain’s most successful clubs, Liverpool and Celtic. Featuring previously unseen archival footage, the documentary reveals how he became not only one of Europe’s greatest footballers, but a lasting icon both on and off the field.

The State of Affairs Program, featuring as many as thirteen titles, centers on urgent social dynamics, structural inequalities, and the everyday realities shaping lives around the globe. Farida Baqi’s Visual Feminist Manifesto - previously screened at Ji.hlava and the winner of Rotterdam's Youth Jury Award - examines the construction of identity across different stages of a woman’s life. The film explores how identity is shaped under the pressures of patriarchal norms, while also tracing personal efforts toward liberation, self-definition, and the articulation of our own voices. Ragnhild Ekner's Ultras - previously screened at Hot Docs and Visions du Réel - takes viewers into the global subculture of football fandom, where passion for sport evolves into a complex social phenomenon that generates community and identity, as well as conflict, violence, and deleterious political messaging.

In Esteban Coloma G. and Luis Herrera R.'s Carmela and the Walkers - which received a Special Mention at the Sheffield Doc/Fest - we follow a woman who has spent years assisting migrants along the Ecuador–Colombia border. As she gradually confronts the erosion of her own sense of security, her story of solidarity transforsm into a story of personal vulnerability. A particularly powerful impression is left by The Mission by the Gaza Collective and director Mike Lerner. Founded on direct testimonies from doctors in Gaza, the film captures daily life under bombardment, where medical work becomes a constant struggle against time, limited resources, and relentless destruction. The film thus documents the endurance of systems and of people trying to preserve a minimum of humanity under extreme conditions. Alexander Rodnyansky's Notes of a True Criminal - which premiered in Venice - marks the filmmaker’s return to documentary after thirty-one years. Born in Kyiv and sentenced in absentia by a Russian court to eight and a half years in prison for his anti-war stance, Rodnyansky reflects on pivotal events in Ukrainian history and their impact on him and his family—from the referendum on Ukrainian independence and the mass execution of Jews at Babyn Yar (and Soviet attempts to erase its memory), through Chernobyl, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Germany, to the war and Russia’s full-scale invasion.

The ZagrebDox International Documentary Film Festival will take place at the Kaptol Boutique Cinema from April 19 to 26, 2026. ZagrebDox is supported by the City of Zagreb, the Croatian Audivisual Centre, the Croatian Film Directors’ Guild, and the Zagreb Tourist Board. For the latest updates and information, visit http://zagrebdox.net/ and follow the festival on social media.