The Madrid International Documentary Festival is holding its twenty-third edition from 26 May to 31 May 2026. It is an event devoted exclusively to documentary film, in which feature films and short films will participate in the National and International Competitions, which can be seen at the main venue, Cineteca Matadero.
For yet another year, Madrid City Council’s International Film Festival, Documenta Madrid invites spectators on a journey through the most diverse realities and aesthetics by film-makers from all over the world, highlighting the creative freedom of the documentary genre’s new film languages and forms of expression. It continues consolidating its commitment to signature documentary film, formal experimentation and critical thought.
The main venue of the 23rd edition is Cineteca Madrid and the programme will also include other venues, such as Spanish Film Library, the Reina Sofía Museum, La Casa Encendida and the German Institute for Culture - Goethe Institut. Under the artistic management of Luis E. Parés, the festival continues to build upon the curatorial approach developed in recent editions, with a programme characterised by focusing on signature documentary film, the promotion of Spanish films and a dialogue with the history of film.
The 2026 edition is structured around the ‘Taking the Pulse’ concept, a themed focus that celebrates the tradition of direct film and its ability to immediately capture social and cultural reality.
The opening session will present Rivisitazione dello sciopero, an audiovisual experience based on the unfinished documentary by Pier Paolo Pasolini on the first street cleaners’ strike in Italy in 1970. Using silent images, Cosimo Terlizzi and Luca Maria Baldini create a live performance that transforms the original material into a contemporary event.
The festival will draw to a close with the première of Vial Matadero, a previously unreleased film by the film-maker Juan Cavestany, which has been especially created for this edition and produced by Matadero Madrid and Cineteca Madrid. The film offers a perspective on Matadero as a symbolic space of urban and social transformation, turning this cultural hub into a mirror of the city’s changes.
The 2026 edition will also feature the three main competitive sections: International Competition, open to feature-length and short documentaries not previously screened in Madrid; the National Competition, devoted to works produced or directed in Spain; and the Final Cut, a section aimed at Spanish films in the final phase of production.
The parallel sections constitute one of the central elements of the festival’s identity. The 23rd edition will also be marked by reflection on cinema as a direct record of its time. Spanish Film Library will host a series devoted to the American Third World Newsreel, a militant film movement founded in the late 1960s that documented social struggles from within, such as the student movement, Black Power, feminism or protests against the Vietnam War.
La Casa Encendida will host a retrospective devoted to the British film-maker, Charlie Shackleton, one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary non-fiction cinema, whose work explores the mechanisms of documentary storytelling through humour and formal experimentation in films like Beyond Clueless, The Afterlight or Zodiac Killer Project.
In collaboration with the Reina Sofía Museum, a retrospective devoted to the Chilean film-maker, Marilú Mallet, a pioneer of the autobiographical documentary and one of the first women to establish her own filmography in Chilean cinema will be presented with films like Andahuaylillas or La cueca sola. The programme also hosts the ECAM Encounter devoted to the German film-maker Jan Soldat, which will take place at Cineteca Madrid, Goethe-Institut and ECAM, with screenings and a masterclass.
Check programme
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