Full Frame Documentary Film Festival’s 2026 schedule is now live, with 49 films from 31 countries slated to play at the annual event.
Now in its 28th year, the festival runs April 16-19 in downtown Durham. On Tuesday, festival organizers announced the full lineup, thematic program within the lineup, and curator.
Robert Greene will curate the thematic program, titled “Extremely Rich Theater: Staging, Performance, and Elasticity in American Nonfiction Film.”
The program engages the question—a rich one, with documentary filmmaking—of authenticity, artistic choices, and the way that “artifice can encourage a deeper examination of true stories,” as Full Frame Festival co-director and artistic director Sadie Tillery wrote in the release.
Alongside six features and eight short films, the thematic program includes a screening of season two of Nathan Fielder’s unclassifiable series, The Rehearsal. (Docu-comedy? Self-help? Reality show? All of the above?). The Rehearsal features a fictionalized version of Fielder helping people “rehearse” for life events, blurring fiction and reality to reliably unsettling but thought-provoking effect. Fans of the show—or newcomers looking to jump into Fielder’s deadpan deep-end right away—can immerse themselves in the second season’s six episodes, which will screen as one three-hour festival block.
“There are all these questions about what authenticity is and what authenticity means,” Greene, a Charlotte native and graduate of North Carolina State University, wrote in the press release. “But those questions misunderstand documentary cinema. Documentary has never been about what is true and what is false—documentary is about using the tools of filmmaking to get at something deeper. This is nothing new.”
Five films that screened at last year’s festival are contenders at the Oscars this year, which takes place on March 15.
One buzzy award contender, The Perfect Neighbor, weaves police body camera footage into a grim look at Florida’s “stand your ground law” and its application in the 2023 murder of a Black woman by a white neighbor. It is currently available to stream on Netflix. Other films nominated in the best documentary feature film category include Come See Me in the Good Light, Mr. Nobody Against Putin, perfectly a strangeness, and The Devil Is Busy.
This year’s full lineup of films features thirteen premieres, including a world premiere of The Grandfather Puzzle, co-produced by UNC-Chapel Hill graduate Ora DeKornfield, and the U.S. premiere of Chilean documentary Mother Lidia. Other films explore timely topics like medical aid in Gaza, fraught recent political chapters in United States history (in the case of documentary The Great Experiment, the years 2017-2020), and the 2023 police raid of the Marion County Record, a Kansas-based newspaper. Other documentaries on tap explore wars past and present, as well as stories of communities contending with global warming and threats to the environment.
The weekend’s opening and closing night films take a chronological-ish approach in reverse: Thursday night opens with Sam Green’s The Oldest Person in the World, which follows those holding the ever-changing title of oldest person alive. (Currently, that title is held by 116-year-old Ethel Caterham of Surrey, England.) Full Frame’s weekend will close with I Was Born This Way, directed by Daniel Junge and Sam Pollard, which tells the story of Archbishop Carl Bean, his titular gay disco anthem, and lifelong motto: “Love is for everyone.”
“These are films that take us around the world, reflect deeply personal relationships, and reveal nuanced perspectives,” Tillery wrote in the release. “There is grace and tenacity on display at every turn. It is inspiring to watch these films, and even more inspiring to be a part of sharing them with audiences this spring.”
Festival passes are now on sale, and tickets for individual films will be available beginning April 9. Free public panels and community screenings will also be announced closer to the date.
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