Our 2026 Film Lineup is LIVE!
Get ready for 64 groundbreaking feature documentaries & 49 shorts from 32 countries, including 9 World Premieres ✨ and a host of U.S., North American, & International Premieres. The festival will also present a special mini-retrospective celebrating the work of Frederick Wiseman, featuring HOSPITAL, JUVENILE COURT, and WELFARE.
Discover urgent, visionary storytelling and meet the creators behind these vital stories at DC/DOX. Explore the program + get your Pass for the full experience, or grab single tickets now! 🔗 Link in bio 🔗
“This year’s DC/DOX lineup reminds us of the singular power of documentary film to bring people together in pursuit of deeper understanding. We’re honored to bring filmmakers and audiences together in Washington, DC to experience these stories in community.” - Sky Sitney, DC/DOX co-founder & festival director.
Join us this June 11-14 in #washingtondc!
#dcdoxfest26 #dcdoxfest #documentary #filmfestival
We’re looking for passionate and enthusiastic volunteers to help bring DC/DOX 2026 to life!
As a volunteer, you’ll play a vital role in ensuring the 2026 festival runs smoothly while experiencing the event’s excitement up close. Meet filmmakers and fellow film enthusiasts, and contribute to an unforgettable experience for our attendees. Various roles and shifts are available, so there’s something for everyone 🎞️
Apply now to be a crucial member of the DC/DOX team! Link in bio 🔗
#dcdoxfest26
WHEN THE REVOLUTION DOESN’T COME explores the lives of the Panther Cubs — children of the Black Panther Party’s revolutionary movement for Black liberation and self-determination. Fifty years later, they reflect on the pride, love, loss, and unfinished promises that shaped their lives, offering urgent insight into America’s present moment.
Directed by Aurora Brachman, an Emmy Award–winning filmmaker whose work has screened at Sundance, Tribeca, True/False, and MoMA, and been featured by The New York Times, The New Yorker, and POV. Aurora’s work centers the experiences of Black, brown, and queer communities and reflects her commitment to collaborative and ethical storytelling.
🎟️ Friday, June 12 at 5:00 PM
📍 Regal Gallery Place
#dcdoxfest26
🐝 Set on an idyllic farm in rural Georgia, THE BOYS AND THE BEES follows young parents teaching their sons the art of beekeeping—and, through it, lessons about care, courage, love, and the natural world. Intimate yet expansive, the film captures landscapes in flux as boys grow, bees are tended, mistakes are made, and new life emerges.
Directed by Arielle Knight, a documentary filmmaker and founder of GoodKnight Films whose work has screened at Sundance, Tribeca, TIFF, NYFF, and MoMA Doc Fortnight. Her latest short, THE BOYS AND THE BEES, received a Jury Award at the Sundance Film Festival.
🎟️ Friday, June 12 at 2:00 PM
📍 Regal Gallery Place
#dcdoxfest26
🍪 It’s Girl Scout Cookie season, and four determined girls set out to become top-selling “Cookie Queens” in this funny, candid, and heartfelt coming-of-age documentary. Following girls ages 5–12 through the whirlwind of selling, striving, and succeeding, COOKIE QUEENS reveals how one of America’s most beloved traditions becomes a crash course in ambition, pressure, community, and capitalism.
Directed by Emmy-winning filmmaker Alysa Nahmias, whose work includes ART & KRIMES BY KRIMES and THE NEW BAUHAUS, as well as producing credits on WILDCAT and UNREST. Nahmias is the founder of AJNA Films and co-founder of FWD-Doc. 🎟️ Saturday, June 13 at 11:00 AM
📍 Woolly Mammoth Theatre
#dcdoxfest26
Meet Robert Christgau: the “Dean of American Rock Critics,” whose writing has shaped, challenged, and occasionally enraged music fans for more than sixty years. THE LAST CRITIC follows the legendary critic—now in his eighties—as he continues grading records and listening to nearly everything, tracing a career that helped define modern music criticism itself.
From championing punk at CBGB to celebrating funk, soul, and generations of boundary-pushing artists, Christgau’s influence stretches across decades of music and cultural history.
Directed by Matty Wishnow, a serial entrepreneur, author, and filmmaker who previously founded Insound—the internet’s first record store. THE LAST CRITIC marks his latest exploration of creativity, culture, and the people who shape them.
🎤 Post-screening discussion with producer Paul Lovelace, moderated by Alan Zilberman, film critic for the Washington City Paper.
🎟️ Friday, June 12 at 8:45 PM
📍 Regal Gallery Place
#dcdoxfest26
ENDLINGS is a meditation on impermanence, extinction, and the ache of environmental loss.
Moving associatively—from a CGI frog to a ctenophore drifting through the deep ocean, from an Ash Wednesday ritual to a laboratory reviving ancient DNA—the film traces the fragile boundaries between memory, preservation, and erasure. Through encounters with a scientist, a painter of endangered birds, and archival images of vanished species, ENDLINGS asks what, if anything, endures when we attempt to recreate what has been lost.
Directed by Costa Rican filmmaker and editor María Luisa Santos, whose work has been featured by The New Yorker, POV, Vimeo Staff Picks, and PBS, and screened at festivals including SXSW, True/False, Slamdance, and BlackStar. Santos is currently pursuing an MFA in Documentary Film at Stanford University.
Don’t miss this East Coast Premiere.
🎟️ Saturday, June 13 at 5:45 PM
📍 Regal Gallery Place
#dcdoxfest26
Don’t miss this US Premiere!
From a chair on a Rio sidewalk, a woman watches the passing choreography of Copacabana in this vibrant and playful portrait of everyday street life. Through workers, tourists, dogs, and fleeting encounters, FILM COPACABANA gradually reveals the subtle patterns, humor, and humanity embedded in the everyday life of the street.
Directed by Sofia Leão, a photographer and documentary filmmaker whose debut feature has screened and won awards at festivals across Mexico, Germany, Italy, Canada, Brazil, France, and Russia.
🎟️ Friday, June 12 at 1:00 PM
📍 Woolly Mammoth Theatre
#dcdoxfest26
Before his father leaves Earth once again, one son tries to close the distance between them.
EARTH TO MICHAEL follows Nico López-Alegría as he revisits his childhood shaped by his father’s career as a NASA astronaut and the emotional absences that came with it. Through intimate conversations with both parents, the film explores family, identity, and the enduring pull of connection across physical and emotional space.
Co-directed by filmmaker and chef Nico López-Alegría and Brooklyn-based filmmaker ZZ, whose work centers intimate, unconventional stories that bring audiences closer together.
Don’t miss this East Coast Premiere
🎟️ Saturday, June 13 at 5:00 PM
📍 Regal Gallery Place
#dcdoxfest26
Deep in Mexico’s forests, two Indigenous mycologists search for connection — between past and present, science and ancestral knowledge, humans and the natural world.
DAUGHTERS OF THE FOREST: MYCELIUM CHRONICLES is an immersive sci-fi documentary exploring the entanglements between humans and mushrooms, the visible and invisible, and the possibilities of reimagining our relationship to a changing planet.
Directed by Mexican filmmaker Otilia Portillo Padua, whose work has screened at SXSW, Ambulante, and Morelia, with support from Sundance, Doc Society, and The Redford Center.
🎟️ Saturday, June 13 at 12:00 PM
📍 Regal Gallery Place
#dcdoxfest26
This year, DC/DOX honors the extraordinary legacy of Frederick Wiseman, the legendary filmmaker who transformed documentary cinema through six decades of groundbreaking observational work. With rigor, compassion, and remarkable moral clarity, Wiseman created an unparalleled portrait of American institutional life—forever changing how we see ourselves and the systems that shape our lives.
Join us for a special retrospective screening series featuring HOSPITAL, JUVENILE COURT, and WELFARE, three landmark works that continue to resonate with astonishing power and relevance today.
WELFARE reveals the nature and complexity of the welfare system through an extraordinary range of human experiences—from housing and unemployment to medical, psychiatric, and family crises—capturing both clients and welfare workers as they struggle to navigate the laws and regulations shaping their lives.
Grab your tickets at the link in the bio.
🎟️ Sunday, June 14 at 2:00 PM
📍Eaton Cinema
#dcdoxfest26
On a volcanic island, one man makes sense of everything he sees—ducks, jungles, flowers, God, and the strange new landscape left behind by eruption.
PEDRO TOMÁS EXPLAINS THE WORLD follows Pedro Tomás on La Palma as he observes and interprets the world through his singular perspective, moving between wonder, humor, and the stark volcanic “black desert” shaped by the Cumbre Vieja eruption.
Directed by Lithuanian filmmaker and scriptwriter Kornelijus Stučkus, who studied philosophy prior to directing documentaries. His latest film, PEDRO TOMÁS EXPLAINS THE WORLD, was selected for a distribution award in the Werner Herzog Film Accelerator.
Don't miss this East Coast Premiere.
🎟️ Friday, June 12 at 1:00 PM
📍 Woolly Mammoth Theatre
#dcdoxfest26
