July 17, 2026
Does this edition get even more special with its special screenings? Of course it does! And here is why: With these three films (one separated in two chapters) the audience will have the most exquisite agenda for all those who come with their very well prepped DokuFest programmes at hand.
Award winning Italian director Massimiliano Battistella joins this programme with Dom following the story of Mirela, a Bosnian woman who lives in Italy, but who arrived with a humanitarian convoy during the 1992 siege of Sarajevo when she was only 10 years old. It is a story of returns and prolonged searches, grasping everyone’s attention, especially this year with the 30th anniversary of the end of the siege of Sarajevo, adding a significant layer of contemporary relevance to Mirela's story.
Dea Gjinovci’s The Beauty of the Donkey brings a story of the director’s father returning to Kosovo. Recreating together moments from his childhood, this film, echoes the necessity to uncover what has been hidden from war while so it intertwines with the fragile and sentimental moments. Gjinovci’s film is also part of the Different Frequencies programme in collaboration with Swiss Films in DokuFest. From intimate and individual stories, the program expands in its full fruition with an historic moment for DokuFest.
With Mark Cousins coming here it also means that audiences will have the immense opportunity to see two chapters from his latest work The Story of Documentary Film - 1960s dhe 1980s.
In the ‘60s chapter: Cousins turns his essayist's eye to a decade of seismic change, exploring how filmmakers met civil rights marches, anti-war movements and countercultural revolt with new tools, new urgency and a new visual language. Encompassing landmark works and hidden treasures, it reveals how documentary has helped us see and make sense of our world.
In the ‘80s chapter: the film-maker and critic traces a decade of documentaries, from the fall of the Berlin Wall to Michael Moore, via Klaus Barbie and The Wombles. The critic is raised again, to educate, to intrigue, to challenge. His histories of the movies are invitations to a seance, a chance to participate in the kind of ecstatic trance or dream-state that Cousins himself goes into, almost free-associating from film to film but with an overarching but discreetly emphasised theme – or maybe motif – and always with something shrewd, pertinent and humane to say.
This is an unmissable film ensemble, and we cannot wait for it to unfold for everyone at this edition of DokuFest.
