July 10, 2025
DokuFest is pleased to announce a selection of films for its highly praised View From the World strand.
Some of the finest and boldest nonfiction work of the year are among the 12 selected films, including 2000 Meters to Andriivka, a terrifying and shocking look at the war in Ukraine from Oscar-winning Ukrainian filmmaker Mstyslav Chernov, and Facing War, another film that centers on the Ukraine–Russia war but through the prism of the NATO Alliance and its Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg’s final year at the helm.
A pair of archival-based films coming from up north of Scandinavia include The Helsinki Effect, about the historic Cold War summit of 1975 in the capital of Finland, and a fascinating look at the history of Israel–Palestine relations through the ever-present Swedish TV archives in Israel Palestine on Swedish TV 1958-1989.
A darker side of America is portrayed in Erroll Morris’s Separated, about one of the most divisive chapters in recent American history—family separations at its southern border—whereas Flophouse America reveals a different yet shocking fact: that 38 million poor Americans still live in motels, and one in ten children grows up in a family ravaged by alcoholism.
Cutting Through Rocks, this year’s Sundance Grand Jury winner, takes us to a small village in Iran, where Sara Shahverdi, the first elected councilwoman, aims to break long-held patriarchal traditions by training teenage girls to ride motorcycles and stopping child marriages.
Another strong female personality in another winning film: meet Noam Shuster Eliassi, who grew up as the literal poster child for the Israeli–Palestinian peace process before making a hard pivot to stand-up comedy and political satire in the brilliant and funny Coexistence, My Ass!
A trio of personal films about family, hermits and artists rounds up the selection, promising an unforgettable cinematic journey to whoever surrenders to them—fantastic, varied stories that once again prove that life is stranger than fiction.
A full list of the films can be found here.
