32nd Athens International Film Festival: These Are the Films in the International Documentary Competition!

ΝΑΖΑ

DIRECTORS: Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor

Two of the four co-creators of the Oscar-winning Best Documentary "No Other Land" (Golden Athena Award at the Stranger than Fiction section of the 30th AIFF) turn the camera on the inner workings of the Israeli military and intelligence apparatus. Through secret, nocturnal conversations on the rooftops of Tel Aviv, 24 Israeli officers and soldiers, all under anonymity, speak about the surveillance, targeting, and remote killing systems used in Gaza. Their voices and images have been digitally altered, as they risk serious consequences by revealing what they know firsthand. While the camera remains in Tel Aviv, Gaza is ever-present through its absence. The creators choose to film a city that continues its daily life, while sixty kilometers away another city is being destroyed. In the darkness of the night interviews, silence becomes as significant as speech, while handwritten representations of the complex technological systems transform the high-tech face of modern warfare into a written line on paper. The very title "NAZA," a military acronym used to denote the estimated "collateral damage" of an attack, becomes the central question of the film: what happens when human lives are reduced to numbers within a system? The much-discussed documentary by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor won the Jury Prize at this year's Venice Film Festival.
The screening at Danaos 1 will be presented with Greek and English subtitles.
The screening at Cinobo Opera 1 will be presented without English subtitles.

01/10/2026, 22:00, DANAOS 1
01/10/2026, 22:00, CINOBO OPERA 1

THE HISTORY OF CONCRETE

DIRECTOR: John Wilson

Following the finale of his award-winning HBO series, the eccentric John Wilson turns his attention to something completely unexpected: concrete. The world’s most ubiquitous building material becomes the catalyst for a labyrinthine exploration, not only of contemporary American absurdity, but also of the mysteries of his eccentric mind. Despite the huge success of the HBO series “How To with John Wilson”, the producers are hesitant in the face of such a strange idea. Wilson, in his attempt to make concrete fascinating, draws us into yet another off-the-cuff, chaotic journey through his urban obsessions and existential anxieties, with consequences that take on unexpected social and universal dimensions. With sarcastic humour, drawn from his offbeat perspective and insatiable curiosity, he engages with eccentric figures on the pavements and captures the distinctive features of New York’s streets and the most unexpected quirks of contemporary America, creating an unconventional documentary comedy that poses the fundamental question: which aspects of our personality are worth harnessing to build something that will stand the test of time?

01/10/2026, 19:30, CINOBO OPERA 1
06/10/2026, 19:30, CINOBO OPERA 1

REHEARSALS FOR A REVOLUTION | تمرین‌هایی برای یک انقلاب

DIRECTOR: Pegah Ahangarani

Winner of the Best Documentary Award at the Cannes Film Festival, this moving cinematic account by the Iranian actress and director Pegah Ahangarani offers a personal reflection on her life and, at the same time, on the contemporary history of Iran. Through five portraits of her relatives, who represent five different forms of resistance, the filmmaker looks back at over 40 turbulent years in her country’s history – from the 1979 Islamic Revolution to the recent geopolitical conflict. With an invaluable audiovisual archive, the film masterfully blends the personal with the collective, presenting the bitter disappointments of people who had no choice but to hope and endure, and their tragic fate to never take peace and freedom for granted.

01/10/2026, 17:15, ASTOR
05/10/2026, 19:00, ASTOR

SILENT FLOOD | Тиха повінь

DIRECTOR: Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk

On the banks of a river somewhere in the western Ukraine, a religious community with pacifist beliefs is trying to keep its distance from the ongoing war with Russia. Soon, however, harsh reality will come knocking at their door, shattering their illusions. Four years after his magnificent debut in fiction with “Pamfir”, Ukrainian director Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk returns to documentary filmmaking with one of the finest documentaries of the year. “Silent Flood” highlights the beauty of peaceful life through images of rare elegance, setting it in stark contrast to the horrors of war, which constantly loom as an impending threat, and emphasizing humanity’s unfortunate inability to remain indifferent when history comes knocking at one’s door. The director’s unparalleled directorial eye results in a gripping cinematic experience, but also serves as a stark reminder of the harsh reality.

02/10/2026, 17:00, ASTOR
06/10/2026, 17:30, ASTOR

DO YOU LOVE ME

DIRECTOR: Lana Daher

How do you love a city that dies every dawn and every dusk is reborn from its own ashes? “Do You Love Me” is not merely a documentary; it is a cinematic spell, a love letter to the collective memory of Beirut. Composed entirely of the death rattle of twenty thousand lost archives, the work spans seventy years of an almost otherworldly survival. Home videos, faded films and television static pass into eternity as they guide us from the sun-baked carefree days of the 1950s to the long winter of the civil war. Here, bombs mingle with laughter on the beaches. Mourning becomes a dance upon mosaics cracking under the weight of nostalgia. A cry and a whisper in unison, for a homeland that wounds you, yet you cannot help but look it in the eye and ask: ‘Do you still love me?’
Screening attended by the director and followed by Q&A.

02/10/2026, 20:30, ONASSIS STEGI

THE PERVERT'S GUIDE TO UTOPIAS

DIRECTOR: Sophie Fiennes

Governments fall, Žižek remains! Twenty years after their first collaboration on “The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema”, which offered us the most devilish blend of film analysis, sociological observation and psychoanalytic theory, and fourteen years after the equally sardonic “The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology”, maverick philosopher Slavoj Žižek and director Sophie Fiennes return with the third and final installment of their imaginative trilogy. Through a kaleidoscope of pop-culture references, with Žižek once again taking centre stage in delightful recreations of scenes from famous films and television series, he presents a dizzying panorama of today’s sociopolitical reality and elevates cinema as the most effective means of confronting our collective fears. For lovers of cinema, philosophy and psychoanalysis, the conclusion of this trilogy is a rare gift, food for thought and, at the same time, useful advice: As the world around us collapses, let us abandon all hope. For only then will we be able to hope again.

03/10/2026, 19:30, CINOBO OPERA 1
09/10/2026, 19:30, CINOBO OPERA 1

TIN CASTLE

DIRECTOR: Alexandre Murphy

What can one learn from the extraordinary life of an Irish family crammed with their ten children into a dilapidated caravan, struggling to survive in the face of poverty and under the constant threat of eviction? This is the story of the O’Reilly family, as patiently captured by the director’s camera over a period of five years. And the example set by this family is a lesson in hope in the face of adversity. A realistic and often unexpectedly lyrical glimpse into a nomadic reality utterly detached from the rules and customs of the modern world, “The Tin Castle” seems to be the place where the downtrodden of this earth find refuge, amidst children’s laughter and dreams of a better day.

03/10/2026, 18:00, ASTOR
09/10/2026, 17:00, ASTOR

ONCE UPON A TIME IN HARLEM

DIRECTORS: David Greaves, William Greaves

There are films that delve into history. But there are also films that make history. One of these is “Once Upon a Time in Harlem”, perhaps the most important documentary of this year. The film sheds light on a legendary gathering of prominent figures that took place in 1972 at Duke Ellington’s home, which was captured on camera by pioneering director William Graves. There, for a few hours, some of the most prominent members of the Harlem Renaissance -one of the most significant artistic and social movements of the 20th century and catalyst in shaping a strong African American consciousness- had a legendary influence on American culture and helped several subsequent civil rights battles. The film offers us a front-row seat to this monumental convergence of literature and the arts in the same welcoming living room, allowing us to hear the conversations and experiences of people who proudly carried forward and perpetuated the great legacy of the Black community. This invaluable material remained unfinished for over 50 years, until the director’s son restored and completed it, ten years after his father’s death. And what he has given us this year is both a priceless historical and cultural treasure and an inspiring testament that serves as a wake-up call and a moving reminder of the power of human communities in the face of adversity.

04/10/2026, 19:30, CINOBO OPERA 1
08/10/2026, 19:30, CINOBO OPERA 1

GABIN

DIRECTOR: Maxence Voiseux

Ten defining years in the life of a boy growing up in the rural parts of northern France, a boy destined to take over his parents’ business, yet with a dream of escape within him. Structurally reminiscent of Richard Linklater’s “Boyhood”, this bittersweet documentary is a remarkable achievement, chronicling the ten-year physical and emotional transformation of a young boy into a man against the backdrop of a rapidly changing world of work and an anachronistic way of life that seems to be slowly fading away. Tenderly, the director chronicles a journey of coming of age and emancipation, culminating in a naturally moving finale  - a melancholic acceptance of the inevitable end of certain things, but also the hopeful beginning of others.

04/10/2026, 17:00, ASTOR
08/10/2026, 17:00, ASTOR

PHENOMENA

DIRECTOR: Josef Gatti

Get ready to trip out! Designed to be appreciated on the largest screen possible and under ideal audiovisual conditions, Josef Gatti's spectacular documentary offers the purest hallucinogenic journey—a rare sensory experience achieved exclusively with the help of the alchemies and mysteries of the nature around us. Combining scientific observation with ecstatic spectacle, "Phenomena" attempts to capture the invisible laws that govern the universe. Without a trace of digital effects or artificial intervention, it focuses on handcrafted natural experiments—from the vibration of waves and electromagnetic fields to the "choreographed" allure of bubbles and micro-matter. The screen pulsates and bursts, images dive into incredible oceans of colour, dissolving into imaginative shapes and unfathomable optical illusions, transforming the microscopic into something majestic and cosmic. Accompanied by the sounds of Nils Frahm and Rival Consoles, who provide the deeply evocative soundtrack, the documentary becomes a psychedelic dive into the architecture of nature, reminding us that the wonder of creation lies in the most ordinary, smallest, unseen detail.

05/10/2026, 22:00, CINOBO OPERA 1
10/10/2026, 18:30, CINOBO OPERA 1

The 32nd Athens International Film Festival, the great cinematic celebration of the city, takes place September 30th - October 11th 2026.

Download the schedule here