Conflict in documentary films rarely appears as a front-and-center event. It is more often found in the surrounding context—in spaces, bodies, and memories that bear its traces. The films in this competition are grounded in this observation—and when viewed collectively, they reflect a movement rather than merely a subject.
Most of the films begin with something intimate and confined—such as a plantation, a mine, a household, or an individual’s life—and then expand outward until that confined space is revealed as a crossroads of larger historical narratives. Colonialism, the Cold War, extractivism, and deforestation are not treated as separate issues, but as interconnected forces. All three emerge as layers of the same soil, accessed through a scale that constantly shifts from the macro to the micro, and then to the movement.
What makes this shift convincing is the way these films handle the process of inheritance. Knowledge and experience are passed down, often to a child, and with each handover, something shifts, so that absence becomes just as real as what is shown. History does not come as a lesson. History migrates through personal narratives, a family, a body, and these films seem less interested in their resemblance to facts than in the manner of their delivery: a process that repositioning who speaks, who inherits, and wherein.
A portrait of an individual’s life can thus coexist on the same timeline as the history of cinema and Cold War politics without any visible gaps, and family conflicts—common throughout Asia—can depict war on the most domestic scale.
In these films, form does most of the political work. The sound design immerses the audience before any argument is even presented. Scenes are rendered with a detail that feels threatening, while sentimental moments are allowed to unfold with unabashed drama. The editing shifts between registers so seamlessly that the transitions themselves become a way of thinking.
Poetic elements and intimacy offer an alternative path, one that keeps history within reach rather than pushing it away, and creates space for the audience not only to understand but also to feel. However, tenderness comes at a price. When a film rejects spectacle, it may also keep the audience at a certain distance, as in a film that offers an alternative narrative to the “Stone Age.”
Taken together, these films shift the question from the so-called conflict to the way that conflict is passed down: as a process, not merely an event; and as what remains, not what is seen.
Selection note is written by Dito Yuwono
Selection committee: Dito Yuwono, Alia Damaihati, Michael A. Chandra, Vanis
General Note on 2026 Competition
Documentaries do more than just preserve; they also open up possibilities for what has yet to be discovered. Some films seek to explore lingering issues or experiences that remain absent from our collective memory. Others venture into a future we cannot possibly imagine. Both stem from the same anxiety about the present. Through this interpretation, convergence depicts two times meeting, and culmination depicts what must be endured to end the postponement of neither dwelling on the past nor waiting for the future.
