«DocumentaMadrid 2026» festival

From 26 to 31 May, Madrid hosts the 23rd edition of Documenta Madrid, a documentary film festival in which reality is approached as raw material for observation, research and cinematic language. Its main venue is once again Cineteca Matadero.

The programme includes international and national competitions, as well as the Corte Final section for films in the editing stage. The focus remains on auteur documentary cinema, experimental forms and Spanish works. This year’s theme is «Taking the pulse», which refers to direct cinema and capturing life in its current state.

The opening will present the audiovisual work Rivisitazione dello sciopero, based on Pasolini’s unfinished project about the sanitation workers’ strike in Italy in 1970, reworked as a live performance.

The finale will be the premiere of the film Vial Matadero, by Juan Cavestany, filmed especially for the festival and dedicated to Matadero as a space of urban transformation.

The parallel programme includes: a Third World Newsreel retrospective on the social movements of the 1960s and 1970s, a Charlie Shackleton programme that explores the limits of documentary film, and screenings of works by Marilú Mallet at the Museo Reina Sofía. An ECAM event dedicated to German director Jan Soldat will also take place.

Screenings will take place not only at Cineteca Matadero, but also at the Filmoteca Española, the Museo Reina Sofía, La Casa Encendida and the Goethe-Institut. The festival continues its line of work, in which contemporary cinema is constantly set against its history.