As 2025 draws to a close, there's plenty to look forward to in the new year. Featuring festival favourites, doc debuts and international hits, we've compiled a list of documentaries we're excited to see on the big screen in 2026.
Orwell: 2+2=5
After a festival run including Cannes, Toronto and London, Raoul Peck’s stirring essay film on the creation of 1984 makes its way to UK cinemas this Spring.
Peck (I Am Not Your Negro) takes George Orwell’s dystopian masterpiece – in which he coins the terms Doublethink, Thoughtcrime and Big Brother – as a jumping-off point to address today’s fractured, ‘post-truth’ society. The visionary writer’s words echo chillingly through Peck’s uncompromising tour-de-force.
When can we see it? Orwell 2+2=5 will be released on Friday 27 March, 2026.
Landmarks
Lucrecia Martel, the singular director of The Headless Woman and Zama, makes a fascinating leap to documentary with her decade-in-the-making exposition of a land dispute in Argentina that ended in the murder of Chuschagasta leader Javier Chocobar.
Landmarks, which just won Best Film at the London Film Festival, stays close to the bones of the case – including astonishing footage of courtroom proceedings – but also explores more widely the Chuschagasta community and their history of mistreatment, marginalisation and removal from their land.
When can we see it? We’re keeping an ear to the ground for news of UK distribution and hope to bring it Bertha DocHouse in 2026.
The Shepherd and the Bear
In his debut feature, UK filmmaker Max Keegan gets right inside the knottiest of issues in the rural French Pyrenees, questioning everything about human stewardship of the natural environment.
Gorgeous cinematography of the mountains and a wonderful cast of contributors give serious pause for thought, as the reintroduction of bears native to the area riles and endangers generational shepherds and their flocks. There are no villains in this surprisingly thoughtful film about a very local issue – with equally wide reverberations.
When can we see it? The Shepherd and the Bear will be released on Friday 6 Feb, 2026.
Time and Water
Director Sara Dosa’s follow up to Fire of Love sounds equally poetically elemental!
Also produced by Sandbox Films, Time and Water features Icelandic writer Andri Snær Magnason, as he faces the death of his country’s glaciers and the loss of his beloved grandparents.
When can we see it? Time and Water will have its world premiere at Sundance in 2026. We don’t know what’s next, but would hazard a guess we’ll see it in on UK screens towards the end of the year.
Everybody to Kenmure Street
Celebrating collective action and solidarity, Everybody to Kenmure Street digs into the events of May 2021, when the Home Office staged a dawn raid in one of Glasgow’s most diverse communities.
This feels like an extremely timely event to cover, and we’re looking forward to seeing Scotland-based Chilean-Belgian director Felipe Bustos Sierra’s take on it, having shown Nae Pasaran in 2018 – another film tackling an inspiring case of solidarity and common humanity between strangers.
When can we see it? After its world premiere at Sundance, Everybody to Kenmure Street will have a cinema release from Friday 13 March, 2026.
Fukushima
Just as it is announced that Japan is set to restart nuclear power production, James Jones (Chernobyl: The Last Tapes, Antidote) tells the full story of the 2011 disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.
This is a true deep dive into the days and weeks following the earthquake and tsunami that led to the disaster at the plant, including interviews with some of the workers who stayed on for days, battling to prevent a meltdown.
When can we see it? Fukushima will be released on Friday 20 Feb, 2026.
Once Upon a Time in Harlem
In 1972, pioneering filmmaker William Greaves brought together the living luminaries of the Harlem Renaissance for a party at Duke Ellington’s house, to capture an oral history of the movement.
Fifty years later, and a decade after his death, the film has been completed by his son, David Greaves – one of three cameramen filming on that day. This much-anticipated posthumous film has taken years of dedication to fund and complete, honouring the artists of the Harlem Renaissance, as well as Greaves himself.
When can we see it? The film will play at Sundance in Jan 2026, and we’re sure to see it travel through the international festival circuit after that. October 2026 will mark the 100th anniversary of Greaves’s birth – look out for it around then, if not before.
Remake
It’s been 14 years since Ross McElwee’s last film, Photographic Memory, in which he tried to understand his young adult son, Adrian. Nearly a decade after Adrian’s sudden death, McElwee returns to their home movies to make a film about their relationship – about loss, memory and about the ‘uneasy space between documenting life and understanding it.’
McElwee’s films are always supremely personal, but Remake, as he reassesses his approach to filmmaking following Adrian’s death, may be his most profound. He has said ‘Remake is both my attempt to hold onto Adrian, and to let him go.’
When can we see it? Remake premiered at Venice in 2025, and we hear that plans are afoot for a UK release in 2026, so watch this space.
The Disciple
Already causing a buzz in the run-up to Sundance 2026, The Disciple digs into the story of Dutch Moroccan rapper and producer Cilvaringz, the man behind Wu-Tang Clan’s near-mythical 31-track double album Once Upon a Time in Shaolin.
We’re excited to see Oscar-winning filmmaker Joanna Natasegara’s feature, which throws open a discussion not just about Cilvaringz and the Wu-Tang Clan, but about the intrinsic worth and ownership of music in the digital age.
When can we see it? No news beyond Sundance yet, but with Film4 behind it, we’re sure it will come to UK cinemas as well as TV broadcast.