The 28th edition of Docaviv, the Tel Aviv International Documentary Film Festival, is presenting a program starting on Thursday that explores Israeli and global realities through politics, history, culture, music, and personal stories.
The eclectic, wide-ranging lineup reflects how documentary cinema has become one of the sharpest forms of understanding a turbulent world.
Taking place until Saturday, June 6, at the Tel Aviv Cinematheque, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, and other venues around the city, the festival will feature Israeli competitions and special programs, international competitions, shorts, student films, music documentaries, arts and culture films, a Master’s section, a Werner Herzog retrospective, and industry events.
This year’s international guests include producer Simon Chinn, a two-time Oscar winner whose credits include Man on Wire and Searching for Sugar Man.
Chinn will give a master class at the festival, followed by a screening of Man on Wire. The master class will focus on how documentary filmmakers identify a powerful story, develop it for the screen, and navigate a changing market in the streaming era.
The festival’s guest list also includes Sergei Loznitsa, the acclaimed Belarus-born filmmaker who is known for such documentaries as The Kiev Trial and Babi Yar. Context, as well as fiction films; Ukrainian producer Alexander Rodnyansky, a three-time Oscar nominee, whose films include Dissident and Of Dogs and Men; Ukrainian director, producer, and film historian Andriy Alferov (Notes of a True Criminal); and Polish-German filmmaker Michal Kosakowski, whose film Holofiction, an experimental look at a century of Holocaust cinema, will be shown in the international competition.
Docaviv 2026 highlights international documentaries and Panorama competition
Gaylen Ross, the director of Sapiro v. Ford: The Jew Who Sued Henry Ford, will also attend. Ross has a distinguished body of work, including films on Switzerland’s Nazi gold, Rudolf Kasztner, Chinese dissident artists, and New York’s diamond district.
Sapiro v. Ford: The Jew Who Sued Henry Ford will be shown in the Panorama section and tells the little-known story of Aaron Sapiro, a Jewish lawyer and farmers’ cooperative organizer who sued Henry Ford after Ford’s newspaper, The Dearborn Independent, published antisemitic attacks against him. Its subject could hardly feel timelier, as the world continues to grapple with antisemitism, conspiracy theories, and the power of wealthy public figures to shape public discourse.
The Panorama section also includes Bodyguard of Lies, Dan Krauss’s indictment of the 20-year war in Afghanistan; A World Gone Mad – The War Diaries of Astrid Lindgren, about the years that shaped Europe and the author of Pippi Longstocking; Natchez, Suzannah Herbert’s look at a Southern town that profits from reviving a troubling past; Menopause Mystery, by Louise Unmack Kjeldsen; and Whispers in the Woods, by Vincent Munier, about three generations journeying through nature.
The international competition includes Mailin, by María Silvia Esteve, which uses testimony, animation, and home video to give voice to people abandoned by the law; Time and Water, by Sara Dosa, a cinematic elegy set against the landscapes of Iceland; and Divia, by Dmytro Hreshko, which offers a hypnotic drone’s eye view of wounded Ukraine.
More works in the competition include Ruth Beckermann’s Wax & Gold, an essay on Ethiopia’s history; Mariinka, Pieter-Jan De Pue’s family saga about brothers scattered across Russia, Ukraine, and the US; and Notes of a True Criminal, by Alexander Rodnyansky and Andriy Alferov, a Ukrainian work that combines war diary, family epic, and confession.
The Masters section will feature films by major documentary voices, including Alan Berliner’s Benita, a portrait of an artist friend at the end of her life.
The Israeli program will focus on the complex reality of life here in recent years, with films that explore war, art, memory, questions of identity, and war. It will include Soccer for the Soul, Avida Livny’s film about the Kfar Aza soccer team, whose members try to use their love of the game to heal after the October 7 massacre.
Other Israeli competition titles include Face Value, by David Ofek, about a police sketch artist who reconstructs the faces of loved ones erased from the world; No More Options – The Israeli Billion-Dollar Sting, by Hilla Medalia, about an international financial fraud case; and Three Photographers in a Swamp, by Racheli Russinek and Eyal Ben Moshe, about photographers who documented the Hula swamps in 1956.
Arts and culture films will include works on the singer Esther Ofarim, the popular and critically acclaimed novelist Meir Shalev, Israeli hip-hop, and the pioneering women’s magazine LaIsha. An updated version of Tom Shoval’s documentary about former hostage David Cunio, A Letter to David, will be shown to reflect Cunio’s homecoming last October after over two years in Hamas captivity.
Docaviv 2026 spotlights Shalom the rhino, Israeli filmmakers, and Loevy retrospective
JERUSALEMITES MAY especially enjoy the touching movie Shalom, by Meital Zvieli, about Shalom, the beloved rhinoceros at the Jerusalem Biblical Zoo (officially called the Tisch Family Zoological Gardens).
The movie uses the zookeepers’ relationships with the animals to symbolize the delicate reality of coexistence in the capital. This rhinoceros came to the zoo just as the Camp David Accords were being signed, and is 45 years old when the film opens, and is tired.
Anyone who has ever cared for an animal will relate to the affection the zookeepers feel for Shalom, and Jews and Muslims on the staff are drawn together by their love for him.
Some may remember the excellent children’s film shown in the Noah’s Ark exhibit at the zoo and will recognize Rushdi and Gilad, two of the zookeepers who appear in it and are among the main subjects. It seems that, against all odds, their bond has grown stronger over the years.
The movie covers the difficult period after war breaks out on October 7, 2023, and shows how the animals are affected by the missiles fired near the zoo. As the war intensifies after Shalom becomes ill and many zookeepers are sent off to fight, one of them quips, “The whole world keeps asking me, ‘Where’s Shalom?’”
The festival will also feature Doron Jerasi’s documentary I Am Ram Loevy, about Israel Prize laureate and film director Ram Loevy, who died in 2025. The film follows Loevy as he directs The Dead of Jaffa, his final film, while suffering from Parkinson’s disease.
Loevy was a pioneer in the Israeli film and television industry. In this documentary, he shares his philosophy of life and filmmaking, saying, “All my life I’ve believed that homeland, state, politicians, and God don’t photograph well. They’re too big, too inflated – the screen is too small for them. But it suits ordinary people perfectly, especially those in whom you can see the wrinkles, the sparkle in the eyes, the hesitations, and the small smile that suddenly appears.”
Docaviv also includes a retrospective of Loevy’s documentary work, showing nine of his films, including the groundbreaking project I Am Ahmad, a 1966 film by Loevy and Avshalom Katz about an Arab construction worker in Tel Aviv as he muses about his life, which was very controversial when it was first released. It’s a fitting tribute for an influential director.
Docaviv’s main partners are yes, HED Foundation, Schweppes, City Boy-Yuvalim, Altshuler Shaham, Harel, Azrieli Sarona, the Culture and Sport Ministry, the Tel Aviv-Jaffa Municipality, the Mifal Hapayis national lottery, and the Foreign Ministry.