Festival Awards
These are the winning films of DocsBarcelona 2026.
Docs Award for best film
Nathan Grossman
In 1996, a Brazilian official and a Swedish journalist ventured into the Amazon to document the isolated Korubo tribe caught in escalating land conflicts. Initially hailed as a heroic breakthrough, the footage now demands to be re-examined. Uncovering the hidden costs of “discovery,” the film confronts the colonial legacy and exposes the long-term repercussions for the Korubo.
The screening on Sunday the 10th will be followed by the Conversation on ‘Amazomania’activity
Hours:
Official Competition
Special Mention:
Marcin Wierzchowski
The film recounts the racist attack in Hanau (Germany) on February 19, 2020, from the perspective of survivors and families. Nine young people were murdered for not appearing “German.” Over nearly five years, the director follows the grief, the fight for recognition, and the search for belonging among the victims’ families and friends in their own country.
Marcin builds an extraordinary work that, based on a specific event, exposes systemic racism and follows the families through their grief and memories, as they struggle for answers and are forced to become activists to demand justice. An essential piece for understanding contemporary Europe, which premiered at the Berlinale 2025.
Hours:
Official Competition - Visions
Docs Award for Best Catalan Film – XAL:
David Bingong
On the border between Morocco and Spain, they wait impatiently for the boza, the crossing to Europe. Amid successive failed attempts, they survive, and the director, as the “artist,” must keep the flame of the group’s hope alive. With a camera and a handful of songs, they made this film together.
The screening on Friday the 15th will be followed by the “Conversación con David Bingong. Cine, mirada y clase” activity.
Hours:
Docs&Cat
Special Mention:
Helena Garza
Bèstia is a portrait of three hunters from inland Catalonia: Palomero, Bernat, and Nen. Their lives reveal the tension between traditional rural masculinity and the modern urban mindset. Without judgment or dramatization, a young vegan filmmaker observes their contradictions and seeks the primitive essence of humanity in the present day.
The session on Friday, May 8 will have subtitles in English and Spanish, while the session on Tuesday, May 12 will have subtitles in English only.
Hours:
Docs&Cat
AUDIENCE AWARD – MORITZ:
Lorena Ros
After eight years in prison, Noa, a 48-year-old Spanish Romani trans woman, fights to regain custody of her twin sons, now under state care. Facing eviction, she searches for a home with support from her cousin Marykarmen Free and a group of friends living on the margins of Barcelona.
The session on Saturday the 16th at Espai Texas will include an audio description track in Spanish, which can be downloaded in advance through the Audesc platform. It will be necessary to bring headphones in order to use it.
The screening on Saturday 16th will feature audio description for people with visual impairments.
Hours:
Docs&City
DOCS JURY AWARD – ANTAVIANA:
Manuel Correa Correa
After eighty years of silence, new forensic technologies help families reconstruct the fate of their relatives, whose bodies were secretly transferred to their executioner’s mausoleum. Faced with legal and bureaucratic obstacles, the film turns to archives and digital techniques to trace the disappeared to the Valley of the Fallen and recover what repression sought to erase.
Following its premiere at CPH:DOX 2026, Atlas of Disappearance arrives to shed light on the system and architecture that buried more than 30,000 people in the Valley of the Fallen, without their families’ knowledge. Manuel Correa, a member of Forensic Architecture, joins us to analyse this dark episode of our history — a wound that remains open in the country’s memory.
Hours:
Official Competition - Visions
DOCS AWARD FOR BEST SHORT FILM:
Juanjo Giménez
A collage made of memories, family conversations, songs, found footage, and attempts at other films. While a film student shoots his first shorts on Super 8, he laments not having a single moving image of his parents. “Only the rich make films.”
Hours:
Shortfilms
AUDIENCE AWARD SHORT FILMS – 16NOU:
Albert Kuhn
A photograph, a silent legacy of power and ideological battles that resonate through several generations. Looking between the fragments of the past, I glimpse what we choose not to see, which escapes through the fissures of our consciousness. How do we inherit what we cannot understand, forcing ourselves to repeat the same gestures over and over again?
Hours:
Shortfilms
DOCS OF THE MONTH AWARD:
David Borenstein, Pavel Talankin
2025 /
90 min /
Czech Republic, Denmark
When Russia launches its large-scale invasion of Ukraine, primary schools in Russia’s most remote regions are transformed into military recruitment centres. Faced with the ethical dilemma of working in a system marked by propaganda and violence, a daring teacher infiltrates his own school to record what is really happening there.
Docs del Mes
DOCS AWARD FOR BEST EDITING – AMMAC
María Silvia Esteve
While telling her daughter a bedtime story, Mailin pieces together her memories. What could have been a fairy tale turns out to be the story of a girl who suffered abuse by a priest for fifteen years. It is a long journey toward healing and justice, but also an opportunity to give her daughter the childhood she never had.
After winning the Pardino d’Oro for Best Short Film at Locarno in 2021 with Criatura, and premiering the short film The Spiral at the Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes 2022, María Silvia Esteve returns with a powerful story filmed over eight years that, through archival footage, home movies, and spectral animations, immerses us in the memories of an abuse that slowly emerge and endure.
Hours:
Official Competition
DOCS NEW TALENT AWARD – FILMIN:
Lana Daher
Do You Love Me is a playful and personal journey through Lebanon’s audiovisual memory, composed entirely of footage recovered from more than 20,000 archival sources. It is a love letter to Beirut that spans 70 years of cinema, television, home videos, and photography, exploring the Lebanese collective psyche, shaped by joy and intimacy, destruction and loss
Thursday the 14th (18:30h) Editing ‘Do You Love Me’ with Qutaiba Barhamji.
Thursday the 14th (20:00h) The screening will be followed by a concert by Mar Pujol.
Hours:
Official Competition - Visions
DOCS&TEENS AWARD:
Augusto Zegarra
Fernando Valencia, a dubbing actor from Cusco (Peru), undertakes an audacious mission: to convince Disney to adapt The Lion King to Quechua in order to preserve his language. Along the way, together with his eight-year-old son, his struggle becomes an intimate journey of paternity, identity and cultural activism, as he faces obstacles, rejections and doubts.
Runa Simi returns to DocsBarcelona after taking part in DocsBarcelona Pro in 2020 and 2023, now ready to be released after his impressive run at international festivals such as Tribeca, Sheffield and Guadalajara. A history of persistence and defence of Quechua culture and language, essential in an increasingly globalized world, which claims the right to enjoy stories in the mother tongue, even when they challenge the established system.
Hours:
Docs&Teens
3CAT AWARD:
Lorena Ros
After eight years in prison, Noa, a 48-year-old Spanish Romani trans woman, fights to regain custody of her twin sons, now under state care. Facing eviction, she searches for a home with support from her cousin Marykarmen Free and a group of friends living on the margins of Barcelona.
The session on Saturday the 16th at Espai Texas will include an audio description track in Spanish, which can be downloaded in advance through the Audesc platform. It will be necessary to bring headphones in order to use it.
The screening on Saturday 16th will feature audio description for people with visual impairments.
Hours:
Docs&City
DOC AROUND EUROPE AWARD:
Marta Duran Lozano
After years of silence about the abortion she experienced as a teenager, Marta receives a hundred anonymous testimonies from women who have gone through the same experience. Bringing these stories to the screen, along with six girls who give a voice and a face to these silenced accounts, she creates a shared space where what was once silenced becomes collective.
After its premiere at the Thessaloniki Film Festival, we are honoured to present Marta Duran Lozano’s debut feature, a work that acts as a catharsis—for the protagonists, the testimonies, and the director. A film which is courageous and generous with its audience and that opens the doors to a taboo subject: adolescent abortion.
The screening on Friday the 8th will include a complimentary beer after the session, courtesy of Moritz.
The Wednesday 13 session will include subtitles for deaf and hard-of-hearing people in Catalan (SDH).
Hours:
Official Competition, Docs&Teens
AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL OF CATALONIA AWARD:
Manuel Correa Correa
After eighty years of silence, new forensic technologies help families reconstruct the fate of their relatives, whose bodies were secretly transferred to their executioner’s mausoleum. Faced with legal and bureaucratic obstacles, the film turns to archives and digital techniques to trace the disappeared to the Valley of the Fallen and recover what repression sought to erase.
Following its premiere at CPH:DOX 2026, Atlas of Disappearance arrives to shed light on the system and architecture that buried more than 30,000 people in the Valley of the Fallen, without their families’ knowledge. Manuel Correa, a member of Forensic Architecture, joins us to analyse this dark episode of our history — a wound that remains open in the country’s memory.
Hours:
Official Competition - Visions
RETEENA YOUNG JURY AWARD:
Mehrdad Oskouei
Soraya Akhlaghi
Soraya, a sixteen-year-old Afghan artist, documents using only her mobile phone, her attempts to escape from Iran over a five-year period in the hope of joining her mother in Austria. Blending personal footage, animation and sculpture, the film lays bare Soraya’s determination to carve out her own path.
Winner of the Best Film Award in the International Competition at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) 2025, A Fox Under a Pink Moon presents, in the first person, the difficult journey to reach Europe from Iran. Through a unique collaboration between the director, working remotely, and the protagonist and co-director Soraya, the film builds an intimate narrative in which art becomes a central element of the journey.