Deriving its name from the Greek word meaning “common belief” or “popular opinion,” the 2026 edition is rife with shorts and features that push the limits of documentary form while sowing the seeds of social change through critical discourse. At a moment when reality itself feels increasingly fabricated, DOXA positions non-fiction as a vital art form—one that captures the zeitgeist while questioning who gets to define it.

Across a program of more than 70 films, here are RANGE’s five definitive picks of the fest:

Bella Sutra (OK Pedersen)

The festival’s opening gala screening, OK Pedersen’s Bella Sutra, is a live cinematic performance that doubles as a visual essay. Running a brisk but thematically dense 42 minutes, and sumptuously shot on hand-processed 16mm in Bella Coola, BC, Pedersen’s film uses a live score, live narration, and a vibrant musical ensemble to capture the rhythms and reflections of a remote mountain village. Come for an impassioned sonic-visual experience, stay for a deeply felt portrait of community and connection.

Powwow People (Sky Hopinka)

Part of DOXA’s Rated Y for Youth series—which aims to engage and immerse youth in socially conscious cinema—Sky Hopinka’s Powwow People unfolds as a lived-in, verité portrait of the rhythms, relationships, and rituals of a contemporary Indigenous gathering. Rather than applying an external lens, Hopinka and company organize the titular powwow itself, inviting a myriad of singers, vendors, and community members while following four central organizing figures over the course of a day. As the film draws us into the cadences and textures of the powwow, it culminates in a 30-minute unbroken shot that illuminates a culture and refuses to reduce Native life to a monolith.

致亞歷珊卓 To Alexandra (Yi Cui)

A seminal entry in the festival’s paraDOXA series—which highlights experimental films pushing the boundaries of the non-fiction form—Yi Cui’s 致亞歷珊卓 To Alexandra bewitchingly intertwines two disparate travelogues. Via on-screen text, researcher-writer Alexandra David-Néel’s journey across the Himalayas unfolds through letters home that grapple with colonial wounds and war. All the while, Yi’s experiences in eastern Tibet come alive in reflective sonic-visual spaces. As the two streams slowly merge, the film manifests as a stirring elegy, uniting past and present into a meditation on the heart-wrenching processes of memory, history, and life itself.

Saigon Story: Two Shootings in the Forest Kingdom (Kim Nguyen)

One of many challenging entries in DOXA’s Justice Forum series—which showcases films that facilitate critical dialogue around a broad range of social issues—Kim Nguyen’s Saigon Story: Two Shootings in the Forest Kingdom emerges as a kaleidoscopic treatise on the pain of wartime memory and the lingering power of photography itself. Following a woman in Washington state hiding a visceral family secret, alongside a journalist helping siblings solve a tragic wartime mystery, Nguyen’s film illuminates the painful connection between two families and Eddie Adams’ infamous photograph “Saigon Execution,” which forever altered the world’s perception and understanding of the Vietnam War. As the film inundates us with shocking revelations, we come to understand that war never really ends, but simply takes on more intimate, damaging forms.

Remake (Ross McElwee)

Part of DOXA’s Spotlight series: Family, Ross McElwee’s Remake turns its lens inward, onto the camera itself and its ability to foster a bond that, despite its fragility, can transcend death. Tracing McElwee’s relationship with his late son Adrian, Remake draws on decades of home footage to carve an intricate, layered monument to filmmaking as a reclamation of memory and lost life. As the film entwines this domestic narrative with an exploration of Hollywood’s failed attempts to fictionalize McElwee’s 1986 classic Sherman’s March, it finds absence as a powerful creative force—one that compels us to hold onto the beauty and tragedy of storytelling, even when narrative itself begins to fall away.

Explore the full lineup and grab tickets at doxafestival.ca

RANGE is proud to be a community partner for this screening.