THE BEND IN THE RIVER

In 2023, Flaco the Eurasian Eagle Owl became an international folk hero when he escaped from New York City's Central Park Zoo and began living independently after a lifetime in captivity. Over many months, Flaco's haunting hoots could be heard over the din of the busy metropolis as he became a mythological figure for a world in which many find themselves far from their roots. Filmmaker Penny Lane's whimsical curiosity has led her to explore numerous eclectic subjects in her career, and with Wild Inside she finds a new level of emotional epiphany.

The first screening will be followed by a Q&A with director Penny Lane and producer Gabriel Sedgwick.

All in-person screening venues provide sound amplification headphones upon request with venue management. IFC Center can also provide a T-Coil loop for compatible devices.

In the remote highlands of Montenegro, shepherd Gara and her daughter Nada live on their ancestral mountain, home of their Mother spirit. Meanwhile, the violence of men is never far from their door: Gara’s sister was murdered by her unstable husband years ago, and Gara had to fight for his conviction and imprisonment. When Montenegrin army commanders want to use the community’s sacred mountain for military exercises, Gara must rally to fight again. The spirit of the maternal envelopes this Sundance Grand Prize-winning film, just as the mists embrace Mother Mountain.

The first screening will be followed by a Q&A with directors Biljana Tutorov and Petar Glomazic.

All in-person screening venues provide sound amplification headphones upon request with venue management. IFC Center can also provide a T-Coil loop for compatible devices.

Oscar-nominated director Sara Dosa (Fire of Love) collaborates with the Icelandic poet Andri Snær Magnason, inspired by his book Of Time and Water. The film is crafted as a letter to the next generation, reflecting on the melting glaciers that are a harbinger of climate change. “[Dosa] and her collaborators create not just an urgent documentary, but a profoundly beautiful elegy for a world slipping away before our eyes” (Murtada Elfadl, Variety).

The first screening will be followed by a Q&A with director/producer Sara Dosa and producers Shane Boris, Elijah Stevens, and Jameka Autry.

All in-person screening venues provide sound amplification headphones upon request with venue management. IFC Center can also provide a T-Coil loop for compatible devices.

Uncovering a hidden chapter of military history, Soul Patrol focuses on the Vietnam War’s first Black special operations team, an elite unit that operated deep behind enemy lines. Director J.M. Harper reconstructs their journey using raw Super 8 footage, photographs, and personal audio archives. Marking the war’s 50th anniversary, the surviving members reunite in a hotel that becomes a surreal space of memory, brotherhood, and trauma. Through reflection, the film interrogates the contradictions of fighting for an ideal of freedom abroad while facing systemic inequality at home. Winner of Sundance Film Festival’s U.S. Documentary Directing Award, Soul Patrol is not just a war story, but a reckoning—an intimate portrait of survival, memory, and the enduring cost of war.

The first screening will be followed by a Q&A with writer/director/producer J.M. Harper.

All in-person screening venues provide sound amplification headphones upon request with venue management. IFC Center can also provide a T-Coil loop for compatible devices.

Filmmakers Lance Oppenheim and Nathan Fielder have each held up many of American life’s peculiarities to their incisive, absurdist artistic viewpoints. Fusing their unique sensibilities, they set out to document their greatest subject yet: the seemingly unknowable, disgraced Silicon Valley tycoon Elizabeth Holmes (convicted of defrauding tech investors of multiple millions of dollars—all while claiming she has never lied and is simply misunderstood) as she prepares to serve her federal prison sentence. 

The first screening will be followed by a Q&A with directors Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim.

All in-person screening venues provide sound amplification headphones upon request with venue management. IFC Center can also provide a T-Coil loop for compatible devices.

Filmmakers Itab Azzam and Jack MacInnes began filming with the 11-year-old Syrian girl Israa in 2015 as her family was fleeing war and seeking refuge in Germany. They chronicled her family over the next ten years, tracking how life in exile created new pressures and opportunities, culminating in Israa’s return to Aleppo as a young wife and mother. The film showcases the power of longitudinal documentary, delivering one surprise after another.

The first screening will be followed by a Q&A with directors Jack MacInnes and Itab Azzam.

All in-person screening venues provide sound amplification headphones upon request with venue management. IFC Center can also provide a T-Coil loop for compatible devices.

In 1972, the pioneering filmmaker William Greaves (Black Journal, Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One) gathered luminaries of the 1920s Harlem Renaissance to document their memories. When Greaves died in 2014, the film was left unfinished. Now his son David, who was a cameraman on the original shoot, brings the project to completion—and we finally get to experience that glorious night capturing a vital period of American culture.

The first screening will be followed by a Q&A with director David Greaves and producers Liani Greaves and Anne de Mare.

All in-person screening venues provide sound amplification headphones upon request with venue management. IFC Center can also provide a T-Coil loop for compatible devices.

Filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, half the team behind the Oscar-winning No Other Land, conduct revealing interviews with Israel Defense Forces members who participated in Gaza’s decimation. The interviewees candidly reflect on attitudes toward civilian casualties—known by an acronym for “collateral damage”: NAZA—and how they process the meaning of genocide. “It is the movie’s relentless insistence on the human factor, not policy or politics, that makes it finally so haunting” (Manohla Dargis, The New York Times).



All in-person screening venues provide sound amplification headphones upon request with venue management. IFC Center can also provide a T-Coil loop for compatible devices.

DOC NYC’s 2026 Lifetime Achievement honoree Alex Gibney delivers his most epic work, profiling the world’s first trillionaire, Elon Musk. How did the tech bro shift from a clean energy champion into an international right-wing megafunder? Gibney examines the dark sides of Tesla, Twitter, SpaceX, Starlink, Grok, the Department of Government Efficiency, and other ventures, interviewing Musk’s former business and romantic partners. The film is “a lacerating portrait of technocratic brilliance, power, lust, and crackpot delusion” (Owen Gleiberman, Variety).

The first screening will be followed by a Q&A with director Alex Gibney.

All in-person screening venues provide sound amplification headphones upon request with venue management. IFC Center can also provide a T-Coil loop for compatible devices.

This uplifting portrayal of resistance focuses on an incident from 2021, when immigration officers conducted a raid on Glasgow’s Kenmure Street. A local activist dove under a van to disrupt the detainment, and the street soon filled with protestors. Filmmaker Felipe Bustos Sierra (Nae Pasaran) reconstructs what happened with eyewitness footage and a clever reenactment with Emma Thompson as “van man.” A Sundance Special Jury Prize winner, the film exemplifies the power of citizens.



All in-person screening venues provide sound amplification headphones upon request with venue management. IFC Center can also provide a T-Coil loop for compatible devices.

Veteran producer and journalist Poh Si Teng makes her directorial debut with the visceral, unflinching American Doctor, following three notable U.S. physicians as they provide in-person support at a Gaza hospital treating victims of mass-casualty events from the Israeli war campaign. Dr. Thaer Ahmad, Dr. Mark Perlmutter, and Dr. Feroze Sidhwa are of different cultural backgrounds, united by a shared calling to confront injustice and uphold their oath to save lives. Back in the U.S., they speak out about what they have witnessed and urge politicians to intervene against the ongoing killing.

The first screening will be followed by a Q&A with director Poh Si Teng and protagonists Dr. Thaer Ahmad and Dr. Feroze Sidhwa.

All in-person screening venues provide sound amplification headphones upon request with venue management. IFC Center can also provide a T-Coil loop for compatible devices.

Soraya Akhalaghi, a young Afghan woman living in Iran, is a ferociously talented artist working under the thumb of patriarchal tyranny. Despite multiple attempts at escaping Tehran, she endures years of oppression all the while channeling her emotions about her circumstances into sculpture, painting, writing, and cinematography.



All in-person screening venues provide sound amplification headphones upon request with venue management. IFC Center can also provide a T-Coil loop for compatible devices.

Ten years after her Oscar-nominated documentary 13th, filmmaker Ava DuVernay creates an equally powerful essay film exploring the legacy of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The post-Civil War law established birthright citizenship, due process, and equal protection, among other matters freshly contested today. DuVernay interviews a lively array of historians, politicians, and cultural critics, combining their testimonies with eclectic visuals for a film that illuminates both past and present.

The first screening will be followed by a Q&A with director Ava DuVernay.

All in-person screening venues provide sound amplification headphones upon request with venue management. IFC Center can also provide a T-Coil loop for compatible devices.