2026 OPENING NIGHT, CENTERPIECE, CLOSING NIGHT, AND SPECIAL PRESENTATIONS
DOC NYC is proud to announce the first wave of program selections for our 17th edition, running in-person from November 11 – 19 at IFC Center, SVA Theatre and Village East by Angelika, and continuing online through November 29. The 2026 festival showcases more than 200 films and dozens of events, including in-person appearances by filmmakers at most screenings.
Binge on all 200+ films in the 2026 program with the All Film Pass for only $699 through October 17th! Ticket packs and individual film tickets for in-person and online screenings are also now available.
Opening Night:
The Hummingbird Paints Fragrant Songs
Nov 11 at SVA Theatre (US Premiere)
Shipibo artist Sara Flores creates sacred intricate geometries revealed through visions, carrying Indigenous knowledge from the Peruvian Amazon into museums worldwide. As international recognition transforms her life, Flores navigates family, illness, spiritual healing, and the responsibilities of newfound influence as she uses her voice to defend her people and their territory. Gorgeous in every frame, the film is an intimate, joyful portrait of an irresistible matriarch whose art entwines creativity, ecology, resistance, ancestral wisdom, and Indigenous futures.
Closing Night:
Totality
Nov 19 at SVA Theatre (US Premiere)
What makes people so fascinated by solar eclipses? Totality begins with that question, reaching back to archival footage from the 1970s, when a newscaster looks ahead to the 2024 eclipse and hopes it will occur over “a world at peace.” Flash forward to the year in question, as David Heilbroner and Kate Davis, directing 21 film teams, set out to explore North American communities that fall in the path of a total blackout, where the moon will completely block the sun’s light. They encounter a population seeking something almost spiritual: to look skyward and, for a brief moment, contemplate a universe larger than themselves—a vastness we are part of and still barely understand. When the eclipse finally arrives in this superbly shot film, the shared human emotion is genuinely touching.
Centerpiece Screening:
Union Town
Nov 13 at SVA Theatre (NYC Premiere)
Two-time Academy Award winner Barbara Kopple makes a vigorous return to her greatest subject—American labor—with a NYC-focused story following three distinct groups of workers. Loosely, Union Town marks the third part of a spiritual trilogy connecting Kopple’s early Oscar winners Harlan County U.S.A. and American Dream. We meet unionized Teamsters at UPS, whose struggles for better pay and better working conditions put them on the edge of a major strike; Amazon workers, whose ongoing fight for unionization puts them at odds with the world’s largest revenue-generating corporation; and the largely Spanish-speaking migrant food-delivery workers, supported by a workers’ rights nonprofit as they fight for the merest basic protections. Kopple’s mastery ultimately unites these struggles with a stirring sense of purpose.
Special Presentation:
Primetime Preacher$
Nov 14 at IFC Center (World Premiere)
In the 1980s, Jerry Falwell, Jim Bakker, and Jimmy Swaggart each cultivate vast viewerships of particular constituencies of Christian fundamentalism. When Bakker’s empire is threatened by revelations of scandal, Falwell and Swaggart sense the potential business advantages of taking the moralistic high ground—and the power they can wield by collaborating with the Republican Party. Joe Berlinger’s first feature film in seven years is Shakespearean in its depiction of the ruthless holy war between these three titans of Christian televangelism’s early days
Special Presentation:
Palace of Gold
Nov 14 at Village East by Angelika (World Premiere)
The story of New Vrindaban, a Hare Krishna commune in West Virginia that grew into one of America’s largest cults, has long been sensationalized for its lurid details of crime and internal corruption. But for brothers Abhay and Halavah, it is the world they were born into, and in Palace of Gold, they aim to show a more sensitive, nuanced side of their family’s reality. The brothers use humor and an affection for human foibles to chart a path from their parents’ original, lofty goals of spirituality to the problems that beset their community in its self-imposed isolation around a cult of personality. Through many unexpected twists, Abhay and Halavah reveal that the contemporary hunger for American alternatives to community continues to grow.
Special Presentation:
The Slightest Touch
Nov 12 at SVA Theatre (North American Premiere)
Filmmaker Rachel Fleit (Introducing, Selma Blair) has a gift for honoring the vulnerability of both illness and celebrity. Colin Farrell steps into unguarded territory to admit that behind his fame, he grapples with personal demons. His friend Emma Fogarty, meanwhile, lives with epidermolysis bullosa (EB), a rare, extraordinarily painful genetic disorder that affects the skin. To mark Emma’s milestone of being the longest-living person in Ireland with her form of EB, Colin and Emma commit to a bold and logistically complex challenge: running the Dublin Marathon together.
Special Presentation:
Pretenders
Nov 13 at IFC Center (NYC Premiere)
Joss Crowley’s rocking and insightful portrait of the singular Chrissie Hynde and the band she built around her goes way beyond the greatest hits. Now 75 and as fierce as ever, Hynde is an elusive subject, consenting to only one filmed interview with Crowley, which forms the throughline of Pretenders. Hynde’s independent streak has always marked her as a rebellious original, and in here we get the full force of her indelible personality—and her brilliance as a songwriter.
Special Presentation:
The Pervert’s Guide to Utopias
Nov 14 at IFC Center (US Premiere)
The collaboration between filmmaker Sophie Fiennes and academic philosopher Slavoj Žižek celebrates its twentieth anniversary and third installment with The Pervert’s Guide to Utopias, following in the footsteps of The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema and The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology, the latter of which screened at DOC NYC in 2012. Whether it is your first or third rodeo with Žižek and Fiennes hardly matters; this zippy trip down the highway of ideas, about human culture as interpreted through popular movies, is breathlessly quirky and appeals to cinephiles of varying intensities.
The 2026 DOC NYC festival will take place both in person and online starting on Wednesday, November 11, with in-person screenings and events held at IFC Center, SVA Theatre and Village East by Angelika through Thursday, November 19. The festival’s online offerings will continue through Sunday, November 29, 2026. The All Film Pass, which allows access to all in-person and online DOC NYC screenings, is now available.
