Our FIPADOC 2026 highlights celebrate five powerful documentaries that moved, challenged, and stayed with us long after the screenings.
This year again, Film Fest Report was on the ground at FIPADOC in Biarritz, France. It’s always a pleasure to discover films on the big screen and, above all, to meet their directors after the screenings. Of course, it’s impossible to see everything in a single week! Here’s our top five films we watched and loved.
1. Coexistence, My Ass! / United States
The film paints a portrait of Noam Shuster-Eliassi, a star of political stand-up. She grew up in a one-of-a-kind village where Israelis and Palestinians live side by side, and she speaks both Hebrew and Arabic fluently. Disillusioned by her time at the UN, she turned to stand-up comedy as a vehicle for peace activism. The film deftly weaves together her performances and her personal story—her fight for peace and her dreams of equality—shattered by the Hamas attacks and the destruction of Gaza. With her, we laugh, we cry, we rage. An endearing protagonist, she brings moments of lightness to a deeply infuriating subject.
2. From Red Light to Limelight / India
Amateur filmmakers shoot a fiction film inside a brothel in Kolkata, inviting the women and girls from the neighborhood to play roles inspired by their own lives. The documentary by Bipuljit Basu immerses us in the daily reality of the brothel without ever slipping into voyeurism or miserabilism. Instead, it shows how the women take ownership of the filmmaking process to assert their pride and dignity.
3. Sisters / France
Director Julia Zahar chronicles her younger sister’s battle with depression. Like an intimate diary, the film reveals a family’s everyday life turned upside down by illness. Through slices of life, family archives, and childlike animations, it explores the bond between the two sisters. A delicate and nuanced portrayal that approaches depression with sensitivity and care.
4. The Dialogue Police / Sweden
An immersion inside a one-of-a-kind unit: the dialogue police, tasked with safeguarding freedom of expression in an increasingly polarized Swedish society. They intervene when a far-right agitator burns the Quran or when Extinction Rebellion activists block traffic. This gripping film by Susanna Edwards takes us into the field to question freedom of expression and its limits, the role of the police, and their methods. When will France get its own dialogue police?
5. Mothers of Chibok / Nigeria
Ten years on, Chibok still lives under the threat of Boko Haram. In 2014, the Islamist sect kidnapped hundreds of schoolgirls there. Today, many mothers remain without news of their daughters, still waiting for their return. They continue to work the fields and send their children to school despite the danger. The few survivors—released with the children conceived during their captivity—struggle to find their place within the community. A film, by Joel’ Kachi Benson, about the aftermath, about waiting, and about hope.
