Bella Sutra will open this year’s DOXA Documentary Festival. The Vancouver festival announced its full 2026 line-up today, including news that the film directed by OK Pedersen will kick off the event on April 30. Bella Sutra offers an intimate story about an innkeeper in Bella Coola, British Columbia. The film explores questions of urban and rural divides and a landscape in transition, all the while accompanied by the music of Eden Glasman and Jakob Tokarcyzk.
Other Canadian docs screening at DOXA include Jessica Johnson and Ryan Ermacora’s Concrete Turned to Sand. The experimental portrait of oyster farmers screens as DOXA’s Mid-week Gala. It has its debut at Hot Docs earlier in the week and is among the homegrown titles touching down in Vancouver for DOXA’s 25th anniversary.
“We are excited to celebrate 25 festival editions highlighting important, entertaining and relevant documentary films,” Artistic Director Sarah Ouazzani said in a statement. “This is an important milestone, and we are pleased to share a great program with the Vancouver film community once again this year, including a slate of innovative short films, a diverse range of International and Canadian features, and a thought-provoking and informative series of Industry events.”
Local docs screening at DOXA include təm kʷaθ nan Namesake, Evan Adams and Eileen Francis’s observation of the Tla’amin Nation’s fight to rename Powell River given its namesake’s role in the formation of residential schools and the potlatch ban. Meanwhile, filmmaker Morgan Tams turns the lens on his own farm in the community self-portrait Green Valley. Among the festival’s world premiere screenings is Illustrated Legacies: Graveyard of the Pacific, Cree/Métis filmmaker Tanner Zurkoski’s animated hybrid film about the sinking of the Kingfisher and the legacy of gunboating on the West Coast, all connected through elements of Indigenous oral storytelling.
Other Canadian docs continuing their run with stops at DOXA include Kenya-Jade Pinto’s The Sandbox, about human lives caught amid technological advances and the migration crisis, Min Sook Lee’s personal exploration of family trauma in There Are No Words, and Jevan Crittenden and Nate Slaco’s In Tyee County tackles an idiosyncratic club where membership rituals require candidates to catch a 30-pound salmon as the cost of admission. Meanwhile, Oscar nominee Kim Nguyen’s Saigon Story: Two Shootings in the Forest Kingdom screens as the festival’s Justice Forum Special Presentation. The film considers families connected by Eddie Adams’ iconic Saigon Execution photo.
On the international front, Sara Dosa’s Time and Water screens as DOXA’s closing night film. Time and Water considers the histories housed within the world’s glaciers and what the erosion of these natural wonders mean for our collective memory. Sky Hopinka’s Powwow People brings a story of fancy dance competitions, while Tia Lessin and Carl Deal’s Steal this Story, Please! profiles Democracy Now! journalist Amy Goodman. The festival also screens Poh Si Teng’s American Doctor, which chronicles humanitarian efforts in Gaza, while Under the Red Roof by Yushi Nagamatsu screens as one of the festival’s world premieres.
This year’s DOXA Documentary Festival runs from April 30 to May 10.
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