21. UNDER|DOX 08 – 14 OKT 2026

Ale is a film director and Alex is an actor. After fifteen years together, they decide to go their separate ways and begin to act on an old joke made by Ale’s father, that separations – and not unions – are cause for celebration. They announce their break-up party to numerous members of friends and family, in a bid to try and convince themselves of the reality of their separation. Coupledom – whether getting together, staying together, making up, or breaking up – is synonymous with filmmaking. – Quinzaine des Cinéastes, Cannes

The chickens are suspicious, the relationships are dubious, and the businesses are shady. Margarita and Goodness wonder where and why people are disappearing. Meanwhile the radio is persistently sending messages and the world is awaiting the launch of a rocket that will take humans to the edge of the solar system. ”But out there is nothing” says someone at the dinner table.

Sound supersedes sight in Stanley Schtinter’s austere anti-fairy tale Schneewittchen, an English-language remake of João César Monteiro’s ”Branca de Neve” (2000), made largely of an audio performance of Robert Walser’s titular play set to a black screen, occasionally relieved by shots of passing clouds. In Walser’s radical reworking of the Grimm fable, a resurrected Snow White reconciles with the Evil Queen, denying any foul play and even seeking forgiveness for provoking her jealousy.
A parable for our post-truth times, Schtinter’s film provokes reflection on the ontology of a tale as it travels across languages, mediums, geographies and eras. – Srikanth Srinivasan, IFF Rotterdam

From the street, Li Eryang’s “Republic” is barely visible, a little room that appears to have been left as a tiny cavity between the surrounding houses. Despite its inconspicuous appearance from the outside, on the inside, it’s huge. A hiding place, a home base and an experiment all rolled into one. With lots of time and passion, scarves and coloured light, Eryang has created a free space for himself and his “Cosmic Bros”. Anyone who comes by becomes a citizen of a society with humanistic laws. The repressive social credit system of the People’s Republic is left at the door. With psychedelic music and a few mind-expanding drugs, hippiedom, capitalism and Xi Jinping can all be harmonised on a sofa and mattress.
The experiment needs reworking. Jin Jiang’s documentary shows the radical exit attempt of young adults as a tableau vivant: in the heart of Beijing, Chinese youngsters lounge and cuddle for their freedom. – Berlinale

A voice that claims to belong to a hippopotamus. A voice that does not understand the perception of time. A voice that tells of a historical event as if in a trance. “Am I making that sound that comes out of my mouth? And what is a mouth anyway?” The only thing the animal knows for sure is that it is dead. The first and only hippopotamus ever killed in the Americas. The Colombian press called him Pepe. Between encounters and misunderstandings, epiphanies and sadness, we enter a world full of stories replete with even more stories. In a serious and playful way, both authentic and deceptive, images and sounds narrate the overwhelming orality of places full of beings who, like Pepe, died without ever knowing where they really were. – Berlinale

Who was Jeanne Barret, the woman who, disguised as a man, embarked on a world tour in 1767 with the Bougainville expedition? The film tells of her possible adventures and confronts this extraordinary fate with that of three women, a Malagasy, a Mauritian and a Mexican, today’s “sisters” of Jeanne, who journeyed in the opposite direction. This audacious film essay interweaves the narrative threads of their trajectories and makes us understand and feel all that is concealed by the anonymity of the term ”immigrant”. Precious stories frame the screen and are finally recognized.

Berlin, 1974. 32-year-old stage director Walter Asmus assists 68-year-old Samuel Beckett with his first personal production of ”Waiting for Godot”. Soon, their professional understanding turns into a friendship that will last until the writer’s death.

It is safe to say that this film is the story of that friendship. It does so in pure Declan Clarke fashion, in his usual way: with still shots, in 16mm, in the present tense, articulating visual and sound descriptions of the places, presentation of archival material, and objective report of facts. The archives belong to Asmus: postcards from Beckett, scripts of the plays they staged together with their annotations, etc. The locations are places Beckett frequently visited during his stays in Berlin or Stuttgart: studios, restaurants, parks. Sobriety, factuality – the world as seen by Declan Clarke is Beckettian.
And if the film begins in the Wicklow mountains and ends on the stage of Dublin’s Gate Theatre, it is because this exercise in admiration is also, despite its author, quite an indirect self-portrait. With great decency and restraint. “Hold back!” Just like Walter Asmus, Declan Clarke has learned his lesson from the great Sam. – Cyril Neyrat, FID Marseille

Rangoon, Burma, 1917. Edward, a civil servant for the British Empire, runs away from his fiancée Molly the day she arrives to get married. During his travels, however, panic gives way to melancholy. Contemplating the emptiness of his existence, the cowardly Edward wonders what has become of Molly… Determined to get married and amused by Edward’s move, Molly follows his trail on this Asian grand tour.

The sun plays a primary role in Mateus’ forest-set film, largely shot in broad daylight. It bears down on wine workers toiling in fields and sneaks between the leaves of the cork oaks. A dangerous bull stalks the fields and forces the peasants and workers to clamber into the trees, giving new meaning to shared solidarity.
The film is rooted in an ancestral, almost sacred territory – Alentejo in Portugal – allowing for the intrusion of symbolic imagery. Photos dating back to the colonial war in Africa that Maria Catarina, the main character, offers to the viewer, or the figure of João de Encarnação, the great-grandfather of the director, haunting the film as a young soldier from the Great War, further suggest an eternal presence of the specter of history. – Lucía Requejo, Victor Morozov

”Family Portrait” follows a sprawling family on a morning when they have planned a group picture. After the mother disappears and one of the daughters becomes increasingly anxious to find her and take the picture, the rest of the family appears to resist any attempt to gather. Initially presenting itself as a realistic portrayal of a family on an idle but hectic summer day, the film progressively descends into a realm where time and space lose their grip, transforming the family portrait into a solemn and enigmatic ritual of transition.