Open City Documentary Festival

Open City Documentary Festival creates an open space in London to nurture and champion the art of non-fiction cinema. Based at the UCL Centre for Public Anthropology, we deliver training programmes, an annual documentary festival, the bi-annual Non-Fiction journal and events throughout the year that aim to challenge and expand the idea of documentary in all its forms. The 12th edition of Open City Documentary Festival takes place in venues across London between 7th – 13th September 2022 and will present a diverse programme of international contemporary and retrospective non-fiction film, audio and cross media, as well as filmmaker Q&As, panels, talks and workshops. After a hybrid edition in 2021, we expect the festival to take place fully in-person in 2022. Open City Documentary Festival seeks to nurture experimentation within the expanded field of non-fiction cinema, from artists’ moving image to documentary, the essay film, audio and cross-media works. In conceiving the festival as a discursive space, we intend to provoke dialogue, creation and research through the collective participation in screenings and events. Some of the artists and filmmakers screened at the festival in recent years include Luke Fowler, Kazuo Hara, Laura Huertas Millán, Onyeka Igwe, Naomi Kawase, Zhao Liang, Simon Liu, Rosine Mbakam, Pablo Alvárez Mesa, Miko Revereza, Jessica Sarah Rinland, Renate Sami, Haneda Sumiko, Alia Syed, Anya Tsyrlina, Ana Vaz and Morgan Quaintance.