Play-Doc 2026 announces its International Competition

From April 29 to May 3, the town of Tui, Galicia, Spain, will host the 22nd edition of the Play-Doc International Film Festival, which presents its International Competition, a selection of recent works from contemporary international cinema featuring films from a range of contexts and geographies.

The section brings together titles from diverse origins, with films from Europe, the Americas, Africa and Asia, in formats ranging from short to feature length. The programme combines established filmmakers and emerging voices, with works that draw both on archival materials and on approaches such as essay, portrait or direct observation.

Among the more established filmmakers, American director Ross McElwee presents Remake, built from material filmed over decades alongside his son. From France, Jean-Claude Rousseau participates with Requiem, while Brazilian filmmaker Júlio Bressane, together with Rodrigo Lima, presents O fantasma da ópera, a work centred on the materiality of cinema itself.

The selection also includes 9/05/1982, by Jorge Caballero and Camilo Restrepo(Mexico–Spain), which draws on a film shot in 1982 to reconstruct a series of events through deteriorated images and voice-over narration; Amílcar, by Miguel Eek (Cape Verde–Spain–France–Portugal–Sweden), which combines archival material and 16mm footage around the figure of Amílcar Cabral, an agronomist, poet and leader of the struggle for the independence of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde; A Little Regret in Helsinki, by Haohao Qiaoshi Liu (Finland), centred on a dialogue between a daughter and her father; Fantaisie, by Isabel Pagliai (France), which follows two characters through a notebook in a nocturnal setting; and Tóc, Giấy và Nước… (Hair, Paper and Water…), by Nicolas Graux and Trương Minh Quý (Belgium–France–Vietnam), which gathers fragments from the daily life of a woman from the Ruc ethnic group.

The International Competition will feature a jury composed of producer Raquel Freire Zangrandi (Brazil), critic and programmer Jay Weissberg (United States), and industry advisor Hayet Benkara (France/Canada).

This programme builds on the previously announced retrospectives dedicated to Viola Stephan, Eduardo Coutinho and Rafael Luca de Tena, as well as the Galicia Competition and the festival’s training and industry activities, which include a new edition of VENTURA and Coming Soon; professional meetings focused on international co-production, artificial intelligence and sound in cinema; and a new edition of the community filmmaking workshop. Additional initiatives include Cinema Tours and screenings held in the church.

In the coming days, the festival will reveal the rest of the programme for this new edition.