5 Must-See Documentaries at This Year’s DC/DOX
Carolina Kroon
The fourth annual DC/DOX documentary film festival is right around the corner, taking place in theaters across the nation’s capital from June 11-14.
Founded in 2023 by former AFI Docs festival director Sky Sitney and PR Collaborative president Jamie Shor, DC/DOX is fast becoming one of the East Coast’s foremost film festivals, championing some of the most creative and fascinating works of non-fiction cinema from around the globe. Over its four-day run of show, DC/DOX treats its audiences to over 100 feature-length and short documentaries making their Washington, D.C. premieres, with each screening followed by insightful Q&As with filmmakers and their collaborators. Notably, last year’s lineup of DC/DOX boasted all five works that would go on to receive Academy Award nominations for Best Documentary Feature, speaking to the festival’s quality of programming, although its vast array of offerings are sure to peak any movie lovers interests.
While this year’s DC/DOX lineup includes a plenitude of noteworthy films that have already won major awards at festivals including Sundance, SXSW, and the Berlinale, key standouts include the Opening Night film Give Me the Ball!, a portrait of tennis legend Billie Jean King, co-directed by Liz Garbus (Becoming Cousteau) and Elizabeth Wolff, and Closing Night film Earth, Wind & Fire (To Be Celestial vs That's the Weight of the World) chronicling the eponymous American band, the latest from Oscar-winner Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson (Summer of Soul). Thanks to the festival’s impressive lineup, we look forward to covering a wide assortment of features and shorts, whose themes range from environmental investigations to intimate studies of marginalized communities and perspectives. Continue reading to check out some of the titles Foremost Film is most hotly anticipating at DC/DOX 2026:
‘Do You Love Me’
Directed by Lana Daher
75 Minutes
France, Germany, Lebanon, Qatar. In Arabic, French and English, with English subtitles.
Solely constructed from archival photos and clips from film and television (over 20,000 to be exact), Do You Love Me is an experimental journey through Lebanon’s precarious modern history. With great fascination, Daher blends parallel images and voices from across time that serve as mirrors, whether of easygoing joy or mass destruction, speaking to the cultural and religious discord that has shaped the country’s national identity. In a place such as Lebanon, where the history in school textbooks ends in the year 1946, Do You Love Me serves as a vital work through its account of a country in upheaval.
DC/DOX
‘Fletcher Street’
Directed by Jannat Gargi and David Darg
35 Minutes
USA, in English.
A moving portrait of the Fletcher Street Urban Riding Club in North Philadelphia, where the community is plagued by crime, socio-economic instability, and increasing gentrification, Fletcher Street captures the caring connection built around the city’s unlikely horseback riding program. Shifting focus from the father-son duo who founded the club to the teenagers who ride there, the documentary movingly depicts the program’s mission to instill a sense of worth and confidence in its students, who face very different, often challenging, real-life circumstances outside the riding school's borders. Fletcher Street’s crucial statement contradicts the economic inequality surrounding equestrian sports in America, shedding light on the enduring connection between the African American community and horses.
Get DC/DOX tickets for ‘Fletcher Street.’
‘Jaripeo’
Directed by Efraín Mojica and Rebecca Zweig
71 minutes
France, Mexico, USA. In Spanish and English with English subtitles.
Having already impressed on the festival circuit with stops at Sundance and the Berlinale earlier this year, Jaripeo is an alluring exploration of masculinity and queerness in an unlikely space: the jaripeo, a form of traditional Mexican rodeo. Focusing on two disparate perspectives embedded within the Jaripeo community’s queer subcultures: a closeted cowboy and an out-and-proud superfan, Jaripeo unfolds as a nuanced quest for self-reconciliation in a traditionally hetero-normative environment, shot on Super 8 with style to spare. Jaripeo’s concepts and themes built around queer identity are perfectly timed to celebrate LGBTQ+ Pride Month.
Get DC/DOX tickets for ‘Jaripeo.’
DC/DOX
‘Stalin Boys’
Directed by Ora DeKornfeld and Bianca Giaever
22 Minutes
USA, in English.
Winner of the Audience Award and Special Jury Prize at SXSW 2026, Stalin Boys centers on a middle-school boy named Malachai who has an uncommon historical obsession: the controversial Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. In the dusty, small border town where he lives, Malachai develops a play for the upcoming Texas State History Fair, focusing on the violent pre-World War II purges Stalin carried out to crush his adversaries and consolidate power.
While many teenagers’ eyes would glaze over at the thought of Communist ideology, Malachai approaches his fascination with it with a precocious optimism, preferring to see Stalin not as inherently evil but as morally led astray on his path to domination. Stalin Boys tracks Malachai’s play as it comes to fruition, the highs and lows as he attempts to engage his castmates with the source material. Diving deeper into the source of Malachai’s fixation, the co-directors excavate the contemporary imbalances of power that fuel the young boy’s fervency with touching consideration. Stalin Boys will premiere on New York Times Op-Docs later this year.
Get DC/DOX tickets for ‘Stalin Boys.’
‘Time and Water’
Directed by Sara Dosa
93 Minutes
Iceland, USA. In Icelandic with English subtitles.
A multifaceted exploration of memory and climate change, Time and Water centers around Icelandic writer Andri Snær Magnason and his ancestral links to the dynamic island his family has called home for many generations. Combining archival footage and photography captured by Magnason and his family over the years with spectacular contemporary documentation from the filmmaker, Time and Water dynamically captures the urgent environmental shifts that are expected to melt all of the world’s glaciers within the next two hundred years, with Magnason reflecting on the tremendous impact the natural formations have had on his lineage’s history. Fans of Dosa’s multi-award-winning 2022 feature Fire of Love will certainly resonate with her latest work, which poetically explores themes of human connection and environmentalism in a similar fashion.