2026 Thematic Program

Acclaimed filmmaker Robert Greene will curate Full Frame Documentary Film Festival’s 2026 Thematic Program, titled “Extremely Rich Theater: Staging, Performance, and Elasticity in American Nonfiction Film.”

The program of films will address a central question: How can staged scenes and performance lead a viewer to recognize more deeply what is real and/or true? Greene’s own body of work invites similar questions. In documenting actors and non-actors engaged in sometimes manufactured conceits, Greene encourages reflection around the space between performance and authenticity.

“Artistic choices, whether subtle or exaggerated, are inherent to the documentary form, and yet, the introduction of fictional elements in a film—re-enactments or scripted narration—can generate discomfort,” says Festival Co-Director and Artistic Director Sadie Tillery. “With this year’s program, I wanted to explore the ways artifice can encourage a deeper examination of true stories.”

“There are all these questions about what authenticity is and what authenticity means,” explains Greene. “But those questions misunderstand documentary cinema. Documentary has never been about what is true and what is false—documentary is about using the tools of filmmaking to get at something deeper. This is nothing new.”

This line of questioning dates to the very beginning of cinema, says Greene. Full Frame’s 2026 Thematic Program echoes that history, encompassing six features, eight short films, and one series plotted against 12 decades of the American documentary landscape. The lineup also features Nathan Fielder’s series The Rehearsal, Season 2, which will be screened in its entirety as a single showing. 

Greene will present each film in the lineup and lead post-screening discussions.

“As a filmmaker, I think constantly about how my own work is in conversation with other works that came before,” said Greene. “These are the movies I am obsessed with, that I want audiences to understand in a different way.”   

Greene drew the program’s title from a favorite book: David Shields’ Reality Hunger, which positions nonfiction art as “a staging area for the investigation of any claim of facts and truth—an extremely rich theater.”

Separate from the Thematic Program, Full Frame will host a screening of Greene’s Netflix-distributed and Oscar®-shortlisted film Procession (2021). Greene debuted his first feature documentary, Owning the Weather, at Full Frame in 2009, followed by Kate Plays Christine in 2016 and Bisbee ’17 in 2018. Greene co-created the Murray Center for Documentary Journalism, where he currently serves as Filmmaker-in-Chief, and has written about documentary for outlets including Sight & Sound and Hyperallergic.

The 28th annual Full Frame Documentary Film Festival takes place April 16–19 in downtown Durham, NC. Passes are on sale now.

Extremely Rich Theater: Staging, Performance, and Elasticity in American Nonfiction Film

Alone / (Director: Garrett Bradley)  
This stirringly poetic documentary puts a human face on the ravages of the American carceral state as a conflicted young woman contemplates marrying her imprisoned boyfriend. 

America / (Director: Garrett Bradley)
Inspired by the earliest surviving feature film with an all-Black cast and through a series of vignettes rooted in New Orleans, America challenges the idea of Black cinema as a wave or “movement in time,” proposing instead a continuous thread of achievement.

Bisbee ’17 SHORT FILM (no. 2 of 6) / (Director: Robert Greene)
A short film from unused material from BISBEE ’17 that deconstructs the circumstances around the two deaths on the day of the Bisbee Deportation in 1917.

Bushman / (Director: David Schickele)
When Paul Okpokam arrived in the U.S. in 1968, David Schickele decided to make a film about his Nigerian friend’s experience of coming to teach at San Francisco State College. Truth is stranger than fiction in Bushman, a rare sort of film portrait, part document, part imagined, and poetic in its approach to real events.

Concepto de Ciudadano / (Director: Sharon Quintana-Ortiz)
Inside the installations of a deportation center, a Mexican immigrant hears the innocent question: Where are you from? His answer determines which side of the Mexican American border he belongs to. Years after proving he is an American citizen, the fear of losing the life he built in the streets of L.A. makes him hide parts of his life story.

The Cool World / (Director: Shirley Clarke) 
Shirley Clarke’s vérité-style portrait follows Duke, a fifteen-year-old member of a Harlem youth gang, the Royal Pythons. Made in 1963 and produced by Frederick Wiseman, the narrative features a cast of non-actors filmed on location.

The Cruise / (Director: Bennett Miller)
Sailing the streets of Manhattan atop a double-decker bus, Timothy “Speed” Levitch waxes philosophical as the city’s most eccentric tour guide. Bennett Miller’s groundbreaking debut feature captures Speed’s bombastic and psychedelic poetry.

Ghosts of Sugar Land / (Director: Bassam Tariq) 
Shocked when their friend embraces extremism, a group of Muslim Americans in Texas recount their time with him and theories about his fate.  

Kid Auto Races at Venice / (Director: Henry Lehrman)
Set against the backdrop of a cart competition in California, Charlie Chaplin stars as “The Tramp”—a spectator who repeatedly interrupts the race to the increasing frustration of organizers and bystanders.

Life of an American Fireman / (Director: Edwin S. Porter)
One of the earliest American films, this seven-minute short visualizes the rescue of a woman and child, following the fireman who breaks through their bedroom window to bring them to safety.

Life Without Dreams / (Director: Jessica Bardsley)
This short film is set within the outer space of consciousness, where the surfaces of far out planetary bodies form the terrain for an exploration of insomnia.

Man of Aran / (Director: Robert Flaherty)
Stunning location photography and brilliant montage editing build a forceful drama of life on the Aran Islands and islanders’ Herculean efforts to survive in unbearably harsh conditions.

Not a Pretty Picture / (Director: Martha Coolidge)
A high-stakes experiment in metacinema that broke new ground with its uncompromising examination of date rape, Not a Pretty Picture brings a stunning immediacy to questions about the on-screen representation of sexual violence and the limits of artistic catharsis.

Punishment Park / (Director: Peter Watkins)
In this harrowing documentary-style fiction film, set during the Nixon presidency, convicted dissidents are offered the choice between life imprisonment and three days in “Punishment Park”—a barren, desert landscape where they are pursued by armed forces.

The Rehearsal / (Director: Nathan Fielder) 
Nathan Fielder allows ordinary people to prepare for life’s biggest moments by “rehearsing” them in carefully crafted simulations. 

Special Presentation

Procession / (Director: Robert Greene)

Six men who were sexually abused by Catholic clergy as boys become a makeshift family and find empowerment by creating films inspired by their trauma.