Welcome to the 28th annual Full Frame Documentary Film Festival!

We are enormously proud of this year’s event and are so pleased to share it with you. We are always awed by how much attention and energy goes into a celebration so fleeting— the four days pass by far too quickly—but our hope is that the experience of discovering these documentaries will be as revelatory and rewarding for you as it is for us. You are the reason we are here. Our intention is that the films you see at Full Frame will continue to inspire new ideas and lasting conversations long after the festival tent folds.

Developing and producing the festival is an exercise rooted in creativity, collaboration, and expertise: six full-time staff members spend a year imagining and engineering how the festival will unfold. There is something thrilling, and occasionally daunting, about knowing that we have one chance to get it right before we begin thinking, and dreaming, about the next spring—by May, we will have begun planning for Full Frame 2027.

The annual work of realizing those visions and plans is not ours alone. There are many, many people who take part in making this festival possible each year—the advisors who give shape to the program, the supporters who invest in its continuity, and you, the filmgoers, who truly bring Full Frame to life. While a dedicated team spends a year bringing the festival to fruition, its success belongs to everyone who participates in its creation.

We want to extend special thanks to the partners and individuals, including the hundreds of dedicated volunteers, who sustain this meaningful endeavor. We are also deeply appreciative of the support of our sponsors and donors. Last fall, Full Frame launched a new membership program, the 1998 Society, and we especially wish to acknowledge the inaugural members for investing in the festival’s future. Full Frame is incredibly fortunate to call Durham home, and we remain grateful to all the local venues and vendors who host us and come together to share our city. Duke University’s immense support is integral to Full Frame’s international reach and embrace of the documentary community.

We are thrilled to honor Dawn Porter with our 2026 Full Frame Tribute and to host screenings of her incredible films over the next few days. We are equally proud that Robert Greene has curated this year’s thematic program, Extremely Rich Theater: Staging, Performance, and Elasticity in American Nonfiction Film. This selection of fifteen films is meant to encourage reflection on how we define documentary and what it means to tell true stories.

Seventy-two films will screen over the course of the festival. Each title represents the many people—filmmakers, artists, and professionals—who allow Full Frame to take part in sharing their invaluable, luminous, and provocative work.

Thank you again for joining us for the 2026 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival.

Emily Foster and Sadie Tillery
Co-Directors, Full Frame Documentary Film Festival