EXCLUSIVE: The prestigious True/False Film Fest announced a 2026 lineup packed with world premieres and prize-winning films.
The 23rd edition of the nonfiction cinematic showcase, running March 5-8 in Columbia, MO, will unveil 21 world premieres, three U.S. premieres, and four North American premieres. Overall, 62 features and shorts have been selected for the program, chosen from about 1,500 submissions around the world. Scroll for the full lineup.
Nuisance Bear will head to True/False fresh from winning the Grand Jury Prize for U.S. Documentary at Sundance. It will be joined at T/F by To Hold a Mountain, winner of the Grand Jury Prize for World Cinema Documentary at Sundance, along with several other newly minted Sundance prize winners.
Feature-length films that will hold their world premieres at True/False include First They Came for My College, directed by Patrick Xavier Bresnan (USA); The Great Experiment, directed by Steve Maing & Eric Daniel Metzgar (USA, México); How to Clean a House in Ten Easy Steps, directed by Carolina Gonzalez (USA, Colombia, México); Landscapes of Memory, directed by Leah Galant (Germany, USA); Mary Oliver: Saved by the Beauty of the World, directed by Sasha Waters (USA); Phenomena, directed by Josef Gatti (Australia); Pinball, directed by Naveen Chaubal (USA); School for Defectors, directed by Jeremy Workman (USA, South Korea); What Comes From Sitting in Silence?, directed by Sophie Schrago (France, South Korea, Switzerland, USA); and What Moves America, directed by Yael Bridge (USA).
Ross McElwee’s Remake, winner of the recently created Golden Globes Prize for Documentary, will celebrate its North American premiere at True/False. Fellow North American premieres include Bucks Harbor, directed by Pete Muller (USA); Care (Cuidadoras), directed by Martina Matzkin and Gabriela Uassouf (Argentina); and The Queen And The Smokehouse directed by Iga Lis (Poland).
Three short films will hold their U.S. premieres at True/False: Auto Queens, directed by Sraiyanti Haricharan (India); High Rise Pigs, directed by Ang Siew Ching (Finland); and No Mean City, directed by Ross McClean (United Kingdom).
Oscar-nominated filmmaker Yance Ford (Strong Island, Power) serves as Visiting Artistic Director of the Festival. In a statement, Ford said, “This lineup is full of filmmakers who are paying attention to place, to history, to craft, and small moments that can open into something much larger. Not surprisingly, the films in this year’s lineup also respond to the time in which we are living. A program that responds to the present moment was part of our goal as a programming team. Across both features and shorts, you will sense artists engaging with issues through a broad lens: the personal relationships that define us and the communities in which we live. Most of all, you will feel artists testing the boundaries of non-fiction while staying anchored to lived experience. The program is surprising, bracing and often beautiful. We’re grateful for the chance to bring these films to Columbia, Missouri to experience them together.”
The festival is a presentation of the Rag Tag Film Society. This year’s slate was programmed by Bedatri Choudhury, Amada Torruella, and Ford. The full schedule and screening details will be released by Feb. 9.
“In keeping with the core values of the Ragtag Film Society, True/False is committed to inclusion and transparency and continues to track demographic data,” Rag Tag notes. “Of the 74 filmmakers, 47 self-identify as women or nonbinary and 47 self-identify as people of color.”
This is the full slate for the 23rd edition of True/False:
TRUE/FALSE FILM FEST 2026 FEATURE AND SHORT FILMS
AANIKOOBIJIGAN [ANCESTOR / GREAT-GRANDPARENT / GREAT-GRANDCHILD] Dirs. Adam Khalil & Zachary Khalil // 2026 // USA, Denmark // 85 min
As one Michigan tribal organization works to repatriate ancestral remains, the filmmakers probe the roleof cultural institutions and archival collections, while holding space for collective mourning.
ALWAYS Dir. Deming Chen // 2025 // USA, China, France,Taiwan // 87 min
Amidst the mountains of China’s Hunan region, a young boy finds magic in poetry and then watches it disappear with time.
AMERICAN DOCTOR Dir. Poh Si Teng // 2026 // United States //State of Palestine // Malaysia //Qatar 90 min
Vérité follows three physician friends—Palestinian, Jewish, and Zoroastrian—from a besieged Gaza hospital to the halls of Congress, fighting to save lives.
ANCESTRAL KNOWLEDGE Dir. Ruby Chasi // 2025 // Ecuador // 18 min
We accompany Napuruna midwives in the Ecuadorian Amazon as they assist a birth.
AUTO QUEENS (US Premiere) Dir. Sraiyanti Haricharan // 2025 // India // 31 min
In Chennai, India we follow a tender and intimate friendship between two drivers from their state’s first women-led rickshaw union.
BARBARA FOREVER Dir. Brydie O’Connor // 2026 // US // 102 min
A dreamlike portrait of lesbian experimental pioneer Barbara Hammer, making use of Hammer’s own films and personal archive to explore her work, loves and legacy.
BEND IN THE RIVER, THE Dir. Robb Moss // 2025 // USA // 82 min
Robb Moss completes his Riverdogs trilogy, returning to five friends in their 70s as lifelong friendship meets the sharp edges of memory, loss, and mortality.
BORN SECRET Dir. Riley Fitchpatrick // 2025 // USA // 19 min
Having grown up in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, a filmmaker digs into the legacy of a town founded on the prospect of nuclear war.
BOYS AND THE BEES, THE Dir. Arielle Knight // 2025 // USA // 19 min
A farm in Georgia paints a picture of pastoral idyll as little boys learn lessons in life and love from their beekeeping parents.
BROKEN ENGLISH Dirs. Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard // 2026 // United Kingdom // 96 min
Genre defying portrait of Marianne Faithfull, made with her full involvement and led by Tilda Swinton; celebrates six decades of fearless reinvention and enduring artistry.
BUCKS HARBOR (North American Premiere) Dir. Pete Muller // 2026// USA // 98 min
The fishermen of Bucks Harbor in Downeast Maine share vulnerable reflections on their harsh upbringing in this ode to lives lived on the margins.
BUCKSKIN (World Premiere) Dir. Mars Verrone // 2025 // USA // 17 min
A filmmaker looks to their grandfather, a forester inside academia and the U.S. Forest Service, asking how one life resists, survives, and protects community within institutions that reject you.
CARE (CUIDADORAS) (North American Premiere) Dirs. Martina Matzkin & Gabriela Uassouf // 2025 // Argentina // 80 min
Set in Argentina, Cuidadoras (Care) follows three transgender women caring for the elderly senior residence. Deep bonds grow and a model of empathy and connection emerges.
CLOSURE Dir. Michał Marczak // 2026 // Poland // 108 min
After his teenage son vanishes, Daniel searches Poland’s Vistula River, suspended between fear of a fatal leap and stubborn hope his son survives.
DIARIES (True Vision Award Repertory) Dir. Ed Pincus // 1976 // USA // 210 min
Filmed between 1971 and 1976, Ed Pincus’s Diaries (1971–1976) is a landmark of personal nonfiction, tracing five years of marriage with Jane Pincus, co-author of Our Bodies, Ourselves, as they test the promises and pressures of an open relationship, and let the camera hold what love, freedom, and consequence leave behind.
DIVISION (World Premiere) Dir. Paul Dallas // 2025 // USA // 14 min
Spring, 2025. Brooklyn, New York. One chapter closes and another begins.
ENDLINGS (World Premiere) Dir. María Luisa Santos // 2025 // USA // 16 min
A filmmaker wanders churches, DNA labs, and ghostly archives, asking what endures when what we love is vanishing.
EYES OF GHANA Dir. Ben Proudfoot // 2025 // USA, Ghana, United Kingdom // 90 min
90-year-old filmmaker, Chris Hesse, recounts his career and, through it, recovers and resurrects the history of Ghanaian cinema.
ESCALATION (World Premiere) Dir. AJ Schnack // 2026 // USA // 36 min
Over a dozen U.S. journalists recount being targeted by police while covering protests, revealing escalating state efforts to suppress a free press.
FIRST THEY CAME FOR MY COLLEGE (World Premiere) Dir. Patrick Xavier Bresnan // 2026 // USA // 105 min
As conservatives take over the leadership of New College of Florida, a group of students join hands with their professor to resist and reclaim their alma mater.
FRED’S BASEMENT BIJOU (World Premiere) Dir. Michael T. Vollmann // 2025 // USA // 13 min
In Racine, Wisconsin, a former insurance agent builds a surreal and alternate reality in his home’s basement—a fully functioning 1920s movie palace.
GATORVILLE Dir. Freddie Gluck // 2025 // USA // 19 min
As young siblings grow older, they contemplate a future that lies beyond the limits of their home—a tilapia farm turned into an alligator sanctuary.
GREAT EXPERIMENT, THE (World Premiere) Dirs. Steve Maing & Eric Daniel Metzgar // 2025 // USA, México // 100 min
A collage of stunning black and white vignettes chronicle everyday political life from 2017 to 2020 in the United States.
HAIR, PAPER, WATER… Dirs. Trương Minh Quý & Nicolas Graux // 2025 // Belgium, France, Vietnam // 71 min
In a quiet and poetic film, a grandmother imparts wisdom to her many grandchildren. Ultimately, arming them with language to understand life itself.
HIGH RISE PIGS (US Premiere) Dir. Ang Siew Ching // 2025 // Finland // 15 min
In a massive pig farm in China, a dystopia unfolds; not in blood and gore but in a quiet and disarming way.
HOTLINE, THE Dir. Ricki Stern and Jesse Sweet // 2026 // USA // 36 min
Portrait of an anonymous overdose hotline where people call before using, and volunteers stay on the line, racing against time, forging collective hope amid addiction.
HOW TO CLEAN A HOUSE IN TEN EASY STEPS (World Premiere) Dir. Carolina Gonzalez // 2026 // USA, Colombia, México // 80 min
A mother and daughter create a shared fantasy to explore their intertwined experiences of immigration, labor, and womanhood.
IMPOSSIBLE ADDRESS, AN Dir. Suneil Sanzgiri // 2025 // USA, India, Angola // 38 min
An essay on Afro-Asian solidarity highlights the importance of interconnectedness in a rapidly changing world, through digital animation, 3D scanning and archival material.
IN EXCHANGE FOR FLESH Dirs. Corey Devon Arthur and Sandro Ramani // 2025 // USA // 15 min
Through recorded calls, smuggled footage, and state archival, this unflinching record exposes a violent state-sanctioned prison practice known as “strip frisk”.
JARIPEO Dirs. Efraín Mojica & Rebecca Zweig // 2026 // México, USA, France // 67 min
Neon-lit nights and rodeos pulsing with norteño rhythms frame a complex portrait of masculinity as the filmmaker traces an intimate journey with their own identity in Michoacán.
JISM (BODY) Dir. Husain Qaizar // 2025 // Pakistan // 13 min
When aspiring male models get photographed in Pakistan, they end up pushing the limits of socially-decreed gender roles and taboos.
L’MINA Dir. Randa Maroufi // 2025 // France, Morocco, Qatar // 26 min
In Jerada, Morocco, retired miners pose for a portrait, then reenact the dangerous underground work that still continues—clandestinely—because no other livelihood exists.
LAND OF COLD (World Premiere) Dir. Hervé Demers // 2025 // Canada // 17 min
Immigrants from Sub-Saharan Africa have chosen to start their lives over north of the 49th parallel. Here, in the vast expanses of Northern Canada, they reflect on the challenges and splendors of a season they’ve never yet experienced: winter.
LANDSCAPES OF MEMORY (World Premiere) Dir. Leah Galant // 2026 // Germany, USA // 77 min
As a Jewish American filmmaker studies her past in Berlin, she grapples with the reality of her trauma being weaponized to inflict violence on Palestinians.
MARY OLIVER: SAVED BY THE BEAUTY OF THE WORLD (World Premiere) Dir. Sasha Waters // 2026 // USA // 91 min
Portrait of Mary Oliver, Pulitzer-winning poet and private queer icon, whose plainspoken wonder for woods, dogs, and living reaches readers across every divide.
NO MEAN CITY (US Premiere) Dir. Ross McClean // 2025 // United Kingdom // 15 min
The switch from sodium-vapor street lights to LED street lights reveals an Irish community holding onto tradition while technology changes daily life.
NUISANCE BEAR Dirs. Gabriela Osio Vanden & Jack Weisman // 2026 // USA, Canada, United Kingdom // 90 min
In Manitoba, we see the world through the perspective of a polar bear and question who deserves to be in the icy port town—the bears or the tourists?
OLDEST PERSON IN THE WORLD, THE Dir. Sam Green // 2026 // USA // 87 min
A ten-year quest to meet the world’s oldest living people by record becomes a meditation on time and life itself.
ONE LAST ORDER (World Premiere) Dirs. Lauren DeFilippo and Sam Soko // 2025 // USA // 21 min
On her final shift at a Gainesville drive-thru, a beloved cashier is surprised with the day’s earnings, as a town lines up to say goodbye.
PÁA’TENEHU (WAIT FOR ME) (World Premiere) Dir. Thiago Zanato // 2025 // México // 11 min
As a storm batters Southeast México, a family shelters in their butcher shop, listening to their grandmother tell stories, and clinging to hope for their missing father.
PASS TIME (World Premiere) Dir. Jj Measer // 2025 // US // 16 min
Set against one of the most contentious U.S. elections, PASS TIME reflects on how news and political rhetoric seep quietly into everyday life.
PHENOMENA (World Premiere) Dir. Josef Gatti // 2025 // Australia // 86 min
Partnering with his physics teacher father, the filmmaker embarks on a fantastical journey where the universe opens up in all its glory and magic.
PINBALL (World Premiere) Dir. Naveen Chaubal // 2026 // USA // 86 min
In this contemplative coming of age portrait, Yosef, a spirited athlete, is becoming more aware of his family history, after being displaced from their Iraqi homeland.
PLACE OF ABSENCE, A Dir. Marialuisa Ernst// 2025 // USA, Bolivia // 86 min
Amidst organized movements across the Americas, a filmmaker examines grief shaped by unresolved loss, while unpacking her uncle’s disappearance during Argentina’s Videla dictatorship.
POWWOW PEOPLE Dir. Sky Hopinka // 2025// USA // 88 min
An immersive vérité portrait of contemporary Native powwow culture and a vibrant celebration of community and culture captured from inside the circle.
QUEEN AND THE SMOKEHOUSE, THE (North American Premiere) Dir. Iga Lis // 2025 // Poland // 65 min
In Łeba, Poland, Miecia, lovingly referred to as the “Queen,” serves legendary fish, revealing the quiet power of locally owned institutions.
REMAKE (True Vision Award) (North American Premiere) Dir. Ross McElwee // 2025 // USA // 116 min
Ross McElwee assembles decades of footage of his son Adrian, confronting time, grief, and authorship; while a stalled Sherman’s March remake haunts the margins.
SAME WATER (World Premiere) Dir. Martine Granby // 2025 // USA // 21 min
Archival footage and research come together to resurrect the memory of Florida’s Paradise Park, a waterpark that was a site for Black middle class leisure in Jim Crow America.
SCHOOL FOR DEFECTORS (World Premiere) Dir. Jeremy Workman // 2026 // USA, SOUTH KOREA // 97 min
In a school in Busan, teenagers come of age bearing the weight of their parents’ decision to risk their lives and escape North Korea.
SEIZED Dir. Sharon Liese // 2026 // USA // 92 min
A newspaper in Marion, Kansas, becomes the microcosm mirroring the nation-wide fight between democracy, the free press, and repression.
SHERMAN’S MARCH (True Vision Award Repertory) Dir. Ross McElwee, 1987 // USA // 157 min
Documentary filmmaker Ross McElwee sets out to make a movie about Union General Sherman’s March to the Sea towards the end of the American Civil War, but keeps getting sidetracked by his own love life.
SOLE (얼) (World Premiere) Dir. Haneol Lee // 2025 // USA // 2025 // 12 min
An observational portrait of a Korean American cobbler in Nashville, revealing how pride in craft becomes a way of being.
SONS OF DETROIT Dir. Jeremy Xido // 2025 // USA // 104 min
A filmmaker looks back at the Detroit he called home and questions the social forces that made him move far away.
SOUL PATROL Dir. J.M. Harper // 2026 // USA // 99 min
After fifty years, the Vietnam War’s first and only Black special operations team reunites, revealing a hidden history and seeking peace through reckoning.
SUDAKAS Dir. Ricardo Betancourt // 2025 // USA // 13 min
Ricardo shares the realities of working a low-wage job in the U.S. through the lived experiences of his mother, a college-educated immigrant from Venezuela.
TCB – THE TONI CADE BAMBARA SCHOOL OF ORGANIZING Dirs. Monica Henriquez & Louis Massiah // 2025 // USA, Canada, France, Senegal, UK // 105 min
An archival-rich biography of writer-activist Toni Cade Bambara, whose novels, essays, and filmmaking galvanized movements, illuminated by testimonies from Toni Morrison, Nikky Finney, and Haile Gerima.
TIME AND WATER Dir. Sara Dosa // 2026 // Iceland, USA // 90 min
Illuminating a family’s shared memories with Iceland’s first melted glacier caused by climate change, Time and Water portrays a writer trying to preserve his connection to the natural world.
TO HOLD A MOUNTAIN Drs. Biljana Tutorov and Petar Glomazić // 2026 // Serbia, France, Montenegro, Slovenia, Croatia // 105 min
In Montenegro’s remote highlands, shepherd Gara and her daughter Nada defend their ancestral mountain from a NATO training ground, driven by love for their land and way of life.
TROPICAL PARK Dir. Hansel Porras Garcia // 2025 // USA // 85 min
In one single take, a pair of siblings talk about racism, transphobia, past lives and, somehow, also fit in a driving lesson.
TRUE NORTH Dir. Michèle Stephenson // 2025// USA, Canada // 96 min
A deep archival dig tells us about 1969’s Black student protests at Montreal’s Concordia University. In teaching us history, it teaches us about our presents.
WHAT COMES FROM SITTING IN SILENCE? (World Premiere) Dir. Sophie Schrago // 2026 // France, South Korea, Switzerland, USA // 76 min
Within the quiet confines of a small courtroom—the first Islamic-law court in Mumbai—Judge Khatoon and her team guide families and empower women to speak out against violence.
WHAT MOVES AMERICA (World Premiere) Dir. Yael Bridge // 2026 // 87 min
Across America, UPS workers come together to demand better working conditions as they go about criss-crossing the world, delivering packages and connecting lives.
YOU DO NOT EXIST Dir. Dwayne LeBlanc // 2026// USA // 8 min
As planes fill and empty the sky above, a man lies in his garden letting his mind wander and collect memories.
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