The festival says: "Twelve documentaries by some of the most courageous and extraordinary international filmmakers working today." The final addition to this programme has yet to be announced.
What does it mean to be truly awake in a world that seems satisfied to be asleep? Kris and Michal push their experiences of life and love to a breaking point as they restlessly roam the streets of Warsaw in search for answers.
(Country: UK, Poland; Year: 2015; Director: Michal Marczak)
Everything here is sincerely meant but Gobadi struggles to make the stories fit together in any meaningful way, with the scripting paradoxically too loose for most of the film and then suddenly far too on the nose.
Docu-fiction following two Kurds hoping to construct a better future for the next generation.
A group of Kuchi children in Afghanistan dig out old Soviet mines and sell the explosives to child workers in a lapis lazuli mine. When not dreaming of an Afghanistan after the American withdrawal, Gholam Nasir and his gang control the mountains where caravans are smuggling the blue gemstones.
(Country: Belgium, Ireland, Netherlands, Afghanistan; Year: 2016; Director: Pieter-Jan De Pue; Writer: Pieter-Jan De Pue)
World premiere
The Lovers And The Despot
Following the collapse of their glamorous romance, a celebrity director and his actress ex-wife are kidnapped by movie-obsessed dictator Kim Jong-il. Forced to make films in extraordinary circumstances, they get a second chance at love - but only one chance at escape.
(Country: US; Year: 2016; Director: Robert Cannan, Ross Adam)
World premiere
Plaza De La Soledad
For more than 20 years, photographer Maya Goded has intimately documented the lives of a close community of prostitutes in Mexico City. With dignity and humour, these women now strive for a better life - and the possibility of true love.
Having reached the pinnacle of the global art world with his signature explosion events and gunpowder drawings, Chinese contemporary artist Cai Guo-Qiang is still seeking more. We trace his rise from childhood in Mao’s China and his journey to attempt to realise his lifelong obsession, Sky Ladder.
(Country: US; Year: 2016; Director: Kevin Macdonald)
There's often a question mark over how involved a documentarian has become with their subject and here Ghaemmaghami confronts the issue head on, showing how she becomes not just a recorder of what happens but a catalyst for change.
The story of an aspirational young Afghan rapper whose family plan to sell her into marriage.
What starts out as an innocent investigation of a tickling competition turns into something that's no laughing matter.
(Country: New Zealand; Year: 2016; Director: David Farrier, Dylan Reeve; Stars: David Farrier, Dylan Reeve, David Starr, Hal Karp, David D'Amato)
World premiere
We Are X
As glam rock's most flamboyant survivors, X Japan ignited a musical revolution in Japan during the late '80s with their melodic metal. Twenty years after their tragic dissolution, X Japan’s leader, Yoshiki, battles with physical and spiritual demons alongside prejudices of the West to bring their music to the world.
An indigenous leader resists the environmental ruin of Amazonian lands by big business. As he is forced into exile and faces 20 years in prison, his quest reveals conflicting visions that shape the fate of the Amazon and the climate future of our world.
