The extent to which the documentary film has evolved was once again evident this year at DocFest Sheffield (10–15 June 2026). The classic ideal of Direct Cinema or Cinéma Vérité has given way to a wide variety of cinematic possibilities. Whereas the pioneers of Direct Cinema, such as Richard Leacock and D.A. Pennebaker did not appear on screen themselves, the documentary form has become significantly more personal today. As in literature, auto-fictional storytelling has also found its way into documentary film.
A fine example of the latter is *The Wanted 18*, which was screened within the context of a special focus on Palestine. Although the film premiered at the Toronto Film Festival in 2014, it has, remarkably, lost none of its relevance. At the beginning, we see the filmmaker, Amer Shomali, in the Jerusalem desert as he recounts how he grew up in a Syrian refugee camp, where there were no distractions and he spent his time reading comics. It was there that he came across the story of the 18 cows in the town of Beit Sahour during the first Intifada in 1987. During the boycott of Israeli products, a group of Palestinian activists decided to produce their own milk and bought 18 cows from a kibbutz. As the Intifada escalated and was accompanied by a tax boycott, the Israeli army responded with heightened repression; the cows were declared a ‘threat to the security of the State of Israel’ and were to be slaughtered. But overnight, the cows had disappeared and were never found by the occupying forces.
Amer Shomali and his Canadian co-writer Paul Cowan tell the story using a variety of artistic techniques – interviews with those involved at the time, archive footage, animated drawings and black-and-white re-enactments. Four cows are given names and, using stop-motion animation, become talking characters, which provides plenty of humorous moments. The boycott and the intifada came to an end when Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat signed the Oslo Accords and were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
The film “Birds of War,” which premiered at Sundance, has been screened at various festivals and was enthusiastically acclaimed in Sheffield, is also a very personal story. Syrian activist and reporter Abd Alkader Habak sends reports to BBC editor Janay Boulos from the city of Aleppo, which is under siege by the government forces. When the resistance in Aleppo collapses, Habak leaves the city along with the majority of the remaining population. His correspondence with Janay becomes increasingly intense and personal. When Habak is forced to flee to Turkey, the two meet in person for the first time and become a couple. They eventually marry there and go on to make a life together in London – though their families must not find out, as Janay comes from a Christian family in Lebanon and Habak is a Muslim. Janay leaves the BBC and travels to Lebanon to document the popular uprising in Beirut, which seemed like a revolution but ultimately collapsed. She has since set up her own production company and is working on documentary and fictional projects in the Middle East.
It is surprising to realise just how much authentic footage the BBC World Service uses in its reporting – significantly more than in Germany’s public service media. It makes a noticeable difference whether a reporter is reporting from the scene rather than from Cairo or Istanbul. Particularly at the start of the film, we are confronted with images – such as bombings and rescue operations – that we have never seen before. On the one hand, Habak is so traumatised by his experiences of the war that he is undergoing therapy in London; on the other hand, he suffers from no longer being able to report from Syria. Following the fall of the Assad regime, we see him travelling to Aleppo and reuniting with his family in Idlib. “Birds of War” spans a period of 13 years. What begins amidst the bombardment of the Syrian civil war develops into a deeply moving love story that sounds almost too sentimental to be true. The current situation, with the Israeli invasion and the bombing of Beirut and Tyre, could provide the material for a possible sequel.
“Time Machine Maidan” by Roman Liubyi and Volodymyr Tykhyy, which had its world premiere in Sheffield, also surprises with an unusual form of docu-fiction. A soldier who was killed at the front returns as a virtual voice to the Maidan protests in autumn 2013. He sets out in search of his friend and mentor, the poet Maksym Kryvtsov, to warn him of his subsequent death in the war. This is staged as a fairy-tale-like journey through time, featuring hallucinatory imagery. It becomes very real when we arrive at the Maidan to witness the demonstrations against President Yanukovych’s government. The filmmakers draw on documentary footage from 20 activists who recorded their impressions on video at the time. What we see is rather chaotic: clashes with the Interior Ministry’s Berkut units; much remains superficial, as the activists film whatever comes into view. In one sequence, the dead and injured are carried away. The protagonists are young and idealistic; their demand for freedom and democracy serves as the central theme. The film suggests a consistent thread running from the protests of that time to today’s struggle on the front line. Yet there is no one who flees abroad or evades conscription. That would not fit with the pathos that characterises the film.