DocTalk 2026

FILMING CHILDHOOD — FRAGILITY, IMAGINATION, RESPONSIBILITY

Children are among the most vivid and unpredictable presences in documentary — spontaneous, imaginative, and often revealing truths adults can’t. But filming with them also demands patience, empathy, and deep responsibility. In Flophouse America, a 12-year-old boy navigates the instability of his parents’ addiction and poverty. Over the years of filming, director Monica Strømdahl developed an extraordinary intimacy and sensitivity to how this child experiences hardship and hope. In The Castle, three children transform a crumbling building in Palermo into a world of their own making, and the filmmakers capture the boundless play and self-invention that emerge when adults step back. Directors of both films reflect on the craft and ethics of working with young subjects — how to balance care and authorship, how to give children space to shape their own narratives, what ethical obligations arise when the camera captures something troubling, and how time itself reshapes the relationship between filmmaker and child.

NO JUSTICE, NO RELIEF — A PROVOCATION ABOUT CATHARSIS IN DOCUMENTARY

In an era obsessed with true crime twists and courtroom drama, we’ve grown used to chasing a feeling — that satisfying sense of “finally, justice.” But what if that feeling isn’t justice at all? What if the emotional release documentaries often promise — the catharsis — quietly reinforces the same punitive logic many of us hope our films disrupt? Drawing from her essay No Justice No Relief, filmmaker Brett Story invites the documentary community to interrogate a core assumption: are we giving audiences understanding, or just comfort? And more provocatively: when our films deliver catharsis, do we risk reinforcing the carceral system we claim to question? Brett Story connects the ethics of nonfiction storytelling with abolitionist ideas — not as merely academic theory, but as a challenge to how we frame conflict, harm, and accountability on screen. How else might documentaries work? What forms defy the demand for neat endings? What if refusing catharsis opens up new space for justice — or at least for truth? A talk designed to unsettle, spark debate, and push documentary filmmaking toward bolder, more imaginative possibilities. Followed by a short conversation and Q&A.

IN CONVERSATION WITH KIRSTEN JOHNSON

Across three decades, Kirsten Johnson (Cameraperson, Dick Johnson Is Dead) has been one of the pivotal figures shaping contemporary documentary cinema into what we know it as today. Working in a landscape where women’s authorship was often overlooked, she forged her own path as a cinematographer, collaborating on some of the most influential documentaries of recent decades. Through this work she not only carved out her own authorship, but also helped redefine what it means to film another person. In 2016 she stepped to the forefront to direct her own work. What seemed like a new career path was, in fact, the continuation of a long-standing inquiry. As she has said, “Directing Cameraperson wasn’t a departure — it was finally the moment I could be responsible for the questions I’d been asking all along with the camera.”

In this 90-minute conversation, Johnson reflects on the physical and emotional experience of holding a camera, and on the evolving ethics of nonfiction in an age of constant image- making. The session traces her filmmaking evolution in tandem with a period of profound change in how images are made and understood — showing how a life spent seeing for and with others has crystallised into a filmmaking voice unmistakably her own.