Now in its 24th year, MoMA’s annual Doc Fortnight festival presents adventurous new nonfiction and hybrid fiction cinema from around the world.

Festival Schedule:

1:00 p.m: Bestiari, Erbari, Lapidari (Bestiaries, Herbaria, Lapidaries)

2024. Italy/Switzerland. Directed by Massimo d’Anolfi, Martina Parenti. North American premiere. In English, German, Italian; English subtitles. 206 min.

Like some modern-day Linnaeus, the Italian filmmaking duo Massimo d’Anolfi and Martina Parenti have created a breathtaking inquiry into humanity’s relationship with the natural world—animals, plants, and minerals—through three distinct storytelling techniques: Bestiaries: Cinema Invents New Cages is a found-footage taxonomy of animals and their treatment throughout the history of cinema; Herbaria: The Cure is an observational documentary about the world’s oldest botanical garden, founded in Padua in 1545, that becomes a hymn to the restorative beauty of plants; and Lapidaries: The Fossils of the Future is a reflection on the role of stones in war, destruction, and memorialization. Some lines of Wordsworth’s poetry come to mind: “The world is too much with us; late and soon,/Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—/Little we see in Nature that is ours;/We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!”

Location: The Roy and Niuta Titus Theater 2

4:00 p.m: Who Cares

2024. Belgium/France/Switzerland. Directed by Alexe Poukine. US premiere. In French; English subtitles. 98 min.

Can “bedside manner” be taught? Certainly it’s in increasingly short supply these days, as overworked and underpaid doctors, nurses, and hospital staff are pressured to prioritize profits and efficiency over compassionate care. But while the quaint image of the country doctor may be a thing of the past, an innovative public hospital in Lausanne, Switzerland, has embarked on an ambitious training program involving the kinds of role-playing scenarios one usually finds in acting rehearsals on stage. Simply by observing these encounters, in the best tradition of documentarians like Frederick Wiseman, Allan King, and Nicolas Phillibert, Alexis Poukine has created drama of the highest order, finding the whole of human emotion in this refreshingly new kind of talking cure.

Location: The Roy and Niuta Titus Theater 1

5:00 p.m: Görünür Görünmez: Bir (Oto)Sansür Antolojisi (Seen Unseen: An Anthology of (Auto)Censorship) & Jericho Walk

Görünür Görünmez: Bir (Oto)Sansür Antolojisi (Seen Unseen: An Anthology of (Auto)Censorship). 2024. Netherlands/Turkey. Directed by Seen Unseen Collective. Directed by Fırat Yücel, Erhan Örs, Hakan Bozyurt, Can Memiş, Sibil Çekmen, Serra Akcan, Nadir Sönmez, belit sağ. North American premiere . In Turkish, English, Kurdish; English subtitles. 66 min.

It’s a dangerous time to be a journalist, activist, historian, or artist in Turkey. In this politically courageous anthology film, an eight member collective formed by Altyazı Fasikül from Turkey recounts stories of journalistic and artistic repression in contemporary Turkey, questioning the limits of free expression and the risks of (self-)censorship, lawsuits, violence, and imprisonment. Using an arsenal of material—clandestine footage, encrypted communications, eyewitness testimonials, reenactments, and long-suppresed documentation—the filmmakers bear witness to the Gezi protests of 2013, the Armenian genocide, the violation of the rights of political prisoners, and the secret cruising spots of Istanbul where the gay scene is still mostly underground.

Jericho Walk. 2025. USA. Directed by Jim McKay, Jeff Reichert, Farihah Zaman. World premiere. In English, Spanish, Arabic, Kreyòl, Tamil, Nahuatl, and Kiswahili; no subtitles. 47 min.

Following a tradition of protest and silent prayer that goes back some 3,000 years, the religious and secular volunteers of the New Sanctuary Coalition make seven revolutions around the New York Immigration Court at 26 Federal Plaza, expressing their solidarity with migrants whose fates hang in the balance. Subjected to myriad indignities and the trauma of knowing they can be separated from their families or deported at any time, these are the victims of an increasingly cruel and unjust immigration system in the United States. Award-winning filmmakers Jim McKay, Jeff Reichert, and Farihah Zaman, working with the brilliant sound designer Ernst Karel, document a political action that took place in December 2019.

Location: The Roy and Niuta Titus Theater 2

7:30 p.m: Bogancloch

2024. UK/Germany/Iceland. Directed by Ben Rivers. US premiere. 86 min.

Like some long-lost calotype of the pioneering 19th-century Scottish photographers David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, Ben Rivers’s Bogancloch is an almost transcendentalist portrait of man and nature, witnessing (and staging) Jake Williams, a forest dweller, as he weathers the Scottish wilds with quiet dignity and rugged self-reliance. A bewitching alchemy exists between the filmmaker and his protagonist—reflected in Rivers’s coruscating 16mm celluloid cinematography—as the man we’ve observed for more than a decade in previous collaborations like This Land Is My Land, More Than Just a Dram, and Two Years at Sea now faces down his own mortality.

Location: The Roy and Niuta Titus Theater 2