• From May 6 to 11, the Cine Doré will host a cycle dedicated to the great Palestinian filmmaker Kamal Aljafari.
• Four films will explore the collective memory of the Palestinian people through archival cinema.
• Among these titles is his latest feature film, A Fidai Film.
• The cycle is part of the parallel program of Documenta Madrid 2025.

Documenta Madrid, the International Documentary Film Festival of the City of Madrid, in collaboration with Filmoteca Española, an institution of the Ministry of Culture responsible for preserving and disseminating film and cinematographic heritage, presents in its 22nd edition one of the most intense and necessary retrospectives in contemporary cinema: Kamal Aljafari: The Archive as Territory. This cycle will be shown at Cine Doré from May 6 to 11 and is part of the festival’s parallel program.

Kamal Aljafari, an internationally recognized Palestinian filmmaker, is a tireless collector of images who has dedicated his filmography to reconstructing the threatened memory of a people, both personally and collectively. The selection, consisting of four feature films —Port of Memory (2009), Recollection (2015), An Unusual Summer (2020), and his recent A Fidai Film (2024)— is structured as a radical journey through his work, challenging conventional approaches to this theme.

With a language that straddles documentary and essay cinema, Aljafari composes from absence, reveals what is not there, and transforms the archive into both a political and aesthetic tool. As noted by the programming committee of Documenta Madrid, “Aljafari’s cinema not only denounces, it also imagines; his work teaches us that another narrative is possible, one that resists through editing, through poetry, through the persistence of memory.”

The screenings at Filmoteca Española are part of this year’s thematic focus at the festival, which revolves around the archive image as a trigger for new forms of memory, thus reinforcing Documenta Madrid's commitment to critical thought, formal experimentation, and the most radical cinematographic practices.

Documenta Madrid 2025
Documenta Madrid, the International Film Festival of the City of Madrid, celebrates its 22nd edition from May 6 to 11, reaffirming its commitment to auteur documentary cinema, formal experimentation, and critical thought. This year’s edition focuses on the archive image as a generator of new memories and heritage, and on the potential of cinema as a tool for resistance, historical revisionism, and collective creation.

The festival, organized by Cineteca Madrid, continues to be the meeting point for contemporary documentary and non-fiction cinema. This edition will maintain its three competitive sections — International, National, and Corte Final — with €36,000 in prizes, along with a strong parallel program featuring retrospectives, special screenings, professional meetings, and workshops. The main venue will be Cineteca Madrid, which will fully host the Corte Final section.

In addition to Cineteca, Documenta Madrid 2025 extends to other key venues in the city, such as Museo Reina Sofía, Filmoteca Española, La Casa Encendida, and Fundación Casa de México. The festival is supported by ECAM, Madrid Film Office, Acción Cultural Española (ACE), the Romanian Cultural Institute, UNAM University in Spain, the Swiss Embassy, the Juan March Foundation, among other national and international cultural entities.

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Contact for inquiries and interviews: prensa@documentamadrid.com; mdelriego@mahala.es