• Two screenings and a performance/masterclass by the British filmmaker will take place at this venue.
• The retrospective includes The Host, a film that reinterprets British colonialism in Iran through personal and official photographs.
• The programme also features the director’s three most recent short films, including Man Number 4, which addresses the conflict in Gaza.

For the third consecutive year, Documenta Madrid—Madrid City Council’s International Documentary Film Festival—joins forces with ECAM (Madrid Film School) and its Documentary Film Diploma students to create hybrid encounters that blend masterclasses and lectures with film screenings. The aim is to foster reflection on contemporary documentary cinema as well as alternative models of production, funding, and distribution.

This year, the guest artist is British filmmaker Miranda Pennell, who will join ECAM students for a retrospective titled Returning the Gaze, a programme that turns its eyes back to the colonial archive. The cycle includes two retrospective screenings and a performance/masterclass led by the London-based artist and filmmaker.

Originally trained as a dancer, Pennell’s work centres on researching and challenging colonial image archives. Her films propose a critical re-reading of such material, raising questions about how we engage with these images from our present moment—how to decipher them without replicating the violence and power structures that shaped them. Through reframing, editing still photographs, and layering them with sound, she constructs narratives where personal, intimate, and family histories are woven into the broader fabric of colonial political history. Her films directly confront the viewer, tackling the emotional and ethical distance between the spectator and current global conflicts—such as in her latest film, Man Number 4 (2024), which addresses the genocide in Gaza.

The first session presents The Host (2015), an immersive dive into the visual memory of Britain’s colonial past. Through personal snapshots and official archives, the filmmaker investigates British Petroleum’s (BP) operations in Iran, gradually becoming entangled in the story through her own family history.

The second session features a performance/masterclass titled Gestures of Love and Violence, in which Miranda Pennell re-enacts a performance first developed for London’s What If… Festival in 2013. This work marks the genesis of her cinematic practice—a meditation on how systems of power use images, and how we, in turn, are possessed by them. Her background as a dancer informs her exploration of the corporeality of images and the central role of the viewer’s body in the darkened cinema space. Pennell interacts with projected footage: from 16mm images on screen and experimental cinema by Martin Arnold, to early animated films. The performance will be followed by a conversation with the audience.

The final session, titled You Will Not See the Bodies Buried in the Sand, features Pennell’s three most recent short films, each engaging with colonial photographic archives past and present. Strange Object (2020) is an archival essay using aerial images to reflect on the destruction of human life and the cultural impact of colonialism. Trouble (2023), created during the pandemic, is an investigation into mysterious photographs of British troops in Egypt and Iraq. Finally, Man Number 4 (2024) dives into the pixels and textures of a raw image from Gaza, sourced from social media—a visual journey that opens up a complex dialogue on violence and spectatorship. All sessions will include the presence of the filmmaker and open discussions with ECAM students.

Documenta Madrid 2025
Documenta Madrid, the International Film Festival organised by Madrid City Council, will celebrate its 22nd edition from 6 to 11 May 2025, continuing its commitment to auteur documentary cinema, formal experimentation, and critical thinking. This year’s edition places a strong focus on archival imagery as a generator of new memories and collective heritage, as well as on the potential of cinema as a tool for resistance, historical revision, and collaborative creation.

Organised by Cineteca Madrid, the festival remains a key meeting point for contemporary documentary and non-fiction cinema. The programme retains its three competitive sections—International, National, and Corte Final—with €36,000 in prize money, including a distribution award managed by Agencia Freak, alongside a rich parallel programme of retrospectives, special screenings, professional encounters, and workshops. Cineteca Madrid will serve as the main venue and will host the Corte Final section in full.

In addition to Cineteca, Documenta Madrid 2025 will extend to other key cultural spaces across the city, including Museo Reina Sofía, Filmoteca Española, La Casa Encendida, and Fundación Casa de México. The festival is made possible thanks to the collaboration of ECAM, Madrid Film Office, Acción Cultural Española (AC/E), the Romanian Cultural Institute, UNAM-Spain Mexican Studies Centre, the Swiss Embassy, Fundación Juan March, and Ricardo Bofill Taller de Arquitectura, among other national and international cultural institutions.

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Inquiries and interviews: prensa@documentamadrid.com; mdelriego@mahala.es