Cinéma du Réel, the esteemed international documentary film festival held annually in Paris, France, has long been celebrated for its commitment to showcasing non-mainstream, intellectually, and artistically stimulating documentaries. The competition of the festival’s 2025 edition, running from March 22 to 29, continues this tradition by presenting a diverse program that blurs the lines between feature-length films and short shorts, treating each with equal reverence and attention. This egalitarian approach highlights the festival’s dedication to exploring the myriad forms and expressions within non-fiction cinema, providing a platform for both emerging and established filmmakers to present their unique visions. Below are a couple standouts of this year’s edition.
Manal Issa, 2024
Directed by: Elisabeth Subrin
Year: 2025
Country: France / Lebanon / USA
Length: 10 minutes
Elisabeth Subrin’s Manal Issa, 2024 is an impressive exploration of the actor’s role amidst global conflict. Filmed in Beirut on September 22, 2024, mere hours before escalated bombings throughout the country, the film captures Franco-Lebanese actress Manal Issa as she reflects on her profession and its relation to the current socio-political climate.
A stationary camera focuses on an empty chair and table, adorned only with a glass of water and a smoldering cigarette. The deliberate absence of the subject on screen emphasizes Issa’s disembodied voice as she articulates her thoughts. Issa suggests that acting is taken too seriously, no longer confined to performance, it seeps into daily life and reshapes one’s identity. The profession, she argues, diminishes the individual’s authenticity, offering a voice only when that voice serves the system’s desires.
The actress critiques the entertainment industry’s superficiality and expresses a profound admiration for journalists covering conflicts, particularly in Gaza. She laments the portrayal of Arab characters in cinema, observing that they are routinely represented through the lens of crisis and war, but with no explanation for the causes. In her view, the power to shape these portrayals lies in the hands of capital.
Aside from the form, the film’s production stands out for its immediacy and context. Directed remotely by Subrin from New York, with Issa on location in Beirut, the collaboration spanned over a year of long-distance conversations. The timing of the filming, just six hours before devastating airstrikes in Lebanon that claimed 500 lives in a single day, imbues the film with a haunting urgency.
Manal Issa, 2024 shows the introspective and critical potential of documentary filmmaking, challenging audiences to reconsider the intersections of art, politics, and personal integrity.
Little Boy
Directed by: James Benning
Year: 2025
Country: USA
Length: 74 minutes
Veteran experimental filmmaker James Benning’s Little Boy delivers audiences a contemplative companion piece to his earlier work, American Dreams (lost and found) (1984). The film offers a reflective examination of America’s past, viewed through the lens of a child’s perspective, aiming to provide cautionary insights for the future, as the spectator is presented with accounts of several historical events in The United States.
Benning employs his signature formalist approach, meticulously connecting musical elements with representations of military settings crafted with a childlike sensibility. The film integrates audio fragments from various eras, creating a layered soundscape that demonstrates the pervasive influence of the military-industrial complex on American youth throughout the decades. This synthesis of sound and imagery invites viewers to engage in a meditative analysis of the subtle indoctrinations present in everyday life.
By juxtaposing innocent, youthful perspectives with the bleak imagery of militarization, Little Boy challenges audiences to reflect on the narratives imparted to younger generations and the implications of growing up in a society intertwined with military influence.
Evidence
Directed by: Lee Anne Schmitt
Year: 2025
Country: USA
Length: 75 minutes
In her fourth feature-length film, Evidence, Lee Anne Schmitt delivers a deeply personal and incisive political meditation. The documentary intertwines family history with a critique of capitalism and an analysis of the neo-conservative movement in the United States.
Schmitt begins with a recollection from her childhood. She remembers her aunt once brushing her hair aside and commenting that, had she been a boy, she would have looked just like her father.
This anecdote sets the stage for an exploration of her father’s career at the Olin Corporation, a munitions manufacturer turned industrial chemical producer. Through personal memories and physical experiences, Schmitt examines the corporation’s history, including its substantial financial contributions (over $370 million across 35 years) to conservative causes.
The film outlines the broader implications of such corporate influence, highlighting the establishment of conservative think tanks, the shaping of academic fields, and the rise of prominent conservative figures. Schmitt underscores the intersection of property rights and racial inequality, illustrating how corporate actions have perpetuated systemic disparities.
Evidence is a thought-provoking examination of the undercurrents shaping contemporary political and social landscapes, urging viewers to consider the pervasive impact of corporate power on public life.
Collective Monologue
Directed by: Jessica Sarah Rinland
Year: 2024
Country: Argentina / UK
Length: 104 minutes
Jessica Sarah Rinland’s Collective Monologue is an intimate portrayal of the relationships between humans and caged animals within Argentine zoos and rescue centers. The film employs impeccable sound design and a focus on tactile interactions to highlight the nuanced dynamics between caregivers and animals.
Filmed across various institutions, including the historic Jardín Zoológico of Buenos Aires, Rinland captures moments of care and connection that challenge traditional hierarchies. The use of 16mm film emphasizes the textures and details of these interactions, creating a sensory experience that invites viewers to reconsider the boundaries between species.
Rinland’s documentary encourages viewers to observe the world from the animals’ perspectives, challenging anthropocentric viewpoints and advocating for a more empathetic understanding of interspecies relationships.
Robert Taschen
Directed by: Léo Bizeul
Year: 2025
Country: France
Length: 9 minutes
Léo Bizeul’s Robert Taschen is a brief yet remarkably affecting nine-minute exploration of solitude, aging, and the boundary between reality and fantasy. Centered on an elderly man living alone, the film unfolds in a confined domestic space, its formalism reflecting the limits of his world. The man mutters indistinct words to himself, moving slowly from room to room, with the camera fixed and observational. His isolation is almost tactile, his every movement weighed with routine and a kind of existential resignation.
But then, in an unexpected shift, he sees something, ambiguous in form, which draws him out of his repetitive trance. What follows is a magical realist detour that transports him to an alternate reality where he is no longer alone. This metamorphosis is rendered with poetic simplicity, using only light, framing, and ambient sound to suggest the miraculous. In just a few minutes, Bizeul captures the devastating monotony of loneliness and the fragile, flickering hope of connection. Robert Taschen may be short, but its emotional reverberations are highly impactful.
Together, these competition titles at Cinéma du Réel 2025 showcase the festival’s enduring commitment to form-breaking, politically and philosophically rich cinema. Whether it’s through a disembodied monologue in Beirut, a formalist reflection on militarized childhood, a daughter’s reckoning with a toxic inheritance, or a tactile meditation on interspecies relations, the films push the boundaries of the documentary form. Even in the shortest works profound questions of humanity, memory, and meaning are presented.
This year’s lineup reaffirms that nonfiction cinema can be as poetic, confrontational, and imaginative as any other medium. Cinéma du Réel continues to offer a home for a wide range of exciting documentary filmmakers to present their latest works.
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