We announce the line-up of the Documentary Features Competition of the 33rd edition of the EnergaCAMERIMAGE International Film Festival.
The aim of the competition is to recognize the art of documentary filmmaking as creative interpretation of reality. Putting emphasis on the visual and aesthetic aspects of the selected nonfiction entries, the jury awards the best cinematographers in the competition.
ALL THE MOUNTAINS GIVE
DIRECTOR: Arash Rakhsha
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Arash Rakhsha
PRODUCTION: Big Indie Pictures
COUNTRY AND YEAR: Iran, USA, 2024
Documented over the course of six years, filmmaker Arash Rakhsha presents an intimate portrait of Hamid and Yaser, two close friends living in a Kurdish village who are forced into kolbari, the illegal act of smuggling untaxed household goods across the deadly border between Iraq and Iran.
DEAR TOMORROW
DIRECTOR: Kaspar Astrup Schröder
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Kaspar Astrup Schröder
PRODUCTION: Good Company Pictures, Momento Film, Moolin Production
COUNTRY AND YEAR: Denmark, Japan, Sweden, 2025
In Japan, loneliness has turned into a national crisis, encouraging the government to create a Ministry of Loneliness. Dear Tomorrow follows two individuals struggling with isolation. With the help of a volunteer chat service, compassionate connections, government initiatives, and even pet owls, they attempt to reclaim their lives from this very contemporary affliction.
IRON WINTER
DIRECTOR: Kasimir Burgess
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Benjamin Bryan
PRODUCTION: Repeater Productions
COUNTRY AND YEAR: Australia, 2025
In Mongolia’s remote Tsakhir Valley, Batbold faces the greatest challenge of his young life: safeguarding 1,000 horses during the deadliest winter on record. After this adventure and with the future of his community at stake, Batbold must choose between upholding the values that define his culture, or abandoning them for the lure of a more appealing life in the city.
MESSENGERS
DIRECTOR: Jeffrey Zablotny
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Adam Crosby
PRODUCTION: Trapdoor
COUNTRY AND YEAR: Canada, 2025
A poetic exploration of three subterranean telescopes in remote regions of Canada, Japan, and Antarctica that reveal a new way of perceiving the universe from within. Underground, we are dreaming into the earth.
THE QUEEN AND THE SMOKEHOUSE
ORIGINAL TITLE: Bałtyk
DIRECTOR: Iga Lis
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Kacper Gawron
PRODUCTION: Ewa Jastrzębska, Jerzy Kapuściński, Magdalena Tomanek
COUNTRY AND YEAR: Poland, 2025
In the heart of Łeba, amid wind, salt and the scent of smoke, Miecia has run an iconic fish smokehouse for four decades. It is not merely a business – it is her element, her calling, the rhythm of her everyday life. Thanks to her, the smokehouse has become a local legend, and she herself a larger-than-life figure. To many residents she is more than a neighbour or a boss – she is the Queen of Łeba in the flesh, with a temperament as bracing as the smoke from the oven.
SILVER
DIRECTOR: Natalia Koniarz
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Stanisław Cuske
PRODUCTION: Telemark
COUNTRY AND YEAR: Poland, 2025
Silver takes us to the heart of the world's oldest silver mine in Bolivia. In the silent depths of the earth, where darkness reigns and the mountain trembles, the film unveils the visceral experience of underground mining through the eyes of a teenage boy, a seasoned miner, and a woman miner. Where sweat mingles with history's bloodstains, we are faced with the anatomy of a dark colonial past and the threads of a never-ending cycle of exploitation. A cinematic testament to resilience and remembrance, it beckons us to confront the brutal truths lurking beneath the surface of our collective consciousness.