Films

This energetic documentary explores the cultural impact of the iconic American Girl doll brand that shaped generations of Americans in the ’80s, ’90s, and early 2000s. Featuring an exclusive, rare interview with founder Pleasant Rowland.

When a mining project threatens her ancestral lands, Sámi reindeer herder Maia calls upon her estranged uncle for legal advice, but his return opens deep familial wounds in indigenous Sámi filmmaker Elle Sofe Sara’s inventive, visually arresting musical drama.

A car becomes the connective tissue of director Stephanie Ahn’s absorbing, Sundance award-winning debut, as an accident brings two broken souls together, drawing them into an intimate, if fumbling, relationship.

Sonja, born with Down Syndrome, is a bundle of energy who dreams of dance and demands independence. This inclusively produced family-friendly film is a testament to the power of resilience, creative expression, and love.

The fascinating documentary reveals the man behind the legend of cosmologist Carl Sagan, the man who was for many the face of space exploration, scientific inquiry, and insatiable curiosity.

A group of teenagers brimming with cinephile passion plunges into a sea of adventure when they begin making films in their small Nigerian village and found a collective, The Critics, that gains international traction and support.

Joanna Natasegara’s wildly entertaining documentary is essentially two films in one, the story of the Wu-Tang Clan’s notorious (and notoriously rare) 2015 album Once Upon a Time in Shaolin and the man behind it, Dutch Moroccan rapper/producer Cilvaringz.

A Bulgarian archaeologist investigates the disappearance of a former lover in this absorbing Cannes prizewinner. German director Valeska Grisebach works with a nonprofessional cast to create a slow-burn thriller with the grit of a Western and the scope of Chinatown.

This thrilling documentary captures extreme sport star Jim Morrison’s 2025 risky attempt to scale Mount Everest’s rarely attempted north face and ski down from the summit with co-director Jimmy Chin along for the adventure.

Austrian writer/director Sandra Wollner won the Cannes Un Certain Regard Award for this unique, immersive drama that follows a family on a journey to Tenerife a year after a tragedy.

In Molly Manners’ witty and winsome debut about the pains of girlhood, quirky British boarding school besties Flic and Minna decide to become worldly Oxbridge candidates by getting some practice in romance.

The lives of a musician and a police detective unexpectedly dovetail in Marie Kreutzer’s (Corsage, MVFF45) latest provocative drama when a search warrant for a filmmaker’s hard drives upends the life of his wife.

Fed-up communities in Louisiana and Appalachia's Rust Belt find themselves thrust into an unlikely role—that of accidental activists—as they take on factory polluters and fracking practices that have had devastating effects on the health of their friends and families.

Born in the wake of China’s controversial one-child policy, six-year-old Juan is suddenly uprooted from her family when her mom becomes pregnant in this achingly poignant coming-of-age story from first-time feature director Zou Jing.

Myrsini Aristodou’s award-winning, sensitive debut resonates with deeply felt authenticity and lasting emotional power in its story of the relationship that develops between a troubled, precocious preteen and the father she’s just getting to know.

Filmed over 25 years, this prize-winning documentary casts a tender and fearless eye over the lives of two inseparable cousins, Guillermina and Belinda, as they grow up in the rural Argentine Pampas.

Some things arrive in waves: sunlight, joy, but also grief and loss. Director Phuong Mai Nguyen’s animated adaptation of AJ Dungo’s 2019 graphic novel is an indelible story of love between two teenagers and their passion for each other and the sea.

An unlikely setting for a groundswell of talent and creativity, Cameroon’s overcrowded New Bell Prison reveals incarcerated artists whose extraordinary music, dance, and performance may just offer a chance at redemption.

Jean-Michel Basquiat burned brightly in his 27 years—and still does in a legacy both artistic and personal reflected in this touching and funny documentary centered around reminiscences by the painter’s surviving sisters, Lisane and Jeanine.

When eight-year-old Josephine witnesses an attack in Golden Gate Park, it shatters her sense of safety. Driven by terrific performances, what ensues is riveting storytelling as she and her parents navigate the unfathomable.

French teenagers take a summer class trip to Naples, Italy, in this marvelous coming-of-age film that is subtle, mysterious, and intelligent. Marine Atlan’s feature debut garnered the Cannes Critics Week Best Picture award.

In this striking neo-noir debut, a fiercely independent Lagos taxi driver’s careful life is upended when she becomes the driver for a group of glamorous, reckless sex workers—including her long-lost childhood friend.

Finding the love of your life can be exhilarating and a little crazy. Margaret Qualley creates a nuanced portrait of a young woman on the verge as a nurse whose life is upturned by the pandemic.

Against the backdrop of Chile’s transition to democracy, a disappearance at a ski resort pulls a nine-year-old girl into the adults’ pact of silence in director Manuela Martelli’s unnerving political allegory.

Fifteen years after her landmark documentary Miss Representation, Jennifer Siebel Newsom returns to confront the ways social media, AI, and online misogyny are weaponized against girls, threatening the future of the next generation of female leaders.

With their third collaboration, Kelly O’Sullivan and Alex Thompson continue to caress our humanity through a tender coming-of-age tale. Attuned to the mysterious ebbs and flows of grief with humor and heartbreak, Mouse is a gentle stunner.

Forced to flee their own country, independent Russian journalists continue to chronicle Putin’s war on free speech—and Ukraine—in this equally vivid follow-up to Julie Loktev’s acclaimed 2024 documentary.

Johnny Flynn and John C. Reilly star as community leaders confronting wildfire and other threats in a small Western town in 1870. Dara Van Dusen’s feature debut is both familiar and eerily apocalyptic—a notable accomplishment.

Nearly a half-century of Iranian political repression and resistance unfolds through one family’s experience, illustrated by home movies and other archival materials in this highly personal documentary from expatriate Pegah Ahangarani.

While preparing for an upcoming swimming trip to Brazil, best friends La Maestra and Paula see their bright futures upended one fateful night. First-time feature director Fernanda Tovar crafts a moving coming-of-age drama in this Berlinale award winner.

MVFF partners with CalArts, UC Santa Cruz, UCLA, California College of the Arts, and CSU Long Beach for a stellar showcase of animated work directed by female and nonbinary filmmakers. This selection features films reflecting family, friendship, life, death, and cultural identity.

"If music could talk, which means whatever your mind can bring.” This collection of documentary short films invite a sense of curiosity and quest, seeking to grasp human thought, motive, and expression. In Nita Blum and Jonathan Pickett’s A NEW INFERNO (US 2026, 16 min), paramedics race to save the lives of heatstroke victims using a radical new treatment. With an experimental sensibility, Karla Condado’s MIRIAM (Mexico 2025, 19 min) copes with grief as the filmmaker reads personal letters to her aunt who was a victim of femicide. Along the picturesque coastline of Brittany, France, bright orange novelty Garfield phones wash ashore in Zack Grant’s eccentric SILLY LITTLE PLASTIC CAT (France/US 2026 12 min). In SWING SWISH SWAY (US 2026, 7 min), TT Takemoto's colorful and tangible reconstruction of history is inspired by Filipina-American Rose Bamberger, founder of Daughters of Bilitis, San Francisco’s own first lesbian activist group. Free-spirited and expressive, Charlie Eguia’s HAPPINESS FOR A HERDER (US/Mongolia 2026, 16 min) follows a group of nomadic herder families in Mongolia. —Diana Sánchez Maciel

“Big business, it don't like you, it don't like the things you do. You got no money, so you got no power.”   In this selection of short-form films, protagonists assert their power and try to rewrite the narrative against powerful forces they face.  In Maia Wikler’s documentary WILD EAST (Canada/US 2026, 36 min), environmental activist Gabi Paun risks his life to expose illegal logging in Romania’s ancient forests, taking on timber mafias and IKEA while revealing the hidden cost of the world’s appetite for cheap furniture. In the fictional FLESH IMPACT (US 2026, 17 min), director Maggie Gyllenhaal assembles a notable cast (Ellen Burstyn, Dakota Johnson, Peter Sarsgaard) to tell a revisionist history of Marilyn Monroe, who faces down studio pressure to assert her voice and influence, in a speculation on a career that might have been.  Then in FREE JOAN LITTLE (US 2025, 38 min), award-winning filmmaker Yoruba Richen excavates a groundbreaking true-life 1975 case that galvanized Black Power activists, feminists, and prison reformers around one young Black woman’s historic fight for justice and the right to defend herself against sexual violence.  Be sure not to miss this memorable, eclectic trio of legends and their stories. —Michelle Svenson

“But go easy Step lightly Stay free.” As we grow older, we tend to abandon all inherent free spirit and audacity. This collection of short documentary films brings those feelings flooding back, allowing us to live vicariously through these bold, intrepid, and resilient characters. In THE RIGHT FIT (US 2025, 12 min), Max Mollring and Nicolas Collins introduce the owner of a one-of-a-kind small business in San Rafael. Intimate and observational, Hao Zhou's AT THE STAGE WHEN (China 2026, 15 min) follows a young urban couple experiencing societal pressure around parenthood. Composed of black-and-white 35mm photographs, A TOWN CALLED NEEDVILLE (US/Canada 2026, 5 min) traces filmmaker Audrey Lane's inpatient stay at an all-women’s mental health facility in Texas. A collaboration between Ukrainian painter Alla Hurenko and directors Natalie Shirinian and Elizabeth Baudouin, ROOM OF THE ABSOLUTE (US, Ukraine 2026, 18 min) is a time capsule and portrait of resilience in the face of relentless destruction in Ukraine. It is 1980 in Yuba City, California, in Reaa Puri’s HARVEST PARTY AT CAMP TWO (US 2026, 16 min), and a group of Young Punjabi Sikh farmworkers throw the biggest party their small town has ever seen. —Diana Sánchez Maciel

When the local pool closes, pre-teen Pola leads the charge to save it in this upbeat and inspiring story of activism, kid-style, and the enduring power of friendship, awash in wildly creative costumes, musical dance numbers, and fabulous young talent.

Desperate to escape her volatile home life, Ali takes a leap of faith and hops on a bus to Venice Beach where a vivacious band of unhoused young adults take her under their wing.

Often presented as secondary to his climbing partner Edmund Hillary in the story of the first successful summit of Mount Everest, Sherpa guide Tenzing Norgay’s life amidst the Himalayas comes into sharp relief in this stirring biopic.

The promising life of an Olympic-bound gymnast is cut short, but her presence lives on through an enduring mother-daughter bond reaching beyond the physical world—exploring the mysteries of cellular memory, spirit, and our connections across life and death.

Legendary documentary filmmaker Barbara Kopple completes the workers’ trilogy she began 50 years ago with this vivid, on-the-ground look at often rancorous labor struggles in the era of delivery apps and the gig economy.

Bay Area poet, educator, and community activist Amber Allen-Peirson turns the camera on her own life in this deeply moving quest for belonging that blends personal archival footage and vérité moments with a bold poetic narration.

Former lawyer and veteran documentarian Dawn Porter revisits the case of the Harlem Park Three, whose wrongful convictions as teenagers led to 36 years behind bars and exposed profound failures within the American justice system.

When filmmaker Gabriela Pena returns to Valparaíso, Chile, to renovate the house her family left behind decades earlier, she unearths how silences, unspoken fears, and absences have shaped their relationships and approaches to love.

A fisherwoman mocked for her spinsterish ways beseeches a basket maker to weave her a husband in this altogether unique and fantastical folk romance starring Olivia Colman, Alexander Skarsgård, and Peter Dinklage.

The lives of a musician and a police detective unexpectedly dovetail in Marie Kreutzer’s (Corsage, MVFF45) latest provocative drama when a search warrant for a filmmaker’s hard drives upends the life of his wife.

When eight-year-old Josephine witnesses an attack in Golden Gate Park, it shatters her sense of safety. Driven by terrific performances, what ensues is riveting storytelling as she and her parents navigate the unfathomable.

With their third collaboration, Kelly O’Sullivan and Alex Thompson continue to caress our humanity through a tender coming-of-age tale. Attuned to the mysterious ebbs and flows of grief with humor and heartbreak, Mouse is a gentle stunner.

Director Maggie Gyllenhaal tells a revisionist history of Marilyn Monroe (Dakota Johnson, Ellen Burstyn), who faces down studio pressure to assert her voice and influence, in a speculation on a career that might have been.

Award-winning filmmaker Yoruba Richen excavates a groundbreaking true-life 1975 case that galvanized Black Power activists, feminists, and prison reformers around one young Black woman’s historic fight for justice and the right to defend herself against sexual violence.

Memories of one man’s literal and figurative trip to Chiapas accompanied by his brother and a bag of magic mushrooms soaked in honey.

With an experimental sensibility, Karla Condado’s Miriam copes with grief as the filmmaker reads personal letters to her aunt who was a victim of femicide.

A collaboration between Ukrainian painter Alla Hurenko and directors Natalie Shirinian and Elizabeth Baudouin, Room of the Absolute is a time capsule and portrait of resilience in the face of relentless destruction in Ukraine.

TT Takemoto's colorful and tangible reconstruction of history is inspired by Filipina-American Rose Bamberger, founder of Daughters of Bilitis, San Francisco’s own first lesbian activist group.

A trance-like dance of human and abstract forms. Undulating and shapeshifting to an irresistible rhythmic beat.

Composed of black-and-white 35mm photographs, A Town Called Needville traces filmmaker Audrey Lane's inpatient stay at an all-women’s mental health facility in Texas.