The SCAD Savannah Film Festival and The Hollywood Reporter have announced the 10 standout 2026 documentaries that will be represented by their directors on the 13th annual edition of Docs to Watch, the fest’s panel that has become an important stop on the road to the Oscars for nonfiction films.
This year’s selections: Poh Si Teng’s American Doctor (Watermelon), Ron Howard’s Avedon (Netflix), Alysa Nahmias’s Cookie Queens (Roadside), Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi’s Everest: The Other Side (Nat Geo), Amir Bar-Lev’s The Last First: Winter K2 (Apple), Julia Loktev’s My Undesirable Friends: Part II – Exile (MUBI), William Greaves and David Greaves’s Once Upon a Time in Harlem (Neon), Itab Azzam & Jack MacInnes’s One in a Million (Frontline), Rory Kennedy’s The Trial of Alec Baldwin (Abramorama) and Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim’s You Can See Everything (A24).
Over the past 12 years, 27 films that were represented on the panel went on to receive an Oscar nomination for best documentary feature, and eight ultimately won that award: 2015’s Amy, 2016’s O.J.: Made in America, 2017’s Icarus, 2018’s Free Solo, 2019’s American Factory, 2021’s Summer of Soul, 2022’s Navalny and 2023’s 20 Days in Mariupol.
The 2026 panel will take place over 90 minutes at the Lucas Theatre on the afternoon of Wednesday, Oct. 28, and will be moderated by yours truly.
“This year’s Docs to Watch selections reflect a range of films that take us somewhere we didn’t expect to go, whether that’s into a hidden chapter of history, the life of an extraordinary individual, or a story unfolding in front of us right now,” Christina Routhier, the senior executive director of SCAD Theaters and Festivals, said in a statement. “We’re excited to partner with Scott Feinberg and The Hollywood Reporter to bring these filmmakers and their films to Savannah and give our students and audiences the chance to experience the work, meet the artists behind it, and be part of the conversation.”
Here are some brief loglines about each of 2026’s Docs to Watch:
• American Doctor, a film independently financed and directed by a Malaysian-born American journalist, follows three American physicians — one Jewish, one Palestinian and one Zoroastrian — as they volunteer at a hospital in Gaza amid the ongoing war
• Avedon, from Oscar-winning director Ron Howard, explores the life, work and legacy of the American portrait photographer Richard Avedon, drawing upon unprecedented access to his personal archives and including never-before-seen stills and behind-the-lens footage
• Cookie Queens, the year’s highest-grossing non-celebrity doc, is a heartwarming chronicle of four young girls’ efforts, in the face of varying forms of adversity, to meet their sales goals during Girl Scouts cookie-selling season
• Everest: The Other Side, from the Oscar-winning directors of Free Solo, is another film about extreme outdoor athletes, in this case a man and a woman who fall in love and share a dream of climbing and then skiing down the north face of Mt. Everest
• The Last First: Winter K2 follows a team of mountaineers as they strive to achieve something never previously accomplished, namely, climbing K2, the second-highest mountain in the world after Mt. Everest, in winter
• My Undesirable Friends: Part II – Exile is the six-hour second installment, following a five-hour first, in an epic portrait of independent Russian journalists whose coverage amid Vladimir Putin’s authoritarian crackdown forces them to flee their homeland
• Once Upon a Time in Harlem is a miraculous achievement, featuring remarkable footage of a gathering of Harlem Renaissance luminaries that was shot by one filmmaker in 1972 but not turned into a film until that filmmaker’s son completed it more than a half-century later
• One in a Million, the winner of the Sundance Film Festival’s audience award, chronicles a tumultuous decade in the life of a young Syrian girl who, along with her family, flees her war-torn country and seeks refuge in Europe
• The Trial of Alec Baldwin is the result of exclusive access to the titular star following a 2021 accidental shooting during the making of the film Rust, and includes powerful footage from the set, from Baldwin’s police interrogation and from the legal proceedings that followed
• You Can See Everything, a film unlike any other, follows The Rehearsal’s Nathan Fielder as he is welcomed into the home of Theranos’ Elizabeth Holmes over the 34 days before begins serving a prison sentence, and tries to figure out what she’s really about
The 29th SCAD Savannah Film Festival will take place Oct. 24-31. Presented by the Savannah College of Art and Design, it is the largest university-run film festival in the world. Each year, some 75,000 people attend the eight-day event, which attracts some of the biggest names in Hollywood and world cinema, and which features exclusive screenings, panel discussions and workshops. Tickets for this year’s fest are now on sale.
