Docs by the sea
The 2024 Folkestone Documentary Festival will feature the best in new international documentaries. 12 feature-length films, 12 shorts, a communal swim, drinks, food and parties, a free documentary industry day, and the chance to hear from amazing filmmakers in post-film Q&As in a friendly and fun atmosphere. Taking place in The Silver Screen, Folkestone's gem of an independent cinema, Creative Folkestone's flagship Quarterhouse venue, Kollectiv, the hottest new gallery and cafe in town, Space Bar, Folkestone's cosiest Bar, and other Folkestone locations.
For the first time this year we will also be taking the festival on the road to The Palace Cinema in Broadstairs and the Kino Rye Cinema in East Sussex where we will be showing a double bill from the programme.
Full programme announced
All films now available for booking, including the opening night film The Walk, a documentary fairytale about Amal, a 12 foot giant puppet of a young refugee girl travelling from the Syrian border in Turkey, all the way across Europe, trying to find a home.
Programme Highlights 2024
This year’s programme covers big subjects - how to be happier, refugees, mental health, the climate crisis, Palestine, trade unions and trans rights. All told through fascinating people, from a giant puppet to a very special nun, from Lithuanian beer-makers to a maverick Kent fashion artist.
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As The Tide Comes In
The 27 residents of the tiny Danish island of Mandø are used to severe weather and flooding. Its last farmer, Gregers, whose family has lived there for eight generations, refuses to build a life elsewhere and hopes to find a wife to manage his farm
Buy tickets![The Stimming Pool]()
The Stimming Pool
An experimental – at times fantastical – film co-created by a collective of autistic artists based in Hastings who invite you into a neurodiverse world within the undulating logic of neurotypical environments.
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My Sextortion Diary
Pati's world turns upside down when her stolen computer becomes the target of an invisible Hacker and blackmail threat. Through her search for redress, Pati discovers her story is one of countless cases and the vulnerability of our privacy in an online world.
Buy tickets![Agent of Happiness Folkestone Documentary Festival]()
Agent of Happiness
How can you measure happiness? Bhutan invented Gross National Happiness, and Amber is one of the agents who travels door to door to measure how happy people really are, reminding us of the fragility of our own happiness. No matter where we live.
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Orlando, My Political Biography
A joyous celebration of trans identity from writer and activist Paul B. Preciado, told through the lens of Virginia Woolf’s iconic novel. Featuring a myriad of trans and non-binary voices – our new ‘Orlandos’, how life, poetry and gender can meet.
Buy Tickets![Man lies down on a hill.]()
No Other Land
For half a decade, Basel Adra, a Palestinian activist, films his community of Masafer Yatta being destroyed by Israel's occupation, as he builds an unlikely alliance with an Israeli journalist who wants to join his fight.
Buy Tickets![Mother Vera]()
Mother Vera
Haunted by a tumultuous past, young nun Vera has spent 20 years in refuge at a Belarusian monastery. Guided by her love of horses, she sets out on a path to redemption, from the thick snow of the Belarusian forest to the heat of the French Camargue.
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Union
The Amazon Labor Union (ALU) — a group of current and former Amazon workers in New York City’s Staten Island — takes on one of the world’s largest and most powerful companies in the fight to unionise.
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Plunge
A beautifully animated short film that tells one woman’s incredible journey to regain control of her life through reconnecting to nature and the sea with sea swimming. Followed by a communal swim for doc lovers later in the weekend
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Industry Day
Calling filmmakers, artists and the doc-curious - want to get to know more about the UK documentary industry and meet with other film creatives and potential new collaborators? A FREE day of panels and networking. Now open for booking.
FDF Awards
We're excited to be launching a new Short Film Award alongside our Audience Award which will be announced at our closing night film on the 20th of October. Kindly sponsored by Violet Pictures.
Nominated films are Visible Mending, Broken Goddess, Beer, Eternal Father, Autism Plays Itself and Robert and Georgie.
FDF School Screening
We're launching FDF School screenings this year with a FREE screening of our opening night film The Walk at the Silver Screen Cinema on Friday 18th of October.
Festival Supporters and Partners
