Children No More: "Were and Are Gone"

Director: Ian McDonald

Year: 2027

An intimate portrait of Paolo Avenati, a once-aspiring filmmaker living with a progressive fatal mitochondrial disease, and his fiercely devoted mother, Loretta. As the illness takes over Paolo's mind and body, leaving him completely dependent on his mother, she becomes his voice, revealing the quiet realities of caregiving and anticipatory grief. Moving between moments of tenderness, humour and sorrow, the film traces a mother’s enduring love as she learns that sometimes the deepest expression of love is learning how to let go.

Director: Jonathan Glazer

Year: 2026

JOY OF JOYS is a short documentary about the recording sessions for War Child Records' HELP(2) at Abbey Road Studios, directed by Jonathan Glazer and devised by Mica Levi and Glazer. Children in London film themselves and the musicians, including Olivia Rodrigo, Arctic Monkeys, Damon Albarn, Cameron Winter, Fontaines DC and Pulp. While children in Gaza Ukraine, Sudan and Yemen film themselves and their surroundings. The documentary interweaves these layers across continents and backgrounds to show a universal innocence and the joy of childhood itself. Glazer and Levi describe the film as being “by children, for children”. Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2026

Director: Wallace Minchong Li

Year: 2026

European archival footage from the 1950s documents the life of indigenous, nomadic Sahrawi children and youth in Western Sahara / Morocco. Seventy years later, local young people from Laayoune (El Aaiún) revisit locations that may have appeared in the footage. From ocean to desert to oasis, under trembling starlight, they share their thoughts on life, dreams, and utopia as they search for an uncertain upstream. Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2026