Free Lyric

Director: Imoje Aikhoje

Year: 2025

A Black British activist and a former neo-Nazi sit face to face. In a tense encounter combining direct testimony with dramatic reconstruction, each man is forced to confront what brought him to this point: one radicalised by hate, one shaped by the movement that resists it. Chris Otokito and Nigel Bromage meet for the first time on camera. What unfolds is an unsparing examination of how far-right extremism takes root in Britain and whether dialogue across that divide is possible at all.

Director: Anna Maguire, Kyle Greenberg

Year: 2026

What if you went on a holiday and the apocalypse happened? GALICIA! is a found-footage, hybrid-documentary following a couple through home video footage as they visit their friends at a winery in rural Spain and inadvertently capture the end of days. We live in a time where the sense of our impending mutually assured destruction is more real than it’s ever been. GALICIA! Takes the form of a holiday video - a document of a couple before - and after the great cataclysm. The film starts as something that feels unedited - an accidental video diary of an ordinary couple that feels somewhat ghostly as much as it is also pedestrian. As the film evolves and degrades, we are led to question the fragility of humanity, as well as its power to endure.

Director: Jake J Smith

Year: 2026

For the first time in 30 years, a film crew gains rare access to Pennsylvania’s maximum-security women’s prisons. Inside, The Lady Lifers – a band led by former soul singer Naomi Blount – turn grief into music and defiance. Though Naomi never took a life, she is serving life without parole. To have any hope of freedom, she must express guilt she does not feel – a cruel paradox of the justice system. As her music echoes beyond the prison walls and reaches the public, lawmakers and activists, the question remains: Will her voice be enough to finally set her free - and to free those she left behind? Official Selection Durban International Film Festival 2026