Hockney

Director: Randall Wright

Year: 2016

An unfiltered and authentic comedy of errors, revealing the lives of people with intellectual disabilities in a house on the edge of a beautiful forest just north of Paris. If there are rules to break, they will be broken. If there is a truth to be told, they will tell it. Like countless others Philippe, Michel, Andre and Patrick were rejected as ‘idiots’ and locked away in violent asylums until the sixties when philosopher Jean Vanier secured their release, set up home with them, and came to realise that they knew something the rest of us are forgetting: what it is that makes us truly happy. Haunting memories upset Michel but he relishes his freedom on long walks in the forest with friends. Still optimistic Andre, approaching seventy, hopes to learn to drive and read, so he can take the woman he loves to a restaurant and choose from the menu without embarrassment. Beautifully shot for the cinema with full orchestra, The Idiots reveals the mutual benefits of making friends with people very different from ourselves - how vulnerable people help us forget our egos, forgive our enemies, and makes us wonder who the real idiots actually are.

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