Some of the greatest documentary talents in the world will be descending on coastal Maine for the 21st edition of the Camden International Film Festival.
CIFF announced its lineup today ahead of the event running September 11-14, a roster featuring new work from Oscar winners Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin (Love+War); a masterclass with Oscar winner Alex Gibney and Oscar nominee Raoul Peck pegged to their collaboration on Orwell: 2+2=5, which Peck directed and Gibney produced; Nuestra Tierra, the first documentary feature from acclaimed Argentinian director Lucrecia Martel; the world premiere of Sama Waham’s multimedia personal essay Ki-Bé -Giš; the world premiere of Robert and June (and all the time in the world), a short directed by Jem Cohen, and much more. Scroll for the full lineup.
Andrea Gibson (left) and Meg Falley in ‘Come See Me in the Good Light’
Apple TV+
CIFF officially opens with the Maine premiere of Come See Me in the Good Light, the film directed by Ryan White that tells the love story of poets Andrea Gibson and Megan Falley. The documentary has won numerous awards, including the Festival Favorite at the Sundance Film Festival and the Audience Award at Hot Docs. In what could be a preview of the upcoming Oscar race, Come See Me in the Good Light and Orwell: 2+2=5 will be joined in the CIFF program by Geeta Gandbhir’s The Perfect Neighbor, Brittany Shyne’s Seeds, and Reid Davenport’s Life After, all of which won major prizes at the Sundance Film Festival.
Among other world premieres at CIFF:
- The Blueberry Blues, directed by Andres Livov, which “captures the fading tradition of blueberry picking in northern Canada, as demographic shifts bring seasonal workers from Mexico to sustain the harvest amidst a changing climate.”
- Unless Something Goes Terribly Wrong, directed by Kaitlyn Schwalje and Alex Wolf Lewis, in which “a motley crew of unlikely heroes battles aging infrastructure, forever chemicals and public misconceptions about the critical importance of wastewater management.”
- Dragica, Danica, Duška, a short by Iva Radivojević
- Memento Mori (zinc), a short by Ainara Vera.
- Salt Marsh, a short directed by Tom Bell
- 9,192,631,770 Hz, a short directed by Todd Chandler
- Flowers, a short directed by Maria Carrasco
- House of Light, a short directed by A.B. Zax
“In this moment of global upheaval, when forces of division and dehumanization seem ascendant, the films in this year’s program demonstrate documentary cinema’s essential capacity to illuminate,” observed Sean Flynn, artistic director and co-founder of Points North Institute, which puts on the Camden International Film Festival. “Against all odds, independent filmmakers continue to defend and reclaim cinema’s expressive power, insisting on bearing witness, building empathy, and reminding us of our shared humanity and dignity.”
Camden, Maine
Matthew Carey
CIFF takes place at venues in Camden, Rockport, and Rockland, ME. This year’s festival was curated by Flynn, Senior Programmers Milton Guillén and Zaina Bseiso and Festival Manager cam howard. This is the first CIFF under the leadership of Elise McCave, whose appointment as executive director of Points North Institute was announced at last year’s festival.
“I’m honored to steward CIFF during this moment of extraordinary challenge and urgent opportunity,” McCave said in a statement. “For four days in Maine, filmmakers and audiences from near and far gather in an act of resistance and renewal—celebrating the power and necessity of freedom of expression. When truth is under siege and independent voices face shrinking resources, the need for documentary storytelling has never been greater. The films at the 2025 festival affirm that even in turbulent times, joy can be found in the most unlikely of places.”
Camden International Film Festival
Matthew Carey
CIFF features two competition strands – the Harrell Award and the Cinematic Vision award. This year marks the inaugural Ben Fowlie Audience Award (supported by longtime patrons Ann & Dick Costello), honoring the man who founded CIFF in 2005 “and his enduring impact on the festival’s spirit and community.” The winner of that award, selected by audience ballot, will receive a $10,000 cash prize.
YETI®, National Geographic Documentary Films, RandomGood Foundation, and The deNovo Initiative return as headlining sponsors, the festival notes, and are joined this year by the LEF Foundation, which has previously supported as title sponsors for the last five years.
The complete 2025 CIFF lineup:
2025 Camden International Film Festival Features
Agatha’s Almanac | Amalie Atkins | Canada | U.S. Premiere
Defying modernity, 90-year-old Agatha forges a solitary existence on her ancestral farm, preserving heirloom seeds in her handmade universe.
Always | Demin Chen | USA, France, China, Taiwan | U.S. Premiere
A cinematic allegory of a boy becoming a teenager in rural China. Searching through an emotional landscape of growth, he reflects on the poetry of his solitary childhood.
The Blueberry Blues | Andrés Livov | Canada | World Premiere
Amidst wildfires and a fleeting blueberry harvest, workers in northern Quebec find comfort in music and camaraderie as they race against the frost.
Come See Me in the Good Light | Ryan White | USA
An unexpectedly funny and joyful love story, poets Andrea Gibson and Megan Falley navigate life and mortality in the face of an incurable diagnosis.
Evidence | Lee Anne Schmitt | USA | North American Premiere
Evidence is both an analysis of corporate spending and the impact of dark money on US politics and ideology and a personal meditation on ideas of family and care.
I am Night at Noonday | Gaspard Hirschi | France | North American Premiere
A docudrama, mockumentary in which the story of Don Quixote comes to life in a contemporary Marseille. Marseille is an archipelago. A third of the city’s housing stock is now made up of closed residential complexes. Against this backdrop, Manolo Bez plays the role of Don Quixote. The performance takes the form of a ride through the city, with our knight and his squire Sancho-Saïd battling against the fences and other obstacles in their way.
Iron Winter | Kasimir Burgess | Mongolia, Australia | North American Premiere
A young Mongolian nomad, responsible for herding one thousand horses through perilous mountain terrain, faces a difficult choice — honor the ancient winter tradition alongside his best friend, or leave it all behind for life in the city.
Khartoum | Anas Saaed, Rawia Alhag, Ibrahim Snoopy Ahmad, Timeea Mohamed Ahmed, Phil Cox | Sudan, UK, Germany, Qatar
Khartoum follows five residents of Sudan’s capital whose lives are upended by civil war, filmed in Sudan and in exile by a collective of Sudanese filmmakers. Through inventive reconstructions and poetic memories, this collaborative documentary captures both the pain of displacement and the enduring beauty of a beloved city.
Ki-Bé -Giš | Sama Waham | Canada | World Premiere
In the aftermath of Iraq’s silenced uprising, a forgotten fable reawakens—woven from hidden talismans, fractured memory and a river’s lullaby of return.
The Last Dive | Cody Sheehy | Mexico, USA
A legendary diver who has spent decades living on—and in—the water embarks on one final journey to a remote island in hopes of reuniting with his old friend.
Les Voyageurs | David Bingong | Cameroon, Spain, Morocco | North American Premiere
On the border between Morocco and Spain, a group of travelers is eagerly waiting to cross over to Europe. One failed attempt after another, they survive — singing, filming and keeping the flame of hope alive.
Life After| Reid Davenport | USA
A gripping personal investigation that exposes the tangled web of moral dilemmas and profit motives surrounding assisted dying.
A Life Illuminated| Tasha Van Zandt | USA | U.S. Premiere
After a lifetime of unveiling the deep sea’s most mysterious secrets, pioneering marine biologist Dr. Edie Widder descends 3,300 feet into the ocean’s depths on her most groundbreaking mission yet — to capture a bioluminescent phenomenon that could transform our understanding of life on Earth.
Love+War| Jimmy Chin, Chai Vasarhelyi | USA | US Premiere
Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Lynsey Addario risks her life in the male-dominated world of conflict photography, capturing the realities of war. But each assignment means stepping into danger and leaving behind her husband and two young sons. Behind the camera, Addario is torn between her commitment to the essential work of journalism and the powerful, competing demands of motherhood.
My Dear Theo| Alisa Kovalenko | Poland, Ukraine, Czech Republic | North American Premiere
Ukrainian volunteer soldier, filmmaker and mother Alisa Kovalenko creates a testament to the power of love in the time of war — by balancing frontline routines, the horrors of the battlefield and tender poetic letters to her little son, Théo.
Nuestra Tierra | Lucretia Martell | Argentina, USA, Mexico, France, Netherland, Denmark | US Premiere
A leaked video of the 2009 murder of Indigenous leader Javier Chocobar during a land dispute in northern Argentina sets justice in motion. Nine years later, the trial begins and the film weaves courtroom footage with community voices and images to uncover the deep colonial roots of land dispossession.
Observer| Ian Cheney | USA
In Observer, filmmaker Ian Cheney embarks on an experiment in which he brings a series of keen-eyed observers — scientists, artists, a hunter — to a range of locations around the world, often without telling them where they are going, and asks them simply to describe what they see.
Orwell: 2+2=5 | Raoul Peck
Orwell: 2+2=5 examines George Orwell’s final months and most visionary works, tracing the origins of the urgent and unsettling ideas his prescient writing brought to light.
The Perfect Neighbor | Geeta Gandbhir | USA
Using bodycam footage from dozens of police visits, The Perfect Neighbor bears witness to a tight-knit community navigating one neighbor’s relentless harassment. But her hostility takes a sinister turn when it escalates into a fatal crime. A Netflix release
Powwow People | Sky Hopinka | USA | US Premiere
Powwow People is a vérité-style documentary grounded in the rhythms, relationships and lived experience of contemporary Native powwow culture. Told through the lens of artist and filmmaker Sky Hopinka (Ho-Chunk/Pechanga), the film is an intimate portrait of a powwow organized, hosted and documented through the production of this film.
Remaining Native | Paige Bethmann | USA
Remaining Native is a coming-of-age documentary told from the perspective of Kutoven (Ku) Stevens, a 17-year-old Native American runner, struggling to navigate his dream of becoming a collegiate athlete as the memory of his great-grandfather’s escape from an Indian boarding school begins to connect past, present and future.
Seeds | Brittany Shyne | USA
A look into the lives of Black generational farmers, unveiling the challenges of maintaining legacy and the value of land ownership.
Shifting Baselines | Julian Elie | USA | U.S. Premiere
Where the Rio Grande meets the sea, the rockets of SpaceX are launched; astronomers gaze skyward, hawkers shill their wares and environmentalists survey the damage. Welcome to Boca Chica, USA.
Under the Flags, the Sun | Juanjo Pereira | Paraguay, Argentina, USA, France, Germany | U.S. Premiere
Under the Flags, the Sun weaves unseen archival footage to chronicle Alfredo Stroessner’s 35-year dictatorship in Paraguay, exposing propaganda and control whose imprint on national identity endures today.
Unless Something Goes Terribly Wrong | Kaitlyn Schwalje, Alex Wolf Lewis | USA | World Premiere
As America’s aging wastewater systems begin to fail, one plant and its motley crew of unlikely heroes do all they can to stay afloat.
With Hasan in Gaza | Kamal al Jafari | Palestine, Germany, France, Qatar | US Premiere
Three MiniDV tapes of life in Gaza from 2001 were recently rediscovered. What started as a search for a former prison mate from 1989, led to an unexpected road trip from the north to the south of Gaza with Hasan, a local guide whose fate remains unknown. A cinematic reflection on memory, loss and the passage of time, capturing a Gaza of the past and lives that may never be found again.
SHORTS
+10k | Gala Hernández López | France, Spain | North American Premiere
9,192,631,770 Hz | Todd Chandler | USA | World Premiere
Animal Eye | Carlo Nasisse | USA, Costa Rica
Both, And | Artemisia Luk| USA
Camp Widow | Laura Green, Anna Moot-Levin | USA
Daria’s Night Flowers | Maryam Tafakory | Iran, France, UK | U.S. Premiere
Divers | Geordie Wood | USA | U.S. Premiere
Dragica, Danica, Duška / or / when Zora, the goddess of Dawn, opens the gates of Heaven for Sun to emerge | Iva Radivojević | Kosovo, USA | World Premiere
Final Frontier | Heidi Burkey | USA
Flowers | Maria Carrasco | USA | World Premiere
House of Light | A.B. Zax | USA | World Premiere
I am everything | Jeppe Lange | Denmark | North American Premiere
L’Mina | Randa Maroufi | France, Morocco, Italy, Qatar | North American Premiere
Los Conjurados | Humberto González Bustillo | Venezuela
Love Immortal | Ömer Sami | Denmark, UK
Memento Mori (zinc) | Ainara Vera | USA | World Premiere
No Mean City (sodium) | Ross McClean | Northern Ireland, USA | North American Premiere
Objects Do Not Randomly Fall From the Sky (Kay Basta Angkarav Bagay Ibat Ha Langit) | Maria Estela Paiso | Philippines | North American Premiere
Otherworld | Lokotah Sanborn | USA
Pee Shy | Steven B. Jackson | France, Qatar, Kuwait
Perishable Idol | Majid Al-Remaihi | USA, Canada | North American Premiere
Robert and June (and all the time in the world) | Jem Cohen | USA | World Premiere
Salt Marsh | Tom Bell | USA | World Premiere
Tessitura | Lydia Cornett, Brit Fryer | USA
The Round Forest | Nichole Whitney | USA
Their Eyes | Nicolas Gourault | France | North American Premiere
Tiger | Loren Waters | USA
What Does The Mud Whisper | Georgia, Poland | North American Premiere
