Sheffield DocFest is positioning this as a prestige moment, bringing together documentary royalty for what they're calling a 'landmark conversation.' The Up series represents British documentary filmmaking at its most ambitious and enduring—a 60-year longitudinal study that has captured the nation's imagination since the 1960s.
What's interesting here is how DocFest is threading contemporary political content alongside its programming. Munya Chiwawa's Wrestling with Trump documentary, exploring the connection between the American president and wrestling culture, feels like a deliberate provocation—scheduled as it coincides with Trump's June 14 birthday MMA event on the White House lawn.
Sheffield DocFest runs June 10-15, marking its 33rd edition. The festival announced five separate competition juries including the International Competition (Mark Edwards, Kiyoko McCraea, Noa Nwande) and Tim Hetherington Award jury featuring Brenda Danker, Sam Holland, and Andrii Kotliar from Ukraine's #babylon13 collective.
DocFest continues to prove it's where documentary filmmaking comes to be taken seriously—and with Kapadia joining the conversation alongside ITV brass, this year's industry programming looks designed to attract exactly the kind of prestige attention that keeps funders interested.
Sheffield DocFest is pulling out all the stops just days before its 33rd edition kicks off June 10-15, announcing Friday that Oscar-winning filmmaker Asif Kapadia will headline a landmark conversation about ITV's iconic Up series. The Amy and Senna director will be joined on stage by Jo Clinton Davis, Controller of Factual at ITV, and Mike Blair, Creative Director at Multistory Media—the team behind the latest installment, 70 UP, which continues tracking the lives of the original 14 children first filmed growing up in England during the 1960s. The Up series represents one of documentary filmmaking's most ambitious long-form experiments, following its subjects through childhood, adulthood, middle age, and now into their golden years. Kapadia, who won an Academy Award for his devastating Amy Winehouse portrait Amy and received similar acclaim for Formula One drama Senna, brings serious documentary credibility to the conversation. His involvement signals that DocFest's industry programming is aiming for heavyweight status this year. Beyond the Up series talk, the festival revealed several notable additions to its film lineup. The Last First: Winter K2 from director Amir Bar-Lev receives its UK premiere—a harrowing account of a failed attempt to summit the world's second-tallest mountain during winter conditions. Also getting world premiere treatment is Obsession: The Beryl Burton Story, an intimate portrait of one of Britain's greatest cyclists directed by Stuart Pollitt. Perhaps most provocatively timed: Munya Chiwawa will discuss his documentary Wrestling with Trump, which examines the relationship between President Donald Trump and professional wrestling culture. This arrives as Trump prepares for a massive MMA tournament on the White House lawn June 14 to celebrate his 80th birthday—a detail that gives Chiwawa's film uncomfortable contemporary relevance. The festival also announced five separate competition juries overseeing its various categories, including the International First Feature Competition backed by Netflix and the Tim Hetherington Award for humanitarian storytelling. A special live reading of Maxine Peake's Queens of the Coal Age—detailing four miners' wives who occupied Parkside Colliery in 1993—will feature Jason Done, Christine Bottomley, Carla Henry, Eva Scott, and Lamin Touray.
