2026 Jean Rouch International Ethnographic Film Festival: A Celebration of Ethnographic Cinema Returns in May

From May 7 to 30, 2026, the Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac will host the 45th edition of the Jean Rouch International Ethnographic Film Festival. This year’s festival focuses on documentary screenings, organized by the French Ethnographic Film Committee, with support from the National Centre for Cinema (CNC), in partnership with the Musée de l’Homme, the National Library of France, and the Cinéma Les 3 Luxembourg.

MultiVenue Event · Official Selection 2026 · Special Focus Programmes · Student Works on Display

Founded in 1982 by renowned filmmaker and anthropologist Jean Rouch, the festival once again shines a spotlight on social science and humanities documentaries, continuing its tradition of placing special emphasis on environmental themes.

MultiVenue Event

The public may attend competition screenings free of charge. This year’s competition lineup, curated by Alexia Van Egypt’s team, features approximately thirty films. Screenings will take place at several cultural venues across Paris, including the Musée de l’Homme (also free entry), the National Library of France, and the Cinéma Les 3 Luxembourg. The festival’s opening ceremony and awards presentation will be held on Thursday evenings, May 7 and May 14, at 7:00 pm, at the Musée du Quai Branly.

Official Selection 2026

The selection is divided into three main sections: the International Competition, the special “Focus on Environment” section, and the “Filming in HighRisk Areas” spotlight. The programme features works by both emerging and established directors from around the world, who will be present to engage with audiences in postscreening discussions.

This year includes eight Frenchproduced or coproduced films. In the International Competition: on May 7, Thomas Huzan will present Lead and Coal, documenting the daily lives of Moroccans scraping a living in abandoned mines. Anaïs Macq offers Buffalo, drawn from her own family history, tracing the largescale population migration in China during the 1970s. Francesco Altili presents The Silent World (Le Monde du silence), a personal, intimate portrait of his Corsican father, exploring his father’s political commitments through the lens of a son.

Two coproductions are also in the Competition: Kingdom of Karti (a FranceGeorgiaQatar coproduction) codirected by Tamar Kalandaradze and Julien Pebrel; and The Fox and the Moon (a FranceIran coproduction) directed by Mehrdad Oskouei and Souraya Aharraji.

The “Focus on Environment” section includes six films, half of which are French productions: Human Sea (Mer humaine) by Aurélie Darrebou and Jeff Daniel Silva – a dialoguefree, underwater featurelength documentary offering an immersive view of the seabed in the Gulf of Marseille. Northern Ballet (Ballet boréal) by Thomas Grandremy and Simon Marot – portraying the harsh livelihood of a Thai picker who travels to the remote wilds of northern Sweden to harvest berries. Children of the Salmon (Les enfants du saumon) by Camille Ropaert – following the Namgis First Nation in Alert Bay, Canada, as they fight against industrial salmon farming.

Special Screenings Highlights

The festival offers more than just awards. From May 14 to 30, immediately following the competition screenings, there will be a series of special screenings and meetings with filmmakers, followed by encore screenings of awardwinning films starting May 21.

On the eve of the awards ceremony, the Musée de l’Homme will host a special screening by GREC (Groupe de Recherches et d’Essais Cinématographiques), presenting several short films supported by the CNC. Among them, ParisTehran by Danial Bahrami, part of the Horizons creation residency programme: the director turns his camera on his mother, who decides to return to Iran after 37 years of living in France. In the “Sawa Sawa” screening series, Where Memories Cross by Shema Awad documents the daily lives of civilians in Hebron during the Second Intifada.

This year also features a special programme dedicated to women’s filmmaking, showcasing works by three female directors: Chicken Boat by Yanis Reyes Hernández – a selfnarrated account of leaving Cuba; Tying Knots by Anna Quinn – the story of a woman who travels far from home and mourns her Uruguayan grandmother in a foreign land; Elliniko by Joséphine Faisan – using the decayed Elliniko Airport in Greece as a mirror to reflect the country’s successive economic crises.

Student Works Take the Stage

The “Emerging Filmmakers” section is another highlight of the festival, presenting works by graduate students in film studies. As in previous years, AixMarseille University and Paris Nanterre University each contribute two short films:

AixMarseille University: Waves Run by Chérine Zidou; Uberka by Eléana Courvoisier.

Paris Nanterre University: The Focs Translating by Adrien Audrain; Chronicle of a Dervish (visual anthropology) by Camille Constantini.

The University of Caen Normandy also participates with a special programme “Documentary Filmmaking and Social Research”, featuring Our Path of Desire (Notre chemin du désir), a collaborative work by Alice Da Rosa, Missia Forlen, and Olive Lerouville.

Secondyear master’s students from the Ardèche Image Documentary School will also present four new works: Their Armor (Leurs armures) by Margot Doue; Shards of Fire (Feu, fragments) by Durand Mante; As Long as There Are Comfort Dolls (Tant qu’il y aura des doudous) by Nina Roland; We Are All Fine Cracks (Nous sommes toutes les fines fissures) by Maya Sorrel Des.

Learn more: Official information about the Jean Rouch International Ethnographic Film Festival
https://www.comitedufilmethnographique.com/event/festival-international-jean-rouch-2026/