Documentary cinema and visual arts will once again go hand in hand in Barcelona. From November 26 to 28, the Mooby Bosque cinemas will host the tenth edition of DART, the Barcelona International Film and Visual Arts Festival, which celebrates ten years of being the only event in Spain dedicated entirely to this discipline.
To celebrate its anniversary, the festival presents a three-day program that brings together 15 documentaries in theaters (ten of which are premieres), professional meetings within the framework of DART Lab, and a collaboration with CaixaForum+, where the productions can be seen throughout the month of December.
At the closing gala, for the first time in the festival's history, the Honorary Award for Artistic Career will be presented. The award will be granted posthumously to filmmaker, photographer, and writer Carlos Saura, in recognition of an artist who always understood cinema as a constant dialogue with painting, photography, and dance.
His daughter, director and producer Anna Saura, will be in charge of collecting the distinction just before the screening of Carlos Saura: Ese niño de la fotografía (Carlos Saura: That Child of Photography), the documentary she herself directed from unreleased personal archives to show the man behind the camera and his perspective on the passage of time.
From "Fridamania" to Swedish abstraction
The inauguration of DART will be on Thursday, November 26 and will feature the premiere of La mirada de Frida (Frida's Gaze), directed by Trisha Ziff, a documentary that analyzes the cultural impact of Frida Kahlo and the global phenomenon of "Fridamania."
The Mexican painter heads a lineup full of well-known names in contemporary art, among which Colombian Fernando Botero also stands out, featured twice with the documentaries Botero and Gracias Botero (Thank You Botero), both by Don Millar and covering both his artistic rise and the legacy he left after his death.
The program is completed with tributes to artists such as Georgia O’Keeffe: The Brightness of Light, by Paul Wagner, focused on the figure of this pioneer of American painting and feminist icon, and The Double Life of Hilma af Klint, by Manuelle Blanc, which rescues the trajectory of the Swedish artist who was ahead of her time by linking abstraction with spirituality and the search for new forms of knowledge.
Activism and resistance
DART 2026 also focuses on "artivism" and the role of culture as a tool for political and social resistance. In this block, Ai Weiwei's Turandot, by Maxim Derevianko, stands out, following the debut of the Chinese creator and activist linking Puccini's work with current situations such as the war in Ukraine or the refugee crisis.
In the same vein of artistic commitment is Tina: Art, Love & Revolution, by Daniela Mujica, a review of the life and work of Italian photographer Tina Modotti and her trajectory between Italy, Mexico, and the United States alongside figures such as Edward Weston and Frida Kahlo.
The DART festival program also deals with conflicts surrounding heritage and creative freedom. In Elephants & Squirrels, Sri Lankan artist Deneth Piumakshi documents the repatriation process of cultural artifacts and human remains held in Swiss museums.
Meanwhile, War on Art, by Andrzej Miękus, explains the work of the volunteer network that risked their lives to save works of art in Ukrainian museums after the Russian invasion, while Westoxicateds, the autobiographical documentary by Iranian director Gilda Pourjabar, recalls how smuggled rock tapes and illegal satellite dishes in 1990s Tehran became a space of freedom against repression.
DART will also host the world premiere of El pintor y el escorpión, where director Sadrak Zmork accompanies artist Jesús Galiana after being diagnosed with Parkinson's at 39; a documentary that shows how abstract painting becomes his tool for reconstruction. At the opposite extreme, The Oligarch and the Art Dealer, by Andreas Dalsgaard, adopts the tone of a thriller to explain the multimillion-dollar legal battle between Russian magnate Dmitry Rybolovlev and Swiss art dealer Yves Bouvier over the purchase and sale of masterpieces by Da Vinci, Rothko, or Magritte.
Architecture and design at DART 2026
Architecture and design complete the DART 2026 program with three different options: bauhaus forever., by Nico Weber, on the relevance of the historic German school a century later; Facundo Martínez: From Mislata To Kyoto, by Mar Navarro Herraiz, which vindicates the figure of a visionary Valencian builder; and Out of the Picture, which denounces the historical invisibilization of women architects through the testimony of figures such as Denise Scott Brown.
The official awards will be decided by a jury composed of Sonia Prior (head of Audiovisual Production at the Prado Museum), Juliette Duret (film director at BOZAR Brussels) and filmmaker Sissel Morell Dargis, winner of the last edition of the contest.
In parallel, the second edition of DART Lab will be held, an event that will offer a space for professional reflection with the presentation of Synthetic Memories, the project by Domestic Data Streamers recently acquired by the MoMA in New York; a round table on aesthetic care versus visual oversaturation; and a meeting on Spanish animation with the participation of the Annecy International Animation Film Festival.
And if you can't attend the festival in Barcelona, you still have an online opportunity. Between December 1 and 31, the festival will transfer part of its programming to the CaixaForum+ platform, where Rebecca Horn – The Secret Life Of Things and Viva Varda!, dedicated to the French filmmaker Agnès Varda, will also premiere exclusively.
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