This year, the Territorial Focus at RIDM transports us to the Western Balkans. Building on RIDM’s ongoing relationships with DokuFest, Beldocs and MakeDox, this year’s Focus explores the Western Balkans through 6 feature films and 6 shorts from Kosovo, Serbia and North Macedonia.  

Focus

The Territorial Focus is a program designed to showcase the cinema of a given country or territory. Conceived alongside established local partners, it aims to showcase a wide range of voices and perspectives in documentary film and to foster cross-cultural dialogues.

 

At its core, the Territorial Focus at RIDM is an exercise in reciprocity: where films travel, conversations follow and new forms of collaboration emerge. The Western Balkans Focus is a natural outcome of this approach.

 

The Western Balkans

One of the most compelling aspects of the Western Balkans Focus is how collaborative cinema can transcend political divisions, highlighting a powerful paradox: while physical borders may divide territories, cinema has the power to blur and to reconnect them.

 

Rather than treating this cinematic landscape as a fixed geographical entity, the program approaches the region as a constellation of interconnected histories and perspectives, where belonging, identity and borders remain in constant negotiation. The region offers a compelling lens through which to consider broader questions of coexistence and the relationship between personal experience, collective memory and geopolitical reality. Through intimate stories and formally adventurous works, these films embrace plurality while revealing the richness and diversity of contemporary documentary practices emerging from the territory.

 

Films from Focus 2026

 

Films from Kosovo

THE BEAUTY OF THE DONKEY by Dea Gjinovci

 

I HAVE NEVER BEEN ON AN AIRPLANE by Redon Kika

 

I BELIEVE THE PORTRAIT SAVED ME by Alban Muja

 

WORKER’S WINGS by Ilir Hasanaj

 

Films from Serbia 

 

PROMISED SPACES by Ivan Marković

 

SUNSET by Miloš Jaćimović

 

THIS DESIRABLE DEVICE by Mina Simendić

 

THE DIVINE FEMININE by Ivana Todorović

 

INVENTORY by Ivan Marković

 

Films from North Macedonia 

 

DISTURBED EARTH by Kumjana Novakova & Guillermo Carreras-Candi

 

THE TALE OF SILYAN by Tamara Kotevska

 

MUSHROOMS GROW IN MEMORY by Hanis Bagashov

 

The Podcast

Le monde dans mes oreilles: Discovering a Territory Through Music

This year, the festival is dedicating a major segment to the Western Balkans, which will be complemented by the second season of the podcast Le monde dans mes oreilles, produced by Caroline Marcoux-Gendron and broadcast on CHOQ. 

 

Each recording will reveal, through music, the migration journey of someone from this region, whether they now live in Quebec or are among the festival’s guests. Co-developed with RIDM and broadcasted on CHOQ, the podcast offers, through these life stories, a personal perspective on the world and makes music a living memory. By opening each episode with a new soundscape, Le monde dans mes oreilles complements RIDM’s Territorial Focus.

 

To kick off this new season, Caroline Marcoux-Gendron sits down with Marlene Edoyan and Hubert Sabino-Brunette, RIDM’s artistic co-directors, to discuss this collaboration and the Western Balkans as this year’s regional focus. 

 

The first episode is available now on CHOQ. Starting September 15th, episodes will be published every other Tuesday!