Where is Cannes' Nonfiction Cinema?

You wouldn’t know it, but there are 21 feature documentaries playing across the many sections at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. You wouldn’t know it, because the storied French festival doesn't call these films out as nonfiction and they are relegated to sidebars and parallel sections. (I’ve included a list below, for your reference, but who knows it if it’s accurate?) As usual, there are no documentaries in the Competition and none in Un Certain Regard. In 2014, I wrote an article for IndieWire called “When Will Cannes Embrace Docs Like the World’s Other Major Film Festivals?” Now, twelve years later, not much has changed.

Admittedly, there have been a couple additions made to boost Cannes’s commitment to nonfiction, but it still feels half-assed and surface level, with the selection of docs still relegated to fringe sections and an overcommitment to documentaries about cinema rather than documentaries as cinema.

In 2015, the year after that IndieWire ar…