DOC NYC’s 2026 Short List: 15 awards-season documentaries, and how to stream the festival until November 29

DOC NYC, New York’s documentary festival, opened its 17th edition on November 11 with more than 200 films. In-person screenings at IFC Center, SVA Theatre and Village East by Angelika run until November 19, and the festival’s online platform carries on until November 29 for viewers in the United States and its territories. The section built around awards season is the Short List: Features, which the programmers fill with the nonfiction films they consider among the year’s strongest contenders for the Oscars and other prizes. This year it has 15 titles, by our count.

The 15 films on the Short List

Read together, by our grouping, the list leans toward American history and politics: 14th, The Great Experiment, Soul Patrol and Once Upon a Time in Harlem all deal with them. Three films come out of wars in the Middle East: American Doctor from a hospital in Gaza, NAZA through the testimony of Israeli soldiers and One in a Million through a Syrian daughter’s decade after fleeing war. Two are portraits of very different famous Americans, Musk and You Can See Everything, and Wild Inside turns to Flaco the owl, a folk hero of 2023.

DOC NYC has run the feature Short List since 2012 and presents it as a guide to later awards, from critics’ prizes and top-ten lists to the Oscars. The festival says it has screened the eventual Academy Award winner for documentary feature in 14 of the last 15 years, and 64 of the last 75 nominated documentary features. Those figures are its own.

Where it overlaps with the IDA shortlist

Four of the 15 also appear among the 16 features that the International Documentary Association shortlisted on October 8 for its 42nd Documentary Awards: A Fox Under a Pink Moon, One in a Million, To Hold a Mountain and You Can See Everything. The other 12 IDA titles are not on DOC NYC’s list. The IDA names its five Best Feature nominees on November 17, the day You Can See Everything has its in-person screening at DOC NYC. IDA members then vote on the winners until November 29, the day DOC NYC’s online program closes, and the awards are presented on December 4 at The Ebell of Los Angeles. Our guide to the IDA shortlist has its full list.

How to watch from outside New York

Most of the Short List’s in-person screenings were set for November 12 and 13, so for most readers the online platform is the way in. DOC NYC says most of its films stream for a limited period between November 11 and 29, that the dates vary from film to film, and that each film’s page gives its streaming window. Not every film in the program is hosted online, and online viewing is limited to the US and US territories. For in-person screenings, the festival holds back a few seats at almost every show and releases them 15 minutes before it starts.

The tickets page adds conditions. An online ticket works only with the email address used to buy it. Sales of tickets and passes are final, with exchanges considered only for another screening of the same film. A service charge applies to each ticket bought online, except for IFC Center members buying member-priced tickets.

Also at the festival

Two Short List directors are being honored at the festival’s Visionaries Tribute: Alex Gibney, who made Musk, receives the Lifetime Achievement Award, and Stephen Maing, co-director of The Great Experiment, receives the Robert and Anne Drew Award for Documentary Excellence. A separate Short List: Shorts, in its ninth year, has 15 titles. The Winner’s Circle section gathers features that arrive with major prizes already won, among them American Pachuco: The Legend of Luis Valdez, which DOC NYC says won the audience award for US documentary at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival. Across the whole program, DOC NYC counts 26 films making their debuts at this year’s festival. For filmmakers, the DOC NYC PRO conference runs at Village East by Angelika on November 12-13 and 15-19, with a separately ticketed Solutions Lab on November 14 at The New School.