rewrite this title Margaret Mead Film Festival Announces 2026 Lineup

EXCLUSIVE: Oscar nominee Sara Dosa’s acclaimed documentary Time and Water will open the upcoming Margaret Mead Film Festival, held at the Museum of Natural History in New York.

The 2026 edition of the prestigious cinematic showcase will run from May 1-3.

Time and Water, from National Geographic Documentary Films, has been described as a “beautiful, painful and existential film” about the loss of glaciers in Iceland, as seen through the experience and work of Icelandic author and filmmaker Andri Snær Magnason.

The Margaret Mead Film Festival, which launched in 1977, is named for the famed cultural anthropologist who served as curator of ethnology at the Museum of Natural History from 1946-1969.

In a statement provided to Deadline, Dosa (Fire of Love), commented, “Our film Time and Water explores the transmission of cultural and ecological memory through people and the landscapes we call home. My mother, an anthropologist and keeper of our family’s rituals, taught me to look at the world through the lens of connection—her own initial inspiration being Margaret Mead. With resonance to Mead’s work, Time and Water looks at the entanglements between humans and nature, revealing how memory, climate, and kinship co-author a shared story of our radically shifting world.”

Scroll for the full Margaret Mead Film Festival lineup.

This year’s slate includes a number of award-winning documentaries, including Nuisance Bear, winner of the Grand Jury Prize for U.S. Documentary at the Sundance Film Festival, and Whispers in May, directed by Dongnan Chen, which just won the top award at CPH:DOX in Copenhagen. The festival will host the North American premiere of River Dreams, a film directed by Kristina Mikhailova that held its world premiere at the Berlinale in February. In Berlin, it won the prize of the ecumenical jury in the Forum competition. The Oldest Person in the World, Sam Green’s essayistic documentary about fascination with the person who at any given time is certified as the oldest living human, will hold its New York premiere at MMFF.

“Since 1977, The Margaret Mead Film Festival has invited audiences to come together to encounter the world through the eyes of others,” said Jacqueline Handy, director of public programs at the American Museum of Natural History and director of the Margaret Mead Film Festival. “In 2026, our festival continues that tradition, bringing together filmmakers and storytellers who document life on our planet as it is truly lived: complex, intimate, and deeply human. By gathering to watch these films, we are reminded of our interconnectedness with nature, encouraged to understand our shared world and honor the land that sustains us, and invited to imagine and build our future.”

The 2026 Margaret Mead Film Festival will present two awards: the Margaret Mead Filmmaker Award, “which recognizes documentary filmmakers whose feature films offer new perspectives on a culture or community while demonstrating artistic excellence and originality in storytelling, embodying the spirit, energy, and innovation of groundbreaking  anthropologist Margaret Mead,” and the third annual Audience Award, voted on by attendees from a selection of films making their New York premiere at the festival.

This is the lineup of the 2026 Margaret Mead Film Festival:

Time and Water (NY Premiere) – Academy Award-nominee Sara Dosa’s anticipated follow up to Fire of Love, a powerful meditation on the human scale of climate crisis from a filmmaker who continues to break new cinematic ground.

We Are the Fruits of the Forest (North American Premiere) – Renowned, Cannes award winning and Academy Award-nominated Cambodian filmmaker Rithy Panh’s latest feature documentary, continuing to explore new aesthetic terrain as he tells the story of Cambodia’s indigenous community.

Jaripeo (NY Premiere) -Director Efraín Mojica and Rebecca Zweig, Festival favorite, meditation on masculinity and queerness in northern Mexico’s rodeo culture, where gender is presented expansively against the traditional metaphors of rugged landscape and the figure of the bull.

The Oldest Person in the World (NY Premiere) – Cult filmmaker, Academy Award-nominee Sam Green’s latest project, an exploration of mortality and celebration of life that reframes cultural attitudes and finds new meaning in the natural process of aging.

Bucks Harbor (NY Premiere) – Acclaimed fine art photographer Pete Muller’s debut feature, premiered Berlinale 2026, where it won the prize of the ecumenical jury in the Panorama competition. Gorgeously shot, a tender portrait of community in northern Maine, finding metaphor in natural imagery while challenging preconceptions about gender and class.

Daughters of the Forest (NY Premiere) -Director: Otilia Portillo Padua, Premiered SXSW, a remarkable story of culture and mycology from the forests of Central America, indigenous women

River Dreams (North American Premiere: ,Director: Kristina Mikhailova, Kazakh feminist Heimatfilm, blending poetry and confession, premiered Berlinale 2026, where it won the prize of the ecumenical jury in the Forum competition. Women and girls are asked to imagine themselves as a river, provoking powerful reflection on the culture of gender in post-Soviet Asia.

Nuisance Bear (NY Premiere) – Sundance US Doc Grand Jury Award winner, follows a polar bear’s journey through a changing landscape. The film observes uneasy coexistence with settler Canadians and the Inuit community, overturning nature-documentary conventions to reframe animals as agents in a rapidly changing world.

Whispers In May (New York premiere) Director: Dongnan Chen, In China’s majestic Liangshan Mountains, 14-year-old Qihuo begins a traditional coming-of-age ritual after her first menstruation and, with her parents away as migrant workers, sets out with two friends to buy a ceremonial skirt. Winner of the prestigious DOX:AWARD at CPH:DOX 2026, Whispers in May blurs documentary and fiction, inviting Qihuo to be the protagonist of her own adventure

Black Zombie (New York premiere), Director: Maya Annik Bedward, Fascinating, sprawling, and incisive, Black Zombie excavates the hidden history of the mythical figure, tracing its journey from Haitian Vodou to Hollywood horror. An electrifying act of reclamation and spiritual resistance, the film moves through Caribbean cultural histories and into the global pop stage of Michael Jackson and George A. Romero, ensuring you’ll never see zombies the same way again.