Canadian Premiere
Film is endlessly shapeshifting as it moves from one technological ecosystem to the next. In The Story of Documentary Film – The 2010s & 2020s, Mark Cousins brings his 16-hour epic into the now, where nonfiction has splintered across phone cameras, GoPros, YouTube, TikTok, live-streams, and feeds. These chapters move through dozens of documentaries including Jackass, Citizenfour, I Am Not Your Negro, and The Square, as filmmakers trace the roots of bodily autonomy, surveillance, racism, revolt, and border violence. The present is not a clean break from documentary history; it is history returning through new tools.
Across nearly three hours, Cousins questions what truly defines a “documentary” after cinéma vérité has detached from its old frame. Is a TikTok mukbang or “what I eat in a day” video so far from Marguerite Lumière drinking coffee in one of her husband’s films? Cousins reaches for connections across images and eras, searching for bits of the truth like the filmmakers he profiles.
Content Considerations: blood, brief flashing/strobing lights, protest footage, refugee crisis
Showcase Series Supported by
UK/USA
2026
English
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Credits & Director
Executive Producer
Joslyn Barnes, Frank Lehmann, Clara Glynn, Diana Bustamante
Producer
John Archer
Cinematography
Mark Cousins
Editor
Timo Langer
Original Music
Donna McKevitt
Mark Cousins
Mark is a Scottish-Irish filmmaker and writer whose works focus on politics, visual culture, history, cities, childhood, and recovery. At the start of his career, Cousins made TV documentaries on childhood, neo-Nazis, and Mikhael Gorbachev. In the mid-90s, he partnered with the Edinburgh International Film Festival to host film screenings in Sarajevo for its besieged citizens. His first book was Imagining Reality: The Faber Book of Documentary (2006). He has walked across Los Angeles, Belfast, Moscow, Beijing, London, Paris, Berlin, Dakar, and Mexico City. He drove from Edinburgh to Mumbai and loves night swimming.
Filmography: The Story of Film: An Odyssey (2011); Women Make Film: A New Road Movie Through Cinema (2019); The Story of Film: A New Generation (2021)
Photo by Jenny Leask
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