Our Picks From Choreoscope 2026
What we loved from this year’s edition of the Barcelona-based Dance Film Festival
Still from Pidikwe (Rumble), directed by Caroline Monnet.
By Curation Hour
This year’s Choreoscope, curated by Andreina Aveledo under the theme Rebelling is Healing, turns to movement as a form of resistance, reclamation and transformation. Centred around the experiences of women, migrants and minorities, the programme asks what it means to challenge inherited narratives and create space for stories that have too often been pushed to the margins.
Across dance film, documentary and experimental work, the body becomes a site of memory, identity and cultural expression. Movement extends beyond choreography, becoming a way of reconnecting with roots, questioning history and imagining new forms of freedom. Together, these films explore how movement can not only reflect the world around us, but become a means of changing it.
Here’s a selection of our favourites:
Rift. Directed by Asra Rán Björt and Kiljan V. J. Paoli
Across five landscapes, a solitary dancer moves through each emotional terrain, interacting with a fragmented mannequin, the face of a broken world. As grief unfolds, the boundary between internal and external dissolves, leading not to resolution, but to a quiet, unsettling acceptance.
Opium Dream. Directed by Nishchaya Gera
A Dionysian bacchanal conjoins the immersive pleasures of the body with the physical textures of the natural world. São Paulo based Fabio da Motta’s Shibari ropework awakens the dancers to their bodies’ sensuous powers. Once we understand the ways we are bound, we are free to enjoy the cornucopia of the world.
Juno & Sensei. Directed by Tom Gera
When an aging dancer's mentorship turns to jealousy, his young protégé's talent for mirroring ignites a dazzling duel of reality-bending choreography, blurring the line between creation and destruction.
Organising Principles of Experience. Directed by Gabriela Tropia
An AI model tuned to the writings and sensibilities of Maya Deren collaborates with the filmmaker to imagine new films exploring memory, possession and the digital afterlife, questioning what remains when the past becomes data and how an artist might lay claim to her absent hero.
Field Recordings from Oblivion. Directed by Ferran Gordillo
A dance short film about love, dreams and oblivion, set in the uninhabited landscapes that occupy the liminal spaces of our digital age.
NACHTKANON. Directed by Thomas Bos
A man runs naked through the night, his body presented with almost absurd aesthetic precision. What begins as a polished image of beauty gradually becomes grotesque and ridiculous, blurring the line between artistic expression and pure physical absurdity.
Pidikwe (Rumble). Directed by Caroline Monnet
Indigenous women from different generations deconstruct the western gaze through traditional and contemporary dance.
These films represent just a fraction of Choreoscope’s 2026 programme, bringing together radically different approaches to movement, identity and the body. Across dance, documentary and experimental work, the selection shows how movement can become a language for memory, resistance and new ways of seeing.
Explore the full Choreoscope 2026 programme here.