ATLANTIDOC - FESTIVAL INTERNACIONAL DE CINE DOCUMENTAL DEL URUGUAY (20)

Festival start: 19 October 2026      Festival end: 05 November 2026

The International Documentary Film Festival of Uruguay began in Atlántida, the summer retreat of Alberto Mántaras—one of the pioneers of Uruguayan documentary filmmaking—and a place of refuge for Pablo Neruda. It is one of the first seaside resorts east of Montevideo, located just a few kilometers from the airport and offering ideal infrastructure for hosting a festival. A beautiful coastal town with a beach and a historic hotel that once welcomed notable figures such as Gardel, García Lorca, Mirtha Legrand, and many other celebrities of the 1930s.

Year after year, the festival expanded throughout the entire country, driven by the desire to reach more people, especially in Uruguay’s interior, where the best documentaries in the world do not always arrive. Public television channels support us, but it is never enough—particularly considering that around 600 films are submitted each year, and we only have the capacity to program the 100 that are selected.

This creates a double commitment: on the one hand, to the filmmakers who place their hopes in being part of Atlantidoc’s program; and on the other, to a diverse audience that must leave the comfort of their homes to attend a screening and watch a documentary we have selected, trusting our judgment—always guided by the pursuit of formal and narrative quality. One day we hope to have a streaming platform that will allow us to reach audiences more directly, more comfortably, and more effectively.

ABOUT THE FESTIVAL

In this part of the world, excellent documentaries are produced, yet we face challenges in theatrical and festival programming. This is why we created Atlantidoc in 2006: a festival that seeks to give documentaries the recognition they deserve.
Since then, it has grown every year, expanding across the whole country and throughout South America. With professional juries, significant awards, and high-level training programs, Atlantidoc is an international festival inspired by decentralization.

Our experience in festival organization dates back to 1982, with notable achievements such as Divercine, which ran for 30 years, and the First Animation Film Festival of Uruguay in 2005. We draw inspiration from the Documentary and Experimental Film Festival of SODRE from the 1960s.

Since the very first edition, we have invited to Uruguay the best documentary filmmakers we could bring—many of them outstanding—resulting in clear and lasting benefits for documentary filmmaking in the region. Uruguayan cinema cannot exist without co-production, and this has been at the core of our work since the beginning.

ATLANTIDOC AWARD for the best documentary of the Festival, Félix Oliver Award.

BEST URUGUAYAN DOCUMENTARY AWARD, Mario Handler Award.

BEST IBERO-AMERICAN DOCUMENTARY AWARD, Eduardo Coutinho Award.

BEST DEBUT FILM AWARD, Kristina Konrad Award.

BEST EXPERIMENTAL FILM AND SHORT FILM AWARD, Enrico Gras and Ferruccio Musitelli Awards.

BEST URUGUAYAN DOCUMENTARY IN PRODUCTION AWARD, Ronald Melzer Award.

SIGNIS AWARD for best documentary at the festival, María Blanca Pigola Award.

20th URUGUAY INTERNATIONAL DOCUMENTARY FILM FESTIVAL

Life Experience

ATLANTIDOC / October 19 to November 5, 2026.


1. THE URUGUAY INTERNATIONAL DOCUMENTARY FILM FESTIVAL

This annual event aims to present an overview of new documentary productions, bringing the best and most diverse content of the genre to our country, as well as training talented filmmakers from the Ibero-American region, as we have been doing since the first edition of the festival.
The programming criteria are based on the quality of the works, the virtues of form and content.

The experience over the years has been very positive and Atlantidoc now has a place of consideration among all documentary filmmakers around the world, who recognize it as the only festival of its kind in Uruguay and for the seriousness with which it pursues all its objectives. It promotes the works of young filmmakers while also giving an important space to established documentary filmmakers from around the world.

Registration for the Festival implies acceptance of these rules.


2. ATLANTIDOC 2026 will feature:

A) COMPETITION SCREENINGS.

Productions with the following characteristics will be accepted: international documentaries between 10 and 100 minutes in length, completed after July 2025.

For the works in competition, the following awards will be given to the documentaries that the different juries consider to be the best. Each award promotes a filmmaker who has made an important contribution, pioneers in some cases and fundamental references in others:

ATLANTIDOC AWARD for the best documentary of the Festival, Félix Oliver Award.

BEST URUGUAYAN DOCUMENTARY AWARD, Mario Handler Award.

BEST IBERO-AMERICAN DOCUMENTARY AWARD, Eduardo Coutinho Award.

BEST DEBUT FILM AWARD, Kristina Konrad Award.

BEST EXPERIMENTAL FILM AND SHORT FILM AWARD, Enrico Gras and Ferruccio Musitelli Awards.

BEST URUGUAYAN DOCUMENTARY IN PRODUCTION AWARD, Ronald Melzer Award.

SIGNIS AWARD for best documentary at the festival, María Blanca Pigola Award.

The awards will be granted by a three-member jury composed of renowned artists, film experts, and critics appointed by the organizers. Special awards will have their own juries composed of representatives from the institutions granting them. Individuals with interests in the production and/or exploitation of the films submitted to the competition may not serve on the jury.

The members of the jury undertake not to publicly express their opinions on the films submitted for consideration before the official announcement of the awards.

The SIGNIS Jury (World Catholic Association for Communication) provides an international jury for its award.

The awards will be presented to the directors and producers of the winning films or their representatives at the Festival's Closing Ceremony, to which they are all invited.

The Festival Organization will select the works it considers most suitable for this purpose, in accordance with the guidelines followed by all international documentary film festivals, always based on quality. Documentaries will not be accepted for programming unless they are submitted with the corresponding completed and signed Registration Form.

Each jury will have to consider up to a maximum of 12 works for the decision and will view them well in advance of the festival. The composition of the juries will be announced well in advance of the closing date for registrations.

The selected documentaries will be screened in movie theaters, on streaming platforms, or on television channels, georeferenced to Uruguay only and in agreement with the producer or distributor of the work. The Festival Organization will decide on the programming schedule and the dates and times of each film's screening, taking into account the audiences of each screening venue.

The organizers reserve the right to reject, for the Competition, any documentaries that do not comply with the conditions set forth in these Rules. Propaganda films, as well as educational films intended exclusively for classroom use, or purely commercial films, will be excluded from the Festival.

B) THE INFORMATIVE EXHIBITION includes:

- Documentaries not previously released in Uruguay or prior to the production deadline, which justify their inclusion in the program due to their interest.

This Exhibition will provide specialists and the general public with a broad overview of the creative documentaries of filmmakers who have been fundamental to the history of cinema.

C) THE PARALLEL SECTIONS will feature material specially invited for screening at the Festival.

The works programmed will have in common their thematic unity, author, period of production, or origin.

3. REGISTRATION. Applications must be submitted by the producer or director, or, exceptionally, by film organizations or institutions that hold the distribution rights in the area. Producers who hold the rights to a film must, before the closing date of the call for entries, notify the Festival of their desire to participate by sending the duly completed registration form, which will serve as a sworn statement confirming that they are familiar with and accept these Rules. This is repeated on the distribution platforms to the festivals. If these are transferred after registration, the new owner shall not prevent participation in the Festival.

The statements written on the registration form shall be considered valid and must be accompanied by:

a. Complete technical specifications.

b. Five-line informative synopsis of the documentary.

c. Link to the documentary via Festhome for selection. Up to 30 minutes costs $10, and over 30 minutes costs $20.

Send applications by April 20, 2026, to the following address:

20 FESTIVAL ATLANTIDOC contacto.atlantidoc@gmail.com Registration will close at 8 p.m. Montevideo time. Participation in the Festival implies acceptance of these Rules. Any conflict (of organization or operation) not provided for herein will be resolved by the Festival Organization.

4. COPIES for screening must include:

Photos, posters, and informational material for the press.
Director's bio-filmography.
List of awards won.
Send everything by email if selected by the Festival.

About languages and subtitling: Selected documentaries will be screened in their original version, but all need to be subtitled in Spanish if their language is not Spanish.

All Festival screenings will be digital. They will be used exclusively for the scheduled screenings, which will be duly publicized on the website: www.atlantidoc.com. For more information, please contact:

Ricardo Casas contacto.atlantidoc@gmail.com

5. COPIES OF AWARD-WINNING FILMS. The Festival organizers, with the approval of the producers, will retain a copy of the award-winning short and feature films. These copies will form part of the Festival Archive (Mediateca Atlantidoc) and will be used solely for Festival purposes. No copies will be permitted for commercial or other uses.

6. PARALLEL ACTIVITIES.
Seminars and workshops will be held by invited experts, both national and international, as well as meetings of documentary filmmakers from the region. All festival activities are open to the general public, without limitation, except for age recommendations for the works on display. The workshops are normally for filmmakers from South America, but students from other countries are also accepted upon presentation of their complete bio-filmography. The Screenplay Workshop, for example, has received more than 170 projects since its first year, most of which have already been completed and have a good track record, with top-level international teachers.

For the tenth consecutive year, a Work in Progress (Documentaries in Construction) will be held for Uruguayan documentaries in the final stages of completion. Six documentaries will be selected and a jury of three members, international experts in documentary filmmaking, will be formed to advise the team behind each of the works, in accordance with the rules that will be announced in due course.

7. ORGANIZATION AND SPONSORS. The FESTIVAL is organized by La Compañía del Cine and the Uruguayan Film and Audiovisual Agency - Ministry of Education and Culture, Municipality of Montevideo, Municipality of Canelones, Ministry of Tourism, and other public and private institutions.

8. EXCEPTIONS. The organizers will make decisions on matters not specifically covered by these rules. Signing the Registration Form implies acceptance of these rules.


The regulations for the Screenwriting Workshop, Documentaries in the Making, Filmadoc and other training spaces at the festival, which require registration, will be announced separately in due course.

All information about the Festival will be available on its website:


www.atlantidoc.com. It will also be available on Atlantidoc's social media accounts.