What does real love mean in a world shaped by political conflict, economic conditions, and social norms? At Tempo Documentary Festival 2026, we explore love as a fundamental force in people’s lives—but also as something shaped, negotiated, and sometimes broken down by the structures we live within.
In this year’s festival theme, Real Love, the films approach love beyond romantic ideals. Here, love is not a given or a purely private feeling, but a relational practice: something that requires work, compromise, and courage, and that always exists in relation to power, history, and society. Love can be revolutionary, destructive, caring, or conditional—often all at once.
The theme encompasses stories about love’s political force, its connection to identity and survival, and its place within a broader ecological and global context. In My Boyfriend el Fascista, intimacy is set against ideological conviction, as political differences slowly erode trust within a close relationship. How Deep Is Your Love delves into love for nature and all living things, in an underwater world threatened by exploitation and human impact. In North South Man Woman (top image), we encounter arranged marriages between North Korean women and South Korean men—relationships shaped by trauma, pragmatism, and cautious seeds of tenderness.
Through a documentary kaleidoscope, Tempo aims to create space for thinking, feeling, and conversing about love’s many expressions—as a binding force, a zone of conflict, and a possibility for change. Real Love is not an answer, but an ongoing exploration of what it means to connect with one another in our time.
Three Films Included in the Real Love Theme
How Deep Is Your Love
Eleanor Mortimer / United Kingdom / 2025 / Swedish Premiere
Far out on the open ocean, an expedition vessel travels toward the Clarion–Clipperton Zone, one of the most remote areas on Earth—twelve days from the nearest land. Here, darkness, silence, and immense depths conceal an almost entirely unexplored universe. How Deep Is Your Love follows the people striving to understand life in this unknown world, while grappling with the question of whether their presence risks harming what they seek to protect. A visually hypnotic and deeply absorbing journey in which every discovery reshapes our understanding of the planet.
My Boyfriend el Fascista
Matthias Lintner / Italy / 2025 / Swedish Premiere
Director Matthias Lintner films his boyfriend Sadiel. They live a seemingly idyllic life in the Alps, deeply in love. But as frustration grows over both the Cuban regime and the silence of the European left, Sadiel’s political stance gradually shifts. He becomes increasingly radical in his views and begins campaigning for right-wing populist Giorgia Meloni. My Boyfriend el Fascista is a beautiful and intimate portrayal of loving someone who is changing—and of how politics can create fractures in the most intimate of relationships.
North South Man Woman
Morten Traavik, Sun Kim / Norway, Latvia, South Korea / 2025 / Swedish Premiere
North South Man Woman depicts encounters between North Korean women and South Korean men in a borderland of love, commerce, and geopolitics. After fleeing to South Korea, Yujin Han runs a matchmaking agency for women who have recently left North Korea. She acts as both advisor and support in these new relationships, while her own family life comes under strain. An intimate, nuanced, and at times humorous film, shot over five years.
