The Tempo Documentary Award recognizes the strongest Swedish documentary films of the year and is Sweden’s leading prize for documentary filmmaking. The award is presented to the winning director and consists of prize money and film production equipment with a total value of SEK 150,000. Below are the nominated films for 2026.
Tempo Documentary Festival is one of Sweden’s most important meeting places for documentary storytelling. Previous winners of the Tempo Documentary Award include films such as Om alla bara drar by Karin Wegsjö and Nazira Abzalova, How to Save a Dead Friend by Marusya Syroechkovskaya, and The Scars of Ali Boulala by Max Eriksson.
“This year’s programme reflects our contemporary moment in many different ways, at a time when shared stories are more important than ever. We very much look forward to meeting the audience and engaging with the conversations, reactions, and perspectives that the films inspire,” says Ulrika Bandeira, Artistic Director of Tempo Documentary Festival.
The competition is organised with the support of our partner the Swedish Film Institute. The director of the winning film will receive a prize of SEK 100,000. The winning entry will also receive a voucher worth SEK 50,000 for the rental of professional film production equipment from our sponsor Storyline Studios.
A Song for Love
Hogir Hirori / 1 hr 25 min / 2026 / Sweden
A restrained and deeply human portrayal of coming of age. Sundance-winning documentary filmmaker Hogir Hirori follows 21-year-old Ibrahim, a nursing student and young dervish in Iraqi Kurdistan. Ibrahim gives voice to his innermost feelings through poetic folk songs that run as a connecting thread throughout the film. With great sensitivity, Hirori portrays a life in which the quiet routines of everyday existence meet the intense rhythms, rituals, and ecstatic dances of Sufism.
Celtic Utopia
Dennis Harvey, Lars Lovén / 1 hr 30 min / 2025 / Sweden, Ireland
A probing, timely, and engaging documentary about Ireland’s folk music scene, infused with political urgency. The film depicts a country in transition, where music carries traces of a colonial past while also pointing toward a visionary future. Directors Dennis Harvey and Lars Lovén bring together some of today’s leading Irish folk musicians in a richly layered portrait of society that resonates with both tradition and hope.
En gång skall du vara en av dem som levat för längesen
Alexander Rynéus, Per Bifrost / 1 hr 33 min / 2025 / Sweden
Beneath the worn streets of a small mining town in northern Sweden lies one of the world’s largest iron ore mines—a source of both prosperity and destruction. As the ground begins to give way and farewell becomes inevitable, Alexander Rynéus and Per Bifrost follow some of the town’s last remaining residents. Through fragmentary encounters and memories, a story of loss and transformation emerges—of places that disappear and lives forced to take new shape. With quiet melancholy, dry humour, and touches of the absurd, the film depicts Malmberget’s slow transformation into a ghost town.
La belle année
Angelica Ruffier / 1 hr 30 min / 2026 / Sweden, Norway / Nordic Premiere
A compelling hybrid documentary about an unfinished love relationship that continues to shape a life long after it has faded. In Morières-lès-Avignon in southern France, director Angelica Ruffier clears out her childhood home following her father’s death. Amid practical tasks and unresolved emotions, memories are rekindled of the intense and solitary love she carried as a teenager for her history teacher, Mademoiselle B. As Angelica delves deeper into the past, it becomes clear that her longing cannot be ignored: she must reunite with the woman who once meant everything to her.
Lust for Life
Viktor Nordenskiöld / 1 hr 29 min / 2026 / Sweden, Germany, Qatar / Swedish Premiere
Over ten years, Viktor Nordenskiöld follows Syrian teenagers Hazim and Said and their struggle to find a new home after fleeing across the sea to Europe in 2015. Paralyzed after an injury, Said is forced to abandon his wheelchair along the way and is literally carried by Hazim toward a new life in Hamburg. The film shows how life gradually stabilises for the friends as they learn German, attend school, and begin working. Over time, Said becomes increasingly independent, while Hazim is confronted with the realisation that even the strong sometimes need someone to lean on.
Mördarens son
Sebastian Peña Rojas, Jesper Klemedsson Sotomayor / 1 hr 22 min / 2026 / Sweden
This feature-length debut by Sebastian Peña Rojas and Jesper Klemedsson Sotomayor is a documentary portrait centred on inheritance and trauma, set in a Sweden where it is becoming increasingly difficult to escape one’s background. When Tabaré is three years old, his father is sentenced to life imprisonment for double murder and his mother to fourteen years for complicity. The siblings are placed in foster care, where abuse soon becomes part of everyday life. Many years later, when a close friend is murdered, the adult Tabaré is forced to confront a past he has done everything he can to leave behind.
Strejkarna
Helena Molin / 1 hr 30 min / 2026 / Sweden / World Premiere
It begins on the margins of power: a group of teenagers protest outside the Swedish parliament, cardboard signs in hand and unyielding determination in their eyes. From there, Helena Molin’s long-term portrait unfolds—of a generation forced early on to understand the ruthlessness of politics. The struggle for the climate and for justice runs parallel to lives that should be about friendship, play, and dreams of the future, but are repeatedly hijacked by the failures of the adult world. The result is an intimate and powerful depiction of what happens when moral responsibility is placed in the hands of those still searching for their place in life.
The Making of a Surgeon
Dylan Williams / 1 hr 20 min / 2026 / Sweden, Rwanda, Canada / European Premiere
Dylan Williams’s new documentary follows a small group of surgeons who carry an entire nation’s healthcare needs on their shoulders. At its centre is Faustin Ntirenganya, one of only two reconstructive plastic surgeons in Rwanda, responsible for patients across the country—fourteen million people. His work involves operating on bomb-damaged faces, burn injuries, and congenital conditions, while also striving to build a sustainable system in which others can take over. The goal is ambitious: to train thirty new surgeons by 2030. An intimate and unsentimental portrait of medicine as practical, political, and moral labour.
All nominated films will be screened during Tempo Documentary Festival, 2–8 March, in Stockholm. A selection of the festival programme will also be available digitally on Draken Film.
