Beyond Borders
11th Kastellorizo International
Documentary Festival

August 23-30 2026

We are living through one of the most complex and turbulent periods in modern history. Armed conflicts, humanitarian tragedies, population displacement, and constant questioning of fundamental principles of international law paint an uncertain global landscape where human dignity and collective ethics are tested daily. Against this backdrop, Beyond Borders returns for its 11th edition, posing a question that is both a challenge and an invitation. What remains once the obvious is removed?

Beyond Borders continues to serve as an international meeting place for creators, ideas, and experiences. Through the power of documentary, it seeks out unseen stories, marginalised voices and overlooked aspects of reality. The Festival champions diversity, promotes dialogue, and highlights the role of documentary in fostering understanding, responsibility, and participation.

This year’s theme is also reflected in the Festival’s own trajectory. Faced with significant financial challenges and the ever-increasing precariousness of cultural resources, Beyond Borders was forced to reconsider the fundamentals of its existence. When certainties, guaranteed funding and the constants of the past are stripped away, what remains? What is the core that continues to give meaning and perspective to a cultural institution?

It is precisely this line of thought that has provided the inspiration for this year’s visual identity for the event, which has been designed by Polkadot Design. Abstraction becomes a creative act. Restriction becomes a language. Emptiness is not viewed as a deficit, but as a field of possibilities; a space in which the ideas, people and values that comprise the festival can be showcased more clearly. In a world inundated with images and information, the documentary offers something valuable: time and space to look deeper. It provides an opportunity to question certainties, seek out nuances and reconnect with the human experience behind the events.

In its 11th edition, Beyond Borders invites us to look beyond the obvious. It confronts us with what remains when distractions and certainties are stripped away. It encourages us to seek out the essence once more: memory as an act of resistance, documentation as an act of responsibility, and cinema as a space of freedom, encounter and solidarity.