La Inesperada 2026
By Charlotte Stace
La Inesperada is Barcelona’s film festival dedicated to non-fiction cinema, where documentary spills into visual art, essay film, archive experiments and hybrid forms. It champions work that stays close to reality while taking bold creative risks.
Founded by Nuria Giménez and Miquel Martí Freixas, this film festival is shaped around three programme strands - Atòmica, Cuadecuc and Supernova - which act like different lenses on non-fiction: from radical formal experiments to more boundary-blurring works. Alongside the screenings, there are talks and workshops that open up conversation to a wider group and bring filmmakers and audiences into the same orbit.
For 2026, it runs for four days across February, and the wider programme includes EXIT (a development lab for Catalan non-fiction projects), plus Conversaciones and a closing Fiesta. The full programme can be found online.