You Are Here

Showing Up Is The Story

For 2026, True/False enters a moment of return and redefinition. The theme You Are Here is both a recognition and an invitation. It’s a grounding point—a statement of presence, urgency, and place. A way to frame the kinds of films, performances, installations, and ideas that feel vital right now.

We’re not looking for work that floats above reality. We’re looking for work that stands in it. Work that is embedded and personal; pulsing with the tension of the present while also wrestling with the past. Whether through the lens of personal memory, cultural history, or political reckoning, we welcome work that reexamines what came before to better understand where we are now.

This theme echoes our programming philosophy in several ways:

• It centers authorship—filmmakers and artists who are fully present in the work, bringing vision, ethics, and lived experience to the frame or stage.

   

• It prioritizes lived reality—films and performances that do not flatten or simplify, but instead stay with complexity.

   

• It embraces discovery—welcoming both established and emerging artists, from the U.S. and beyond, who are creating work grounded in the now.

   

• It celebrates form and intentionality—where style and craft are not ornamental, but essential to how the work communicates presence. At True/False, filmmakers are under no obligation to stick to previously established rules. We welcome work that invents its own logic.

   

You Are Here is also about audience—about creating an atmosphere where people feel implicated, invited, and awake. Where the experience can’t be passively consumed. This year, we lean into that—into connection, into awareness, and into work that reminds us that reality isn’t something to watch. It’s something to be in.