From Story to the Big Screen: How the Phone Is Redefining Documentary Film
In video: Docaviv 2026 event, sponsored by Schweppes / Editing: Gilad Man Mannaheim
There are moments we photograph almost without thinking, a glass raised in a bar, a conversation that lingers one second too long, a quick glance at the camera, a late-night drive, a protest, a meal, home, longing. Once, they would have remained in our private memory. Today they go up to a story, are saved in highlights, sent on, and sometimes even become a much bigger story. Docaviv 2026’s “Highlights” competition is being held with the sponsorship of Schweppes, and that connection was felt from the opening moments. From there, the entire experience unfolded, the bar, the glasses, the encounters and the conversations about the moment when everyday documentation from a phone turns into documentary cinema. Between the festival atmosphere and the big screen, a space was created that connected culture, leisure, and true stories born out of life itself. The competition, as Docaviv presents it, seeks to examine the border between cinema and social media and offer a new look at documentary creation in an era when each of us has a camera in our pocket. On the official page of the “Highlights” competition, one can find the participating films and screening details, but at the event itself, the idea took on body, face, and voice.
When the story enters the auditorium, the Docaviv 2026 event did not try to separate high culture from social networks. On the contrary. It asked what happens when the story, originally meant to disappear after 24 hours, becomes documentary raw material. What happens when vertical shooting, fast pace, fragments of moments, and a very personal gaze become a cinematic language in their own right. Alex Parpouri, curator of the “Highlights” competition sponsored by Schweppes, articulated the magic of the format through the place where it was born. For her, the beauty lies דווקא in the everyday, fast, and intimate language of the network. “What is beautiful within Instagram,” she says, is the ability to find within that space a personal, free, and cinematic gaze. And when asked which film in the competition is her favorite, she smiled and declined to choose. Like a proud mother, she loves all her children.
Alongside her also appeared Omer Etzion, an actor, screenwriter, and DJ, who brought to the event his natural connection between cinema, stage, and music. “Cinema is where all my love for acting came from, so I came to DJ in exchange for entry to movies,” he said with a smile. In a sense, that sentence aligned perfectly with the spirit of the evening, a personal, almost incidental moment that reveals how a love of culture can begin from one screen and continue in many other directions.
Ran De Lange, director of the film “120 Hours of Intoxication,” described a process in which the material was already there, alive, immediate, and charged. “So basically all the material was...,” he says, and from there the real challenge was born, not just to collect moments, but to understand how to connect them into a story. How to identify rhythm, movement, emotion, and point of view within wild raw material. In the end, he sums up, it is a matter of being able to “capture reality and pass it on.” That may be one of the most accurate definitions of what this competition is trying to do. Not to invent a new reality, but to capture the one already unfolding around us. Inside the feed, inside the device, inside a conversation, inside a moment that seems too small to become a film, until one realizes it is actually the whole story.
Trailer: Docaviv 2026 / In video: trailer for the Docaviv 2026 festival / Courtesy of the festival
Small moments make the film. Ella Armoni, actress and director, spoke about the change taking place in the creative world in an era when almost everyone documents their lives. What once required a camera, a crew, and a set can now begin with a small moment captured on a phone. In her view, the line between professional filming and personal documentation is already much less sharp: if there is a gaze, emotion, and story, it does not always matter which device it was shot on. Or as she puts it simply: “So it doesn’t really matter.”
Dr. Iris Zaki, lecturer in documentary film at Sapir College, expanded the view to the cultural significance of the format. She spoke about “the small and subjective stories,” the ones that would not always have been given a place in classic documentary cinema, but which sometimes manage to reveal something profound about the era. A big narrative or a clear hero are not always necessary. Sometimes a personal gaze, an intimate moment, and one voice that has not been heard enough are what make the difference. “That really makes the change,” she concludes.
Among the participants was also Guy Nemech, director of the film “Sabbath Procedure,” who was asked about one moment he will not forget from the work on the film. “I think everything,” he says, and in a sense that may be the sentence that explains the entire format. In a world of nonstop documentation, there is not always one moment that holds the whole story. Sometimes it is precisely the accumulation of looks, voices, small frames, and fragments of memory that creates the full picture.
Alongside the participants in the segment also appeared Anna and Gal Rochberger, documentary creators, who joined the broader conversation about what Israeli documentary can look like today, less bound to one format, more open to the language of the moment. Less separation between life as it appears on the small screen and the way it can resonate on the big screen.
Schweppes’ presence at the event connected exactly to that place. Between the bar and the auditorium, between the glasses raised and the conversations that continue after the screening, a space was created where culture, leisure, and creation meet. Schweppes’ sponsorship did not remain in the background, but wrapped the evening in an atmosphere of a living encounter, one in which ideas, tastes, and stories pass from person to person.
What makes “Highlights” unique is the freedom. Instead of trying to fit reality into a familiar mold, the competition allows creators to work with the language that has already become part of our lives. Vertical filming, the rhythm of social networks, a very personal gaze, moments that seem small but contain an entire world. All of these expand the boundaries of the documentary genre and offer a new way to think about cinema, documentation, and memory.
Docaviv 2026 / Screenshot
At the end of the screening, a conversation was held with the creators and with the competition’s curators, Michal Weitz and Alex Parpouri, who continued the discussion about the connection between the small screen and the big screen. In a world where almost every moment is documented, “Highlights” seeks to ask not only what we film, but also why, how, and what happens when those moments become a work that someone else watches from the outside. Perhaps that is exactly why this competition feels so relevant. It does not seek to separate life from the network, but to understand the cinema born from within it. Where a story becomes a memory, and a memory becomes a film, a new and intriguing chapter in Israeli documentary opened at Docaviv 2026.
