The festival, named after American filmmaker Robert Flaherty, has been running since 1995. Since 2006, it has been an annual international documentary film festival. This year, the opening film is the Iranian movie *Fereshteh-ha* (Angels) by Mahdi Zamanpour Kiasari.

Joël Chapron wished to expand on the interview he gave to the website in June 2026. Having examined the distribution side of the industry, he now turns his attention to new areas such as production, exhibition and export. He also discusses the future prospects for actors and directors both within and outside Russia. We would like to extend our warmest thanks to Joël Chapron for once again putting his expertise at the service of our website.

The festival features about 100 films: 45 of them are part of the various competitions, while the rest make up a variety of out-of-competition programs, which are particularly rich this year.

The article presents a unique dataset on film distribution in Russia in 2025: the number of films released in cinemas, categorised by country of origin; cinema attendance, broken down by age group; and pirated films. It also includes a previously unpublished classification of films by genre. The article further examines the impact of government measures on censorship and the promotion of certain types of cinema.