Published: 10:00 am, 24 September 2025
The BBC’s award-winning strand showcasing the very best in international feature documentaries today announced a new slate of films to be shown this autumn on BBC Four and iPlayer.
Holding Liat
BBC Four and iPlayer 10pm Tuesday 30 September
On 7 October 2023, Liat Beinin Atzili and her husband Aviv are kidnapped from their kibbutz as part of the Hamas-led attack on Israel. This film begins by following her parents, Yehuda and Chaya, as they attempt to secure the release of their daughter.
Yehuda travels to the USA to take part in a campaign for the hostages’ release, as Liat is a dual American-Israeli citizen. Yehuda’s desire to advocate for peace and reconciliation quickly puts himself at odds with political forces. He is accompanied by Liat’s sister Tal and Liat’s son Netta, whose views on the conflict differ from his grandfather’s. On their return, the family keep up their hopes amidst conflicting information and press for their daughter to be included in efforts to secure the hostages’ release.
Holding Liat is the story of a family under duress, desperate for news of their daughter and son-in-law, caught in the global news spotlight, and experiencing their own internal dilemmas about the hostage-taking and subsequent war. Brandon Kramer’s intimate and unflinching documentary is present at all the key moments of the family’s journey and won the Documentary Film Award at the Berlin Film Festival in February 2025.
Directed by Brandon Kramer
Produced by Lance Kramer
Meridian Hill Pictures / Protozoa Pictures / Kartemquin Films
The Librarians
BBC Four and iPlayer
In an era of escalating censorship, librarians have found themselves on the frontline of America’s culture wars. The Librarians follows a dispute between librarians with a deep academic tradition of access to knowledge, who clash with campaigning groups who seek to ban books that they find objectionable.
In Texas, the Krause List, a blacklist of 850 books, many focused on race, gender and LGBTQIA+ lives, sparks a wave of book bans that sweep across the country.
What begins in quiet library stacks, erupts into fierce battles at school boards, community meetings, and courtrooms. Facing harassment, threats, and laws that criminalise their work, the librarians refuse to back down, exposing the growing influence of White Christian Nationalism and the coordinated efforts to control ideas by silencing voices. Urgent and deeply human, The Librarians is a powerful reminder that access to knowledge is never guaranteed, and that democracy depends on those willing to protect it.
Directed, Produced by Kim A Synder
Produced by Janique L Robillard, Maria Cuomo Cole and Jana Edelbaum
Ideal Partners
Mr Nobody Against Putin
BBC Four and iPlayer
When Russia invades Ukraine, a quiet schoolteacher in a small industrial town picks up his camera and becomes an unlikely dissident. Pavel Talankin isn’t a journalist or activist, he organises school events, makes quirky videos, and is loved by his students. But when patriotic lessons and military drills begin replacing regular classes, Pavel starts filming. What emerges is a chilling portrait of how propaganda seeps into everyday life and how children are drawn into the machinery of war. As new laws silence dissent and fellow activists are jailed, Pavel’s quiet resistance becomes increasingly dangerous.
Filmed covertly over two years, Mr Nobody Against Putin is a gripping, courageous exposé of a regime tightening its grip, and one man’s brave attempt to push back from the inside. A powerful story of quiet defiance, captured at enormous personal risk. David Borenstein’s film has been selected as Denmark’s entry for the Best International Feature category at the 98th Oscars Academy Awards 2026.
Directed by David Borenstein
Co-Directed by Pavel Talankin
Produced by Helle Faber in co-production with BBC Storyville.
Made in Copenhagen / PINK
Sanatorium
BBC Four and iPlayer
In a vast, crumbling Soviet-era sanatorium on the shores of Odesa, thousands arrive each summer in search of healing. Some come for the legendary black mud, rumoured to cure everything from infertility to joint pain. Others are looking for something less tangible: connection, laughter, even love. Once a jewel of Soviet medicine, the brutalist complex now stands as a surreal time capsule, its pink and lime green corridors echoing not only with the sounds of therapies and romance, but with the distant rumble of war.
Filmed during a single extraordinary summer, Sanatorium introduces an unforgettable cast of patients and staff navigating daily life under the shadow of conflict. With humour, warmth and a deep affection for its subjects, this documentary reveals a Ukraine rarely seen, defiant, tender, absurd and alive. A bittersweet, tragicomic portrait of humanity and hope in the unlikeliest of places.
Directed and Produced by Gar O’Rourke
Co-Produced with BBC Storyville.
Venom
Welded Together
BBC Four and iPlayer
Katya is a young welder, tough, self-reliant, and determined to leave her traumatic childhood behind. But when she’s unexpectedly forced to care for her vulnerable half-sister, everything changes. Thrown into a role she never asked for, Katya must confront painful memories and an estranged family, while trying to shield the little girl from the world they’ve both come from.
As the sisters grow closer, Katya faces an impossible decision-one that could change both their lives forever. Filmed with striking intimacy and visual power, Welded Together is a raw and moving portrait of sisterhood, sacrifice, and survival. It’s a story about growing up too fast, about second chances, and about the unbreakable bonds that can emerge in the most unlikely places.
Directed by Anastasiya Miroshnichenko
Produced by Valerie Montmartin, Raphael Pelissou, Iris Lammertsma, Babet Touw, Anton Iffland Stettner and Eva Kuperman in co-production with BBC Storyville.
Little Big Story / Wit film / Stenola Productions
MF2