Doc Fortnight Shorts 3: Back to Earth

Film

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Muddy Currents. 2025. Palestine. Directed by Shadi Habib Allah. Courtesy the filmmaker

Muddy Currents. 2026. Palestine. Directed by Shadi Habib Allah. World premiere. DCP. In Arabic; English subtitles. 23 min.
词藻飞回大地深处 (Words Fly Back to the Black Earth). 2025. USA/China. Directed by Xiao Zhang. New York premiere. DCP. In Cantonese; English subtitles. 19 min.
Ndjimu (Deep Cobalt). 2026. Democratic Republic of the Congo/USA. Directed by Petna Ndaliko Katondolo. North American premiere. DCP. In Kiswahili; English subtitles. 31 min.

Revealing the human and ecological costs of infrastructure and extraction, as well as the political forces that determine them, the films in this program use a dizzying array of techniques to trace scars above and beneath the surface of the earth. Raw and immersive, Palestinian artist Shadi Habib Allah’s Muddy Currents uses testimonials and a montage of sourced and original material to examine Israel’s control over Palestinian access to a utility as essential as water. In Xiao Zhang’s Words Fly Back to the Black Earth, the major impact of a dam construction on the environment is echoed on a poetic minor scale through diary entries and a dialogue between the filmmaker and her grandmother. The program is pushed to its visual and sonic limit in Petna Ndaliko Katondolo’s IFFR Tiger Short award-winning Ndjimu (Deep Cobalt), which deploys a variety of technological devices to carry us below the surface of the earth with a team of miners in Katanga, Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Program 70 min.

This film accompanies Doc Fortnight 2026: MoMA’s Festival of International Nonfiction Film and Media.

Past events

Wed, Mar 11, 4:00 p.m.

MoMA, Floor T2, Theater 2

The Roy and Niuta Titus Theater 2
Sun, Mar 8, 2:00 p.m.

Followed by a conversation with Xiao Zhang

MoMA, Floor T2, Theater 2

The Roy and Niuta Titus Theater 2

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