'Moritz Feed Doc' rethinks fashion through film and documentary

In Barcelona, fashion is not just worn; it is narrated, questioned, and reframed. 

That spirit defines the 10th edition of Moritz Feed Doc Festival, which returns from March 18 to 22 with an ambitious program.

Over five days, the international film and fashion festival transforms cinemas and creative spaces across the city into a meeting point for filmmakers, designers, students, and audiences eager to explore what fashion means beyond the runway.

From its foundation, 'Moritz Feed Doc' has resisted the surface-level allure often associated with fashion. The goal is not spectacle for spectacle's sake, but storytelling: tracing the cultural, social, and even political imprint of fashion.

This year's edition is structured around a conceptual arc: craftsmanship reflects the past, sustainability the present, and identity points toward the future.

Films serve as a gateway into broader questions: Who defines fashion? Who is left out? And how do we tell these stories?

For the first time, the program stretches beyond documentary into fiction, series, and fashion films, without abandoning its critical lens. A total of 28 films across 38 sessions will be screened, alongside talks, installations, and workshops. 

Reiner Holzemer: intimacy over industry

At the center of this year's edition is a retrospective dedicated to German film director Reiner Holzemer, the festival's guest of honor and one of the most respected voices in fashion documentary filmmaking.

The festival opens with his latest documentary 'Akris: Fashion With a Heritage', a portrait of the Swiss luxury house Akris. 

It's a fitting entry point: a story about legacy, precision, and the quiet tension between tradition and innovation.

Holzemer, known for his portraits of Belgian designers like Martin Margiela and Dries Van Noten, approaches fashion not as spectacle, but as human process.

His films unfold slowly, often built on trust earned over months or years. Gaining access to designers is less about access and more about patience.

"I remember that after I convinced Dries van Noten, I became the first person ever allowed to film in his studio, his atelier. There had never been a camera there before."

The result is a body of work that strips away the myth of the designer as a distant genius and replaces it with something more complex and more human.

Barcelona as context, not backdrop

Uri Altell, the festival director, pointed out that Barcelona has deep textile roots dating back to the Industrial Revolution. But beyond history, the city offers a democratic relationship with fashion.

"There has always been a popular culture of aesthetics here, not so elitist," Altell said. That ethos aligns with the festival's mission: making fashion accessible without simplifying it.

As it enters its second decade, Moritz Feed Doc is part of a larger cultural ecosystem where fashion intersects with film, identity, and critical thought.

Films and talks address sustainability, representation, and the hidden structures behind global fashion systems.

In a landscape often dominated by image, it insists on meaning. That tension, between beauty and labor, image and reality, is exactly where 'Moritz Feed Doc' thrives.

Screenings will take place at Mooby Bosque Cinemas in the Gràcia neighbourhood and talks at the festival's social hub, the 'Casa Capell'. 

The whole festival's program can be found here.