Running from Friday, June 26 to Sunday, June 28 at the Theatre Royal, this year’s Castlemaine Documentary Festival is built around a simple idea: Love – the antidote.
Across three days and nights, the program looks for what connects us when the world feels increasingly fractured.
In our Castlemaine community and beyond, we each share many of the same hopes and dreams. The festival’s way of bringing these to you is by running an annual documentary festival.
Year-on-year, new and interesting conversations are had, and new connections forged through our Festival and Club CDoc’s activities.
Where did it all begin?
Back in 2015, Maggie Fooke, together with John Waldie and Geoffrey Smith, hosted the first Castlemaine Documentary Film Festival at the historic and much-loved Theatre Royal. Herself a filmmaker with a longstanding interest in documentaries, Maggie was the then co-owner of the Theatre Royal, which had been screening documentaries for some time. When Geoffrey and John approached her with an idea, a new festival focused solely on the documentary genre in the Theatre Royal was not a difficult decision. And so, CDoc was born!
Geoffrey Smith, a double Emmy award-winning director, was soon joined by Denise Button, and together they continued to deliver the annual festival over a weekend every winter. Each year, the festival was very well-received with encouraging audience numbers and local support growing, so they continued to deliver it until 2019.
The current Festival Director, Claire Jager, took over from Geoffrey Smith at the end of 2019. In 2018, the festival was formally established as a not-for-profit organisation, and has received the invaluable support of various local volunteer board members since its incorporation.
In 2024, the Castlemaine Documentary Festival celebrated its 10th Anniversary. This milestone also marked the first year of LOCALS Redux — the encore session of the LOCALS short films, which regularly sells out. Over those years, CDoc have continued to evolve and roll on, adapting to the ever-changing media landscape and our community, and each year they continue to showcase the festival’s spirit of innovation and bold storytelling.
Festival programming is always a discovery. There’s something of an alchemy in the way it comes together. The final program is always more than the sum of its parts, and 2026 will be no exception.
This year’s program turns towards what binds us. Love – The Antidote is both a theme and a call to come home to our shared humanity.
CDoc offer a range of ticketing options. Come for a film or the whole weekend! Book tickets at www.cdocff.com.au