Photo: BFI Southbank Photograph by Luke Hayes
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There’s much to love about having the entire lifespan of music at your fingertips via a streaming service, but if you wish to delve deeper into your most revered artists and the stories behind how genres were born, there’s little better than a music documentary. And, in London, there just so happens to be a festival dedicated to them.
Doc’n Roll Festival is back for its 12th edition in 2025, with a vast array of music films that are ‘celebrating artists who refused to bend, break, or conform’. Running from October 23 to November 9, documentaries will be shown across multiple London cinemas, from the BFI IMAX to Rio in Dalston to the brutalist beacon that is the Barbican.
Credit: @docnrollfilms, via IG
What can we expect from the Doc’n Roll Film Festival in London?
There are documentaries of all kinds featured in the programme for Doc’n Roll Festival, from alt-rock to punk to Celtic folk to blues and much more. All in all, the 2025 list includes 20 feature films and eight shorts.
Six world premieres of music documentaries are featured on the bill, which include How Tanita Tikaram Became A Liar, Pieces of Heaven: Porridge Radio, Rockers Don’t Stop: The Revival of Rockers Revenge, and more. Opening the festival at the Barbican is the UK premiere of I Was A Teenage Sex Pistol, a cinematic memoir of Glen Matlock (a founding member of the Sex Pistols) that features his account on the rise of the band in the 70s.
A full panel of names from the music & film industries is also on hand to judge the Doc’n Roll Festival’s Jury Award, with six pictures up for the prize. The aforementioned I Was A Teenage Sex Pistol and How Tanita Tikaram Became A Liar are in the running, alongside four other pictures: Monk in Pieces, Move Ya Body: The Birth of House, The Big Johnson, and Boy George & Culture Club.
Speaking on the festival, Vanessa Lobon Garcia, director and co-founder of Doc’n Roll Film Fest, said: “We’re delighted to bring Doc’n Roll back again this year to the passionate, diverse, and dedicated audiences who continue to support and inspire us. To have the opportunity to present a lineup of documentaries of this calibre in London and Dublin is a dream; it’s what keeps us going, year after year. In the current climate, operating as a totally independent film festival is a rare thing; it makes Doc’n Roll as unique as the films we programme.”
Doc’n Roll Festival is back for its 12th year, and you can catch the action from October 23 – November 9. Find out more and read about the full schedule on their website.