Mimesis 2025 In-Review

The sixth annual Mimesis Documentary Festival was held in Boulder, Colorado from August 5-10 featuring 70+ projects, 100% of which were programmed exclusively from our open call for submissions. The 2025 edition of the festival continued our ongoing partnership with Boulder’s Dairy Arts Center and was held in the exquisite Boedecker Cinema.

Mimesis kicked off with an Opening Night presentation of Masha Chernaya’s dynamic and energetic project, The Shards, hailing from the country of Georgia. The festival concluded beyond the walls of the theatrical environment with an interactive hiking and listening experience on Flagstaff Mountain showcasing Mitra Kaboli’s audio piece, Making Utopia, an experimental oral history about Mount Lebanon in upstate New York.

Our Featured Artist was picked from the open submission process presenting Philadelphia-based artist Melissa Langer. She screened her observational and off-beat feature In Excess (2025), which examined labor, capital, and displacement in modern America through the lens of one city’s trash — in sewers and streets, waterways and workplaces. Melissa also conducted an engaging workshop titled Expanded Cinema, Antidote to Dread where she shared methods for exhibiting multimedia installations and micro-screenings, recounting her experiences working as part of an artist collective and showing how expanded cinema can keep us creatively sustained along the way.

In 2025 we had our largest programming team ever, and none of this could have been accomplished without their dedicated and tireless work crafting programs focused specifically on amplifying artists' and their projects. Thank you, Sarah Biagini, Luiza Pârvu, Laurids Andersen Sonne, Nima Bahrehmand, Chloe Higginbotham, Kaylyn Hunt, and Jean-Jacques Martinod. Your work is deeply appreciated. The technical and administrative execution of the festival was made possible by Curt Heiner with help, guidance and assistance from Eric Coombs Esmail, live-streaming technician Anel Villalobos and camera/documentation from Ella Birchard.

Thank you to all the staff at the Dairy, including Glenn Webb and Shay Wescott. Mimesis would not be possible without your support.

Thank you to our generous sponsors. Their support and your individual donations are the only way that Mimesis can continue to serve this wonderful community. Mimesis 2025 was made possible with major support from Stuart Conway and Jenny Bramhall, the Center for Documentary Media, the Colorado Office for Film, Television, and Media and by your individual contributions.

And most of all, thank you to the artists who contributed their work to our community and who traveled to Boulder, either virtually or in-person, to be together. Your work and your presence are what makes this event so powerful.