‘Wood Street’ and ‘All About the Money’ Take Top Prizes at SF DocFest

Wood Street, directed by Caron Creighton, has won the Audience Award for Best Feature at the 25th Anniversary edition of the annual San Francisco Documentary Film Festival (SF DocFest), which ran from May 28 to June 7, 2026.

The documentary follows a year in the life of Oakland’s largest unhoused encampment as its residents face an imminent eviction that threatens to dismantle their community.

The Jury Prize for Best Feature went to All About the Money, directed by Sinéad O’Shea. The documentary follows James Cox “Fergie” Chambers Jr., of the multibillion-dollar Cox family, as he fights to sustain the communist-friendly Alford Family Farm in Massachusetts.

Organized by parent organization SF IndieFest, the festival featured a hybrid format, with in-person presentations at the Roxie Theater, Vogue Theater, and Artists Television Access in San Francisco, alongside virtual screenings available at sfindie.com.

For 25 years, SF DocFest’s mission has been to discover new non-fiction films for Bay Area film fans to enjoy. Now, with the age of computerized algorithms and the dreaded AI infiltrating the creative process, a human touch is needed more than ever to curate a unique cinematic experience. SF DocFest continues to provide new and unusual alternative films you won’t find at the multiplex or popular streaming services.

DocFest 2026 Award Winners

Audience Award for Best Feature

Wood Street
Director: Caron Creighton
Producer: Caron Creighton, Estevan Padilla
Wood Street follows a year in the life of Oakland’s largest unhoused encampment as its residents face an imminent eviction that threatens to dismantle their community. As notices appear and police move in, residents organize — building barricades, filing lawsuits, and protesting at City Hall to fight for their right to stay. Told through immersive verité, the film places viewers inside the encampment, capturing the urgency, resilience, and emotional toll of collective resistance. At its center are John and LaMonté, whose bond is tested as pressure mounts — LaMonté’s mental health deteriorates while John struggles to remain sober. When the eviction comes, the community is physically erased, but its spirit endures.

Audience Award for Best Short

The Second Life of Freddie Nole
Director: Dana Nachman
Producer: Chelsea Matter
When Freddie Nole drives to meet a man walking out of prison, he’s not just offering a ride, he’s offering hope, dignity, and a path to permanent freedom. As this vérité road trip unfolds, we come to learn the remarkable story behind Freddie’s mission, a staggering mistake that cost him 50 years of freedom but ultimately brings him right back to the prison door.

Jury Prize for Best Feature

All About the Money
Director: Sinéad O’Shea
A son of one of America’s wealthiest families creates a communist revolutionary base in rural Massachusetts as a means of disrupting the capitalist system he grew up in but has now come to despise. It’s the starting point of an unbelievable journey involving radical ideals, betrayal and exile. With rich observational texture, sharp editorial intelligence, and a current of deep moral restlessness, All About the Money speaks to a moment when more and more people are questioning the systems they were told were inevitable. It is a film about contradiction, but also about longing: for justice, for freedom, for reinvention, for a life that does not feel purchased at the expense of someone else’s ruin.

Jury Prize for Best Short

Brick By Brick
Director: Chris Boyd, Nate Riedel
A comedic sports documentary narrated and executive-produced by soccer star Alex Morgan. A women’s college basketball team faces cancellation due to a lack of players, but is saved when the soccer team volunteers to play — even though none of them have ever even tried the sport.

Special Jury Prize for Spirit of Activism

Human Shield
Director: Erin Persley
Producers: Erin Persley, Rajal Pitroda, Erin Semine Kökdil
Facing a growing far-right extremist movement, Human Shield is an intimate portrait of abortion clinic escorts protecting vulnerable patients as they endure one of the most hostile 30-second walks of their lives. Told through the perspective of three clinic escort leaders, this film investigates the struggle to maintain safety and balance mental exhaustion on the front lines of America’s longest culture war.

Special Jury Prize for Excellence in American Profiles

Amazing Live Sea Monkeys
Director: Mark Becker, Aaron Schock
A captivating tale of Yolanda Signorelli von Braunhut, the heiress to the Amazing Live Sea-Monkeys fortune, who is engaged in a David and Goliath legal battle with a large toy company to regain control over her husband’s iconic aquatic novelty. Now dispossessed of her sole source of income, Signorelli von Braunhut lives alone without electricity or running water on the Sea-Monkeys estate along the Potomac River, where she struggles to restore the novelty’s reputation by regaining ownership of the Sea Monkeys and reintroducing the secret Sea-Monkeys formula to the world. Yolanda alone possesses the true Sea Monkey secret formula, and she alone must free them, not only from their captors, but also from the stain of her husband’s dark legacy.