The Big Read: Where? People ask this when I say I'm going to Doha.

Where is Qatar? Did you know this tiny country (population 1.7million) has the world's highest per capita income? Hmmm.

The drive from the plane to the airport terminal is under 10 minutes, but it was just as fast through immigration. I had hardly got out my passport before I was looking deep into the eyes of a very beautiful Qatari immigration official, wearing a black burqa (all the immigration officials were women, dressed exactly the same, and with the same striking make-up. Was this textbook instruction?)

Everything very efficient, clean, calm. With Arab revolt in nearly every country around me, the calmness seemed contradictory, perhaps dangerous. Is Qatar calm? A new black Merc slips me to the Sheraton, home of high thread counts, fab food and venue of Al-Jazeera's 7th International Documentary Film Festival in Doha, the channel's home city.

I'm here because my film is in official competition, one of 284 films from 70 countries, chosen from more than 1200 entries.

This festival (themed "Dialogue") reflects growing interest in the documentary genre, increased global documentary production, and growing prestige for Al-Jazeera, which, research shows, is the most watched and reliable Arab TV channel. Clearly, it has replaced the BBC as the global reporting standard.

Opening night paid tribute to Ali Hassaon al-Jaber, an Al-Jazeera cameraman killed in Libya. Three Al-Jazeera journalists just freed were honoured - a poignant reminder of the dangers the media face, and of those killed bringing us the story of the end of apartheid.

The speeches were followed by Carolina Popolani's film Cairo Downtown, a prescient description of the roots of Egypt's revolution - made three years earlier, in 2008.

Powerful resonances with the bad old days in South Africa - the secret police watching, informers, outlawed strikes, and dissidents being beaten. This time the internet made a difference. Egyptian bloggers and social networks worked constantly.

It was followed by a remarkably balanced Swedish film, Israel vs Israel, about the Palestine-Israeli conflict, by Terje Carlsson, a journalist in Jerusalem for eight years.

It showed conflict at the personal level: the taunting of Palestinian children in Hebron (encouraged by their Jewish parents), and Palestinian olive farmers on the West Bank fending off predatory illegal settlers on their land.

There were also interviews with Israeli soldiers turned activists, just like the End Conscription Campaign in the 1980s. It was déjà vu, watching Israeli soldiers firing tear gas at kids wielding catapults.

One of the soldiers-turned-activist said: "If you want to put in jail every Israeli soldier who abused the Palestinians, then all my generation should go to jail." Remember the TRC and all the killers that still walk free?

These two films set the tone: Arab Revolt and the Question of Palestine. From the animated cartoons of Gaddafi to the newly published How to Avoid Being Killed in a War Zone, by Rose Garthwaite, an English title in a book fair of Arab literature and comics, it's quite clear that Arabs are relishing the storm of democracy and free speech around them.

Into Thin Air is Mohohammadreza Farzad's beautiful, lyrical half-hour from Iran, crafted from a single minute of surviving archive footage of a 1978 street massacre.

Other memorable films I saw include Children of the Revolution (UK), by Shane O'Sullivan, a fascinating counterpoint to the Baader-Meinhof complex that arose after the 1968 riots.

Two women, one from Japan, the other from Germany, joined the fighters in Palestine to start a world revolution. One is still in jail.

Hunting for the Cowboy is Riad Kobaissi's poetic 55-minute examination of a legendary fighter nicknamed "The Cowboy" by comrades and enemies alike during the civil war in western Beirut during the early 1980s.

Possibly the best film I saw was Shooting vs Shooting, a heart-rending examination of the dangers journalists face in reporting war and conflict, made by Greek journalist and film maker Nikos Megrelis.

And finally, a terrifying film, Agent Orange: 30 years later, about the genetic defects and disease caused by the indiscriminate and criminal use by the US military of the poisonous defoliant during the Vietnam War. John Trinh's 56-minute film documents the monstrous deformities and consequences for which no one will accept responsibility. Remember the US and UK use of depleted uranium in the Middle East early this century? Expect more terrifying films about this.

One of the best things about the festival is that documentary film is taken very seriously . This is the world standard .

It's a real pity that South Africans do not value or support our film festivals, or develop them the smart way that government and big business do in very fast-growing Doha - which boasts the highest per capita income in the world - remember?

• Forbes is an independent film-maker. His latest film is The Cradock Four