IDFA, the largest documentary festival in the world, is set to kick off today and run through 20 November in Amsterdam, Netherlands. An independent and inspiring meeting place for audiences and professionals to see diverse and high-quality programming, IDFA offers an alternative to mass entertainment and uniformity. Modern Times Review Industry Editor Steve Rickinson and Critic Sevara Pan will be on-site throughout. If you would like to meet for a coffee, just reach out!

Please remember to SUBSCRIBE to Modern Times Review and get all of our digital and print magazines and unlock our expansive archives covering all the non-fiction films, books, exhibitions, industry news, and essays that matter. Follow Editor-in-Chief Truls Lie on Twitter and also join our Facebook Group Modern Times Review for an uncensored conversation on all things «Modern Times».

And don’t forget to follow us on: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter.

NEWS

IDFA announces 2022 opening film, competition slate, and complete programme

IDFA announces first competition titles, Masters & Best of Fests selections for 2022 festival

Laura Poitras announced as 2022 IDFA guest of honour; first titles announced

Chilean Delegation to present a diverse selection of films across IDFA programmes

FILMS

A House Made of Splinters

Director: : Simon Lereng Wilmont

A small group of social workers work to create a much-needed safe space for children to live in.

All the Beauty and the Bloodshed

Director: Laura Poitras

Laura Poitras' Venice winner is a poignant and captivating portrait of the American artist and activist Nan Goldin.

Anhell69

Director: Theo Montoya

For the young, queer community of Medellín, the injustices of colonial heritage consistently intertwine with the brutality of today's global liberal capitalism.

A Provincial Hopsital

Director: Ilian Metev, Ivan Chertov, Zlatina Teneva

In the midst of the pandemic, a survey of an ordinary Bulgarian hospital draws attention to the country’s obsolete and underfunded healthcare system.

Brainwashed: Sex - Camera - Power

Director: Nina Menkes

The mechanisms of exploitation of women as sexual objects in Hollywood films exposed.

Camouflage

Director: Jonathan Perel

A son's search for meaning at the site of a former Argentinian concentration camp where his mother «disappeared» in the 1970s.

Dry Ground Burning

Director: Adirley Queirós, Joana Pimenta

The hybrid Cinéma du réel Grand Prize winner follows an all-female gang who roams one of Brazil’s biggest favelas selling cheap fuel.

Europe

Director: Philip Scheffner

Philip Scheffner's foray into fiction varies the game of visible and invisible until dreams and reality fuse.

Foragers

Director: Jumana Manna

The petty politics of Palestinian persecution – are seen through the lens of age-old traditions of foraging for medicinal herbs.

Fragile Memory

Director: Ihor Ivanko

A Ukrainian filmmaker turns to a forgotten photo archive as his grandfather’s memory starts fading away.

How to Save a Dead Friend

Director: Marusya Syroechkovskaya

For many young Russians, anyone older than 30 is a cunt.

Mariupolis 2

Director: Mantas Kvedaravicius

A tribute to the ordinary people of Mariupol and the Lithuanian filmmaker who gave his life documenting their struggle to survive total war.

My Imaginary Country

Director: Patricio Guzmán

Patrizio Guzmán´s documentary offers one of the rare elements of hope in global politics.

Riotsville, USA

Director: Sierra Pettenghill

In a collage of archival tapes, delve into the stormy era of the 1960s in the United States with a detailed investigation of the period's incidents and their public reception through the lens of police militarization.

The Eclipse

Director: Nataša Urban

Confronting Serbia's wartime past and the evil that is still on the loose today.

The Exiles

Director: Ben Klein, Violet Columbus

Looking back in anger at the lost chances to help China attain democracy 30 years after Tiananmen Square.

The Hamlet Syndrome

Director: Elwira Niewiera, Piotr Rosolowski

The young Ukrainian generation, scarred by war, prepares a play based on the motifs of Shakespeare's Hamlet.

The Kiev Trial

Director: Sergei Loznitsa

Footage from a Soviet war crimes trial in Kiev in 1946 underscores today's atrocities committed by the heirs to the Red Army in Ukraine.

The Natural History of Destruction

Director: Sergei Loznitsa

Sergei Loznitsa’s sombre documentary, The Natural History of Destruction, re-examines the heavy bombing of British and German cities during World War Two, posing the question – ‘is it morally acceptable to kill civilian populations as a means of war?’

The New Greatness Case

Director: Anna Shishova

An ordinary Russian teenager was arrested and incarcerated on charges of extremism. Three years later, the fight for her innocence continues.

The United States of America

Director: James Benning

A portrait of today’s USA through immaculately composed shots of landscape, cityscape and the spaces in between.