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!
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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.