IDFA announced November 26 the winners of the competition programs during its 2020 Awards Ceremony.
IDFA Competition for Feature-Length Documentary
Radiograph of a Family (Norway, Iran, Switzerland) by Firouzeh Khosrovani was the winner of the IDFA Award for Best Feature-Length Documentary (€20,000).
Jury citation: “Radiography of a Family is literally an X-ray of a family. As discontent grows with politics, many people experience their families divided on ideological lines. Through masterful storytelling, Firouzeh shows how history and revolution brought about the political and personal divorce of her parents, a secular father and increasingly conservative mother. The family space changes over time due to forces of the outside world. It’s the great accomplishment of the filmmaker that she so subtly and poetically shows how divided politics can divide a room and change it forever. The fractured body of family life is told through images, photos, and enactments in such a way that the viewer, too, feels the loss.”
The IDFA Award for Best Directing (€5,000) went to Vitaly Mansky for Gorbachev. Heaven (Latvia, Czech Republic).
The IDFA Award for Best Editing (€2,500) went to Hong Kong Documentary Filmmakers for Inside the Red Brick Wall (Hong Kong), and the IDFA Award for Best Cinematography (€2,500) went to Nemesis (Switzerland), shot and directed by Thomas Imbach.
Radiograph of a Family was supported by the IDFA Bertha Fund.
IDFA Competition for First Appearance
Alina Gorlova won the IDFA Award for Best First Appearance (€10,000) for This Rain Will Never Stop (Ukraine, Latvia, Germany, Qatar).
“A striking, beautifully shot and edited film that embarks on the disaster of war through a personal journey and rocks the spectator between furtive moments of joy and pain. This moving film encompasses traditions, modernity, death, and the power of moving forward. This Rain Will Never Stop is a powerful story that does not allow us to escape from the destruction and heart-wrenching losses of wars,” the jury reported.
The jury chose to give a special mention in the First Appearance competition to Diane Sara Bouzgarrou and Thomas Jenkoe for The Last Hillbilly (France, Qatar).
This Rain Will Never Stop was supported by the IDFA Bertha Fund.
The FIPRESCI Award (€5,000) was given to Ahmed Abd for The Fifth Story (Qatar, Iraq).
IDFA Competition for Mid-Length Documentary
The IDFA Award for Best Mid-Length Documentary (€7,500) was awarded to Nomin Lkhagvasuren for The Wheel(Mongolia).
The film The Blue House (Belgium, Senegal, Cameroon) by Hamedine Kane received a special mention in the Competition for Mid-Length Documentary.
IDFA Competition for Dutch Documentary
The IDFA Award for Best Dutch Documentary (€7,500) went to Paul Sin Nam Rigter for Dealing with Death (Netherlands).
A special mention was awarded to Pieter-Rim de Kroon for Silence of the Tides (Netherlands).
IDFA Competition for Short Documentary
Unforgivable (El Salvador) by Marlén Viñayo won the IDFA Award for Best Short Documentary (€5,000).
IDFA Competition for Student Documentary
Boyi-biyo (Central African Republic, France) by Anne Bertille Vopiande Ndeysseit won the IDFA Award for Best Student Documentary (€2,500).
IDFA Competition for Kids & Docs
The IDFA Award for Best Children’s Documentary (€5,000) went to Ako Salemi for Shadegan (Iran).
A special mention in the IDFA Competition for Kids & Docs went to An Intermission (United Kingdom), directed by Edwin Mingard.
IDFA Competition for Creative Use of Archive
In its second year, the Beeld en Geluid IDFA ReFrame Award for Best Creative Use of Archive (€5,000) was awarded to Firouzeh Khosrovani for Radiograph of a Family (Norway, Iran, Switzerland).
The jury also decided to award a special mention to Dormant (Argentina) by Natalia Labaké.
Additional awards
Last year’s stipend recipient Marina Meijer presented the Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds Documentary Stipend (€50,000) to filmmaker Aboozar Amini.
With this stipend, the Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds awards a documentary talent with a grant of €50,000 that allows the recipient to make a documentary about a subject of their choice. The award is intended for a documentary filmmaker with a proven track record who has already earned modest recognition in the documentary field.
DocLab awards
This year, due to new travel and exhibition restrictions, it was not possible to present all DocLab competition works equally to an international jury. Therefore, the festival opted to forgo the DocLab juries and awards this year. During the Awards Ceremony, the team introduced an alternative scheme to celebrate and support projects by taking the collective prize money, raising it to €15,000, and inviting the artists in competitions to apply for the Creative COVID Response Support scheme with the aim of presenting their work to new audiences after the festival – online, physically and/or in virtual reality. The prize money will be made available in three rounds, and the festival will work with an international jury to select the best proposals. With this support plan, IDFA DocLab also extends its research in collaboration with MIT Open DocLab into new forms of exhibition.
IDFA 2020 Facts & figures
As of 26 November, IDFA 2020 still has 10 days to go. With more than 3000 guests online, the festival has accommodated almost as many professionals as last year, IDFA states. These professionals visited the online Industry Program more than 28,000 times. The on-site part of the festival, in cinemas and venues, was almost sold out with more than 15,000 visits. To date, IDFA has received over 62,000 online film views.
IDFA continues until Sunday, December 6.
