Nick Cunningham

In recent years the lives of footballing geniuses Cruyff, Ibrahimović and Maradona have been given the full cinematic treatment, courtesy of leading European auteurs. Now it is the turn of Italian Francesco Totti, the one-team World Cup-winning neo-god from the Eternal City where, appropriately, Alex Infascelli’s new film word-premiered this week.

At Cinekid 2020, Youtuber Quinty Misiedjan premiered her documentary Marked for Life, made in collaboration with the NGO War Child for whom she is an ambassador. The film explores the lives of refugee children, and seeks to find out how they can retain any sense of joy, resolve or passion against a backdrop of uncertainty, fear and violence.

This evening, FILM PLATFORM and ProQuest invite students, faculties and academics to a live dialogue with the founders of Partners In Health, the subject of the award-winning documentary Bending the Arc (whose exec producers include Ben Affleck/Matt Damon). Panel hosted by Tabitha Jackson of Sundance FF.

Amsterdam doc fest reveals Dutch, short, student, and young audience competition programmes, as well as selections within non-competitive sections Luminous, Frontlight, and IDFA on Stage. 90 films and performances have now been added to the festival program.

“IDFA will not stop.” Joint statement issued by festival staff underlines that, “as long as cinemas are open, every IDFA 2020 film will first screen in theaters, no matter how limited the capacity.”

Running November 11-19, festival goes online for 2020 and available nationwide for first time; 23 world prems, 12 International/North American prems and seven US premieres among 200+ films and events.

Producer Maarten Schmidt may not have a project at the Flemish showcase this year, but is nevertheless a very active participant within the Belgian doc scene (and in European with DAE), specialising in films for youth. He talks to Business Doc Europe.

Maarten Bernaerts of Flemish production house Diplodokus talks to Business Doc Europe about his current doc slate, which includes the delicate and lyrical What Makes Us Boys, which received a jury commendation at Connext 2019.

Despite the recent shift to the digital space, the programme features more than 220 films with 59 world and 26 international premieres including latest of Czech and international docs, a South Korean film retrospective, comprehensive showcase of Afro- American documentaries.

Hanne Phlypo’s Clin d’Oeil films is handling no fewer than five documentary projects at the Flemish forum for new audiovisual works, including an ambitious new series entitled Draw for Change!, which goes next to IDFA Forum, directed by six leading international female docmakers.