Nick Cunningham

Neshoma tells a very particular history using found footage and archive, that of Amsterdam’s Jewish community between the two World Wars. Dutch director Sandra Beerends is of Indonesian heritage and herself married to a Jewish man. “I feel familiar with this wound because my mum had also a war trauma from the Japanese camps in Indonesia,” she says of her film’s subject. “It's not for nothing that I know a lot of couples in Amsterdam where one is Jewish and one is from Indonesia, because there are stories to share of how it is to live in captivity.”

Orwa Nyrabia talks to BDE about his seventh, and final, IDFA as Artistic Director. He speaks about this year’s programme and robustly counters accusations that he has overlooked European filmmakers and their industries during his tenure. He also addresses the opening night events of 2023 when pro-Palestinian protesters stormed the stage. “No matter our good intentions and misunderstandings, we made mistakes last year,” he acknowledges.

What’s in a name? A lot, if you’re called John Smith, and you’ve developed, over the past 70-plus years, a psychological complex about bearing Britain’s most common name. In the very amusing Being John Smith, a recent winner at DOK Leipzig, the viewer is invited inside the mind of the eponymous director to understand what it is like to live with that curse. “Being called John Smith still undermines my sense of individuality and self-worth on an almost daily basis,” the director laments to BDE.

The International Coalition for Filmmakers at Risk (ICFR) has expressed its “support and deep concern” for Uyghur filmmaker Ikram Nurmehmet, whom the Chinese authorities have sentenced to six-and-a-half years in prison on politically motivated and unfounded claims of ‘actively participating in terrorist activities.’ “The ICFR strongly condemns the treatment and proceedings of the authorities, and calls on the Chinese government to release Ikram Nurmehmet immediately,” the organisation writes.

Norwegian Benjamin Ree’s The Remarkable Life of Ibelin won the Audience Award: World Cinema Documentary and The Directing Award: World Cinema Documentary at Sundance 2024. The film tells of gamer Mats who died of the degenerative muscular disease at the age of 25 - and the astonishing legacy he left behind in the online world. Ree discusses his film with double-Oscar© nominee Jonas Poher Rasmussen.

In her feature doc that world-premiered recently in Leipzig, Anna Maria Friedrich goes in search of nomadic life in Germany and talks to its exponents, such as Journeywoman Magdalena in traditional costume or former tightrope artist Elwera, a member of the small but vocal Yenish community. As elegiac as their lives sound, these are women who live very much in the present. “The existences that I encountered are mostly very modern and very adaptive,” Friedrich tells BDE.

After a long and successful tenure as Artistic Director, Orwa Nyrabia will be stepping down from his role at IDFA at the end of his current term in the summer of 2025, the festival announced November 7. He announced his decision jointly with the organization in the run-up to the 2024 festival edition from November 14-24, making this upcoming edition the seventh and last under his leadership. Nyrabia will remain in place until July 1, 2025 to ensure a smooth transition, the festival writes.

Lina Soualem’s Bye Bye Tiberias; Dahomey by Mati Diop; In Limbo by Alina Maksimenko; No Other Land by Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor, Basel Adra & Hamdan Ballal, and Johan Grimonprez’s Soundtrack to a Coup d‘Etat were unveiled November 5 as the 5 nominees in the European Documentary category of the 37th European Film Awards. All 5 are also nominated in the European Film category. The winners will be revealed in this year’s award ceremony on 7 December in Lucerne, Switzerland.

The festival welcomed a total of 55,000 filmgoers this year – more than ever before. Last year, the festival attracted 45,500 filmgoers. The previous record (48,000) was set in 2019, the year before the pandemic. This enabled “lively discussions in sold-out cinemas and memorable feedback for the numerous filmmakers who came here from all over the world,” comments Festival Director Christoph Terhechte. “This is a good sign for cinema screenings of documentaries and animated films.”

For German Films MD Simone Baumann, it may be “a pleasure” to promote German docs throughout the year, but she can’t hide her frustration at her government dragging its feet in passing new and long-awaited film legislation. This means docmakers (and the wider production community) don’t know where they stand either in terms of future funding or what they can offer international co-pro partners. “These are crucial elements in the whole reform of the funding system - and everybody's waiting for it to be resolved,” Baumann tells BDE.