IDFA 2020

Sales powerhouse Cinephil has boarded Forum rough-cut project A House Made Of Splinters, directed by Simon Lereng Wilmont, about the plight of kids in war-torn Ukraine. Doc is being made by Final Cut for Real, responsible for The Distant Barking Of Dogs (2017) which was shortlisted for the 2019 Oscars.

Music doc Phil Lynott: Songs For While I'm Away premiered in the UK recently to considerable acclaim at Alexandra Palace as part of the Doc N Roll music documentary festival. However, the film’s theatrical life in the UK has been hampered by the COVID lockdown.

An impressive achievement for Brooklyn-based filmmaker Saad Khan who wrote, directed, co-produced and co-edited this intriguing look into the world of Pakistan’s theatre dancers - once worshipped and respected, now hunted and lusted after.

Matti Paunio started his job as Head of Production at The Finnish Film Foundation in the autumn of last year. Then, the pandemic came. “As with everybody, this was a total surprise and changed a lot of things we had planned,” Paunio says of the sudden challenges posed by Covid-19.

Like an X-ray, this documentary gets under your skin to touch invisible points both in the body and the mind.

Dutch CORE Sales Manager Margaret Stanneveld talks to Business Doc Europe about the large slate of home-grown (and beyond) documentaries that she and her team will be selling at Docs for Sale 2020.

The documentary and private detective genres meet in Maite Alberdi’s The Mole Agent which world premiered at Sundance 2020 and is now selected for IDFA Best of Fests. The Chilean director talks to BDE.

IDFA Award for Best Directing (€5,000) goes to Vitaly Mansky for Gorbachev. Heaven. IDFA First Appearance Award (€10,000) to Alina Gorlova for 'This Rain Will Never Stop'.

An Ordinary Country, Tomasz Wolski’s immersion into the Secret Service archives of Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance, packs a considerable political punch, and delivers on an aesthetic level too. The Best of Fests director explains all to BDE.

No, the Scottish Documentary Institute (SDI) won’t be holding their usual soirée during IDFA at which it plies festival guests with wee drams of whisky. Covid restrictions have meant that SDI representatives, like other international industry delegates, can’t be in Amsterdam in person.