IDFA 2021

At some point, maybe a quarter way into the film, you may find yourself asking: what is this all about? But stick with it and you’ll realise this question is an irrelevance. Because you’re about to get sucked in deep into this irresistible, colourful, rough, loving, and sometimes scary world of Cabaret Travesía Travesti.

Veteran Danish filmmaker Jon Bang Carlsen was in Amsterdam last week for the international premiere in Masters section of his deeply personal film The Banality Of Grief, in which he reflects on the recent death of his beloved wife, Madeleine.

A lot of filmmakers come to Docs for Sale in search of a sales agent but not all of them can boast the excess interest Maartje Nevejan is receiving for her film Descending the Mountain, which opened November 11 in The Netherlands. The documentary makes the case for the widespread application of psychedelic drugs to treat illnesses such as depression, PTSD and anxiety.

A world premiere in IDFA International Competition, Journey To The Sun marks the first occasion when revered Portuguese filmmaker Susana de Sousa Dias co-directs a film with Ansgar Schaefer (her partner and usually her producer). The filmmakers discuss their collaboration with Business Doc Europe.

Acclaimed veteran Italian filmmaker Marco Bellocchio is in deeply contemplative mood with Marx Can Wait, a warmly personal film that sees him delving into family history, and in particular the circumstances surrounding his twin brother Camillo’s suicide, allowing for insight and reflection as he gathers the surviving members of his family around him more than 50 years later.

The Lightdox IDFA 2021 slate may seem small, but that’s exactly the way company boss Anna Berthollet wants it. What’s more three of those films are in official IDFA selection, including the world-premiere of Serbian Srđan Keča’s Museum of the Revolution in Luminous section. Berthollet explains her rationale to Business Doc Europe.

Newly available on discovery+, and coming hot on the heels of its Best of Fests screening at IDFA, is Scott Gawlik’s feature doc Set!, about the competitive world of table setting, in which the perfectionism of the participants is no different from that of an artist or even a filmmaker like Gawlik himself, he tells Business Doc Europe.

For many years, Dutch films at IDFA were presented within their own special programme. This year the Dutch sidebar is gone. Instead documentaries from the Netherlands are spread throughout the festival, within the new Envision and International Competitions, and elsewhere. For Simone van den Broek, the new documentary Consultant at the Netherlands Film Fund, this turns out to be an inspiring change, she explains.

The IDFA Bertha Fund Managing Director and IDFA Deputy Director explains to Business Doc Europe how the fund’s role has taken on even more significance over the past 18 months, and how proud she is of this year’s “super harvest” of IBF-supported films.

Less is definitely more in Penny Andrea’s engaging and highly original documentary that chronicles her radically altered state after the diagnosis of a brain tumor. With nothing more than her drawings and her monotone voice-over, she creates a fascinating journey both through time and her magnificent mind within a filmic testimony to resilience, creativity and humour.