IDFA 2021

Jason is the third and final part of Maasja Ooms’ trilogy about the failing Dutch youth welfare services, in which the eponymous hero (and there really is something genuinely heroic about Jason) seeks to overcome systemic inadequacies, in the process transforming into an articulate advocate for reform. The documentary won Best Dutch Film at IDFA last week.

Business Doc Europe talks to Meera Devi, Chief Reporter at Khabar Lahariya and core protagonist within Writing With Fire. “Both personally and professionally, it has really amplified the newspaper and its work. We have witnessed a completely different kind of popularity - and that is really good,” Meera says of the multi award-winning doc.

The Covid-19 pandemic may well have dominated television news coverages for months, especially at its height in 2020, but that doesn’t detract from the immersive power of director Matthew Heineman’s new film The First Wave, which recounts in grim but pragmatic detail the experiences of those on the front line of New York’s response to the health crisis.

Film historian Nikolai Izvolov briefs Business Doc Europe on the rescue and restoration of Russian master Dziga Vertov’s epic The History Of The Civil War which will, during IDFA, be screened for the first time in a cinema to the general public. The momentous event takes place in the Tuschinski on Saturday November 20.

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.

With Luminous and Frontlight sections comprised mainly of world prems, the fest also presents first competition selections within Short and Youth Doc Competitions. IDFA also announces titles in its interdisciplinary program IDFA on Stage, chief among them the world premiere of the newly restored Dziga Vertov film The History of the Civil War (pictured). The 34th edition of IDFA takes place November 17-28.

Meet Oli London, social media influencer, online personality and someone utterly obsessed with South Korean pop culture. London, the subject of Gangnam Beauty (a world premiere at IDFA) may be English-born but has spent a fortune on plastic surgery (including several botched operations) in order to look like a K-Pop idol. Director Tomaszewski faces off with BDE.

In her self-shot film, selected for IDFA Best of Fests, Cléo Cohen, a granddaughter of Jewish Arabs form Tunisia and Algeria, is determined to discover her identity. She spoke to Business Doc Europe about the emotional and evocative journey that results, as well as colonization and the essential business (at least from her grandmothers’ perspective) of straightening her very curly hair…

Artur Liebhart of Polish distributor Against Gravity and doc fest Millennium Docs Against Gravity briefed Business Doc Europe on recent all-rights pick-ups of IDFA 2021 titles plus selections for the 2022 festival slate.

Charting the odyssey taken by Greek marble as it is shipped to China, sculpted into objets d’art and then transported back to Greece, only to be bought by Chinese tourists, the doc is gently ironic and eminently watchable, and blessed with a satisfyingly light touch.