IDFA 2022

At IDFA 2022, Amsterdam’s Royal Theatre Carré hosted a 90-minute conversation with Golden Lion, Academy Award-winning director Laura Poitras (Flag Wars, Citizenfour, The Oath, My Country My Country, All the Beauty and the Bloodshed), moderated by IDFA’s artistic director, Orwa Nyrabia.

Apolonia, Apolonia wins Best Film in Int’l Comp, Manifesto wins Best Film in Envision Comp. Both awards are valued at €15,000. The IDFA Award for Best Directing (worth €5,000) in Int’l Competition goes to Simon Chambers for Much Ado About Dying (Ireland, United Kingdom) while the Best Editing nod in Int’l Comp Mario Steenbergen went to Journey Through Our World (The Netherlands). All awards…

A beautiful portrait of aging and loneliness, Simon Chambers’ Much Ado About Dying dwells on an often-tragicomic but warm relationship as filmmaker Chambers returns to London to grudgingly look after his Shakespeare-loving uncle, a former actor who has grown old and infirm but who still yearns for a diet of attention and applause that clearly he feels his nephew can provide.

The prolific Dutch docmaking couple discuss their latest film, shot during lockdown and very close to home. “We had always wondered what it would be like to make a film…in the garden,” says co-director Petra. “We couldn’t stand the idea that we wouldn’t have work during the Covid period.”

Mirka Duijn and Nina Spiering’s part-archive doc seeks to unravel the mystery of Shangri-La, the mystical land written about so evocatively by British author James Hilton in his 1933 novel ‘Lost Horizon.’ But it was only in 2001 that the place officially existed, after much investment and a very inventive marketing campaign, explains co-director Mirka Duijn.

Heroic Bodies may not be the most skillfully made of documentaries, but its stories and images show a formerly unseen side of women's oppression in an impactful way, and also indicate how slowly but surely the balance is swinging in the other direction. The film provides an important contribution to the liberation and self-determination of women in Sudan - and around the world.

A remarkably immersive and at times terrifying examination of the impact of climate change as it has started to impact the remote region of Siberia, director Alexander Abuturov’s Paradise follows villagers as they battle devastating forest fires without any prospect of assistance from the authorities. It is striking, mermerising and visceral, all the time driven by strong visuals and a perfect soundtrack.

Icelandic director Rut Sigurðardóttir tells BDE about her feature doc debut Skuld and her overall approach to non-fiction filmmaking. “I always believed that I wanted to tell other people’s stories...but very soon I realised that, of course, I’m always telling my own personal story, exploring my personal identity and role in this crazy world. [It’s] so obvious when you think about it... my covert narcissism disguised as altruism!”

One pitch warmly received in the IDFA Forum this week was for Motherland [working title], the new documentary by Danish directors Kristoffer Juel and Christian Als. As Juel explains to Business Doc Europe, the idea for the project dates back to 2015 when he and Als, who are photojournalists, had gone to Mongolia to film the Neo-Nazi gangs then thriving there.

The subjects of Maryam Ebrahimi’s Forum doc, produced by Stina Gardell of Swedish outfit Mantaray Film, are the Kurdish guerrillas who fought in the war against ISIS and Turkey. “I was wondering how these guerrillas, mostly women, can fight face to face with the most brutal men in the world, ISIS men. I wanted to be close to them and to see how they could get this power,” Ebrahimi tells BDE.