IDFA 2022

Lyfta chief content officer Paulina Tervo spoke to Business Doc Europe during IDFA Forum about her platform “where kids can learn about the world through stories.” Tervo is looking to invest in doc projects from around the globe for which she can acquire educational rights. “Our vision is that by the time a child leaves school, they would've 'visited' every country in the world,” she says.

Antipode’s IDFA slate will feature two lead titles, Humaira Bilkis’ Things I Could Never Tell My Mother (Best of Fests) and Kirill Nenashev’s Doc for Sales film Ice Under His Feet. Originally based in Moscow, Antipode relocated to Israel following the unfolding of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The company’s Anisa Kazakova explained that the sales outlet’s catalogue also includes several protest films.

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.

Much Ado About Dying is a documentary with very unlikely origins, British documentary maker Simon Chambers tells BDE. The original idea had been to make a movie called Carmageddon about traffic congestion and climate change in Delhi. Instead, Chambers left the traffic fumes in India far behind and ended up back in London, looking after his uncle David, whose health was failing.

Business Doc Europe caught up with Hadar Porubanova, managing director of the sales and distribution firm Ruth Films. “We were offered an unprecedented number of films this year, and only a few of them could make it to the Ruth Films’ catalogue. We try to keep things intimate, while picking subjects that are less covered by mainstream cinema,” she underlined.

With a large Italian contingent of docmakers and professionals taking part at IDFA 2022, BDE sat down with two reps of DocIt, Italy’s national association of documentarians, to discuss how the country’s doc scene is developing, their agenda for the fest and the Italian titles and projects set to be showcased or screened this year. DocIt president Francesco Virga, and Lucia Pornaro, in charge of DocIt’s internationalisation processes, filled us in.

Anna Blom’s The Night My Brother Disappeared may well be conventional in structure, but the power of its emotional stories and encounters, combined with her protagonist’s own memories, sense of guilt and desire to find links to the terrifying incident in which his younger brother perished, help deliver a potent film.

Dok.incubator director Andrea Prenghyová discusses her high-end professional programme, its raison d’etre and modus operandi, as well as its presence at IDFA, centering on the November 12 showcase of seven new projects. “There are many good films, but we help people to make their films outstanding,” she tells Business Doc Europe of the eight filmmaker teams selected each year.

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…

After chancing upon Winslow, Arizona – during a long drive he needed a place to sleep for the night – veteran Danish doccer Jon Bang Carlsen ended up falling in love with the place, and decided to set his latest doc there, about teenagers exploring the idea of freedom. “They all have some kind of scars,” the director says of his young cast. “Those scars can either bring them down or could make them wiser and more prepared to go on in life.”