IDFA 2022

There can be few documentaries that make their point as succinctly, or indeed as persuasively, as Sarah Vos’ White Balls on Walls, world-premiering November 11 at IDFA. It is a film very much of the time in which we are living, that tackles head on the subject of ethnic and gender diversity, or rather the lack of it, both within the board room and within the culture we consume.

How do you depict the impact of colonisation, decolonisation, a civil war and a destructed economy in one film? Director Alain Kassandra decided to portray his grandparents, who were both born in what was then called Zaire, and lived through all of these traumatising times. The result is a deeply personal, sometimes poetic, sometimes harrowing (hi)story of oppression, revolution, betrayal, disillusionment and love.

Czech sales company Filmotor arrives at IDFA with a slate of award-winning festival films and the international premiere of the home-grown Art Talent Show (A. Komrzy & T. Bojar, Luminous), which picked up the Fipresci prize at Karlovy Vary and sales to Slovakia and the US (Film Movement). The Peruvan title Steel Life is selected for Best of Fests. Both titles join Laura Sistero’s Tolyatti Adrift in Docs for Sale.

“It's about diversity, inclusion and making sure that people find the way to connect to their audiences and articulate their very personal artistic voices,” Industry Head Adriek van Nieuwenhuijzen explains to BDE of the offer to professionals on the eve of IDFA 2022. “We really want to be influential when it comes to exploring new ways of storytelling.”

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.

Lea Glob first met Apolonia Sokol in 2009 – when Glob was a film student in Copenhagen and Sokol was a bohemian art student in Paris. Sokol’s life journey has taken tumultuous twists and turns in those intervening 13 years – she is now an internationally award-winning painter – and Glob has been there to document every step of the way, she explains to BDE.

IDFA 2022 opened November 9 with Niki Padidar’s All You See at Amsterdam's prestigious Royal Carré Theater. The film was simultaneously screened at 35 theaters throughout the Netherlands. During the opening ceremony, the €50,000 Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds Documentary Stipend was awarded to media artist and filmmaker Pim Zwier.

Stylistically bold and as timeless as it is topical, All You See explores the alienation migrants experience coming to the Netherlands. It’s a strong opening film for IDFA, as its main question concerns every documentary in the programme: we look at people, but do we see them?

The 35th IDFA kicks off today, 9 November, running through to November 20, presenting an official selection of 277 films from all corners of the globe, and most places in-between. “If I am to summarize what I hope our impact would be like, that would probably be to evoke self-reflection and openness towards the Other,” Creative Director Orwa Nyrabia tells BDE. “In daily arguments we’re always defensive, but in the dark room, with a good film, we can actually lose our defenses, and be honest with ourselves.”

It is tough to strike the right tonal balance when it comes to looking at the impact of poverty on the vulnerable in society, but while Łukasz Kowalski’s humour in his new doc may well be pitch-black at times, the Best of Fests film is also astutely compassionate as it dwells on staff and customers as they struggle to deal with their harsh lives.