IDFA 24

At IDFA 2024, we caught up with Renko Douze, producer of Tom Fassaert’s Forum project Between Brothers. The pic follows two elderly brothers - one a psychologist, the other a lifelong psychiatric patient - who set out to unravel the mystery of their father’s disappearance. Their son and nephew is filmmaker Fassaert, who joins them on a tragicomic road trip, untangling the roots of their inseparable bond. “Fassaert’s films are renowned for their emotional depth and intimacy,” Douze tells BDE.

The fascinating subject of well-educated Kenyans making money writing essays for Western undergraduates and doctoral students is investigated with a distinctly personal touch by sociologist Patricia Kingori, the youngest female black professor in the 925-year history of the University of Oxford. With so many opportunities for ‘contract cheating,’ what is the true value of education, she asks.

The Eternal Soldier follows the story of the titular tragic figure who has fought and died in every war since the dawn of time, only to be resurrected again and again. “Our narrative device is to use a real telephone conversation between two opposing commanders in Chechnya as a central scene in the film and then to imagine their prior and subsequent lives, extending their stories all the way into eternity where they finally realise that they are in fact two sides of the same coin,” says producer Friedemann Hottenbacher.

Lidija Zelovic left Bosnia for Amsterdam when the war in the Balkans began, but has recently noticed an equally disturbing rise in intolerance and xenophobia in The Netherlands. It chronicles the way that the Dutch political scene has increasingly come to resemble the powder keg in the Balkans she remembers from 30 years ago. There is an intolerance and xenophobia in the Netherlands that she simply doesn’t remember from when she first arrived in the country, she explains.

Business Doc Europe spoke with Francesco Virga and Anna Di Toma of Doc/it during what is proving to be a frenetic IDFA for Italian docs. The country is represented by eight titles in the festival’s official selection, nine Docs for Sale titles, and four Forum projects. Virga and Di Toma focused on the Italian presence, the state of the country’s documentary scene, and Doc/its main activities at the Amsterdam-based gathering, among other topics.

The prolific Dutch duo are back at IDFA with their heart-rending documentary about the Ukrainian babushkas (grandmas) currently sheltering in Amsterdam as war continues to rage back home. “The city made a big effort to find places for them. We wanted to do something in regards of what it means to be a displaced person,” Peter Lataster explains of his and partner Petra’s intentions with their film.

An arrogant egotist driven by a love of cinema or a malicious fascist who took any chance he could to rise to the top? Drawing on previously unpublished interviews, journals, family film footage, archival material and propaganda films, Luuk Bouwman’s The Propagandist tracks the rise and fall of the Dutch filmmaker Jan Teunissen, with particular focus on his time as head of the Dutch Nazi Party’s film department during World War II.

In his new project to be pitched at IDFA Forum, Belgian filmmaker Kristof Bilsen asks what it takes to say sorry, whether in macro or micro terms. “Apologies hold the power to heal, both for individuals and society. But what makes a good apology? And can it truly mend deep wounds, whether from childhood bullying or historical atrocities?”

The Niger city of Agadez lies deep in the Sahara desert. It’s a very long way from Brussels but it was still part of a strange EU experiment. There was an attempt to create a new security border there, to combat terrorism and stem migration - a sort of Schengen equivalent in the African sands. Gerald Igor Hauzenberger and Gabriela Schild’s On The Border, a world premiere in IDFA, makes it clear why this border plan was doomed to failure. The filmmakers explain more to BDE.

An intriguing and absorbing glimpse behind the scenes at a high end hotel in the Italian Dolomites, Carmen Trocker’s Personale follows often-exhausted staff as they set about folding towels, stripping beds, cleaning bathrooms, precisely fluffing pillows and – yes – cleaning up vomit, all in the name of creating a pristine room ready for the next guest. Day-after-day and hour-after-hour they must help create the image of hotel perfection.