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“Chile arrives at IDFA with a vibrant and diverse presence that celebrates both new voices and master documentarians, reaffirming the creative strength and international recognition of our cinema,” Flor Rubina, Deputy Director of Chiledoc, comments of her country’s presence in Amsterdam this year. Highlights include Blue Silence (by Matías Rojas Ruz) in International Short Film Competition, and two films in Signed; Letters to My Dead Parents by Ignacio Agüero and Invisible Life by Bettina Perut and Iván Osnovikoff.

As doors open on 2025 IDFA Forum 2025, one of the most delicate and emotionally resonant titles in the Rough Cut line-up is Bugboy, the new documentary by Greek director Lucas Paleocrassas. The film is produced by Anemon Productions (Greece) in co-production with Toolbox Film (Denmark) and Flach Film Production (France), with world sales being handled by Austria's Autlook. Shot over three years, it examines the growing bond between a sensitive teenager, Yorgos, and the insects he cares for - an unlikely friendship that gradually becomes a map of the boy’s inner world.

In Benjamin Bucher’s debut feature, Joyce, a 22-year-old African-Chinese dancer, tries to find her way in Europe – torn between artistic and identity-related self-discovery, and financial dependence on her mother’s TikTok business. “The film deals with universal themes that many of us can relate to, such as the search for independence, migration and globalisation, identity and the attempt to preserve real moments in an increasingly staged world,” producer Olivier Zobrist tells BDE.

With Getting the Message, Neasa Ní Chianáin steps inside the heart of political power at a moment when public trust in institutions is eroding and the climate emergency is accelerating. Over 18 months, Ní Chianáin gained unprecedented “fly-on-the-wall” access to Ireland’s Green Party leader and Minister for the Environment, Eamon Ryan, capturing both the mechanisms of democracy and the private moments that reveal the human cost of political life. The project is one of the Rough Cut presentations of this year's IDFA Forum, and will be presented November 16.

In his new feature documentary, Danish docmaker Michael Madsen seeks to explore, together with visionary architect Daniel Libeskind, “the edge of human creativity” through the completion and recording of six architectural challenges over six days. “On the one hand, Architecture as Invention will aim to be a creative playground; and on the other, it will aim to be a portrait of this century as envisioned by Mr. Libeskind: the chaos, the wars, the destruction, the Holocaust; but also, the love, the memories and the dreams,” producer Per Damgaard Hansen tells Business Doc Europe.

France-based filmmaker Nolwenn Hervé arrives at IDFA Forum 2025 with The Cord, a rough-cut project produced by Estelle Robin You for Grande Ourse Films. The documentary follows Carolina, a fearless activist operating in the crumbling health system of Maracaibo, Venezuela—an environment where, as the director notes, “life hangs by a thread,” and where women are forced to fight daily for their own survival and that of their babies.

Iranian helmer Marjan Khosravi brings Dreams of the Wild Oaks to IDFA Forum 2025 as a rough-cut project, now in post-production and produced by Milad Khosravi for Seven Springs Pictures, with French and Spanish co-production partners on board in the form of Avant la Nuit and Lukimedia. Set within a Bakhtiari community in southwest Iran, the film follows Samaneh, a young girl racing against time to save her freedom. Caught between a forced marriage and the ancestral ritual of Cease Blood Sacrifice, she embarks on a quest to find rare and endangered birds—a path that challenges her beliefs and tests the limits of her father’s love.

IDFA’s focus programme Dead Angle returns this year with a far-reaching thematic deep dive into the structures that shape civic life. This year, programmer Joost Daamen turns the spotlight on institutions — democratic, administrative, medical, colonial — and on the frictions, contradictions and aspirations that define them. The focus is also placed squarely on archives. “Archives tell us a lot about how a society sees itself… how it shapes a narrative,” Daamen tells BDE.

Emmy-winning docmaker Carla Gutierrez (Frida) talks to Sara Khaki and Mohammadreza Eyni about their acclaimed feature doc about Iranian Sara Shahverdi, who, as the first elected councilwoman of her remote Iranian village, fearlessly breaks patriarchal traditions by training teenage girls to ride motorcycles and by stopping child marriages. “We wanted to see this conflict. And also we wanted to experience how the society was reflecting on Sara's offer to bring the change in the society,” says co-director Eyni.

The goal of the pitch event, organised by Polish docfest Millennium Docs Against Gravity, is to “promote international co-productions, leverage the expertise of festival guests, and create a space where globally impactful films can emerge.” write organisers. Up to 12 projects will be selected for presentation at session, and guests will include producers, world sales agents, festival programmers, and commissioning editors from European broadcasters. Deadline for submissions: February 1, 2026.