IDFA has unveiled the first Competition titles for its 37th edition running November 14 to 24 in Amsterdam. The festival also announced selections within Signed, Best of Fests and Paradocs sections. Over 100 films have now been added to the IDFA 2024 program, “showcasing a wide selection of works by both critically acclaimed filmmakers and exceptional newcomers,” festival organisers write
IDFA Competition for Short Documentary
“The IDFA Competition for Short Documentary showcases a mosaic of styles and themes, exploring everything a short documentary film can be,” says the festival. “The selection presents films that use the form in imaginative and ambitious ways, by filmmakers at all stages of their careers.”
Several films seek for echoes of the past in our current times, including The Iron by award-winning Vitaly Mansky, who returns to IDFA with a portrait of Europe in war time. In the melancholic The Flowers Stand Silently, Witnessing, Theo Panagopoulos revisits archival footage of Palestine’s floral splendour from the 1930s, showing the complex relationship between the land and its inhabitants.
Other highlights include personal stories on grief, such as the mixed media exploration into losing someone close to you, Tough Love by Pat Heywood, and stop-motion animation Mama Micra by Rebecca Blöcher that examines how far people are willing to go to quench their thirst for personal freedom. See full selection below.
IDFA Competition for Youth Documentary
Curated by Niki Padidar, the Youth Competition showcases a selection of films that “distinctly challenge our understanding of youth documentary.” The titles are presented for two distinct age groups: 9- to 12-year-olds, and 13-year-olds through to adulthood.
Moving beyond one-dimensional stereotypes, Tabarak Allah Abbas replaces people with cyborgs in her imaginative animation that tells the story of how her parents overcame fleeing Iraq, packed as a superhero adventure in My Homeland. In a break from traditional narrative arch, Camille Vigny’s Crushed parallels the story of a young girl’s love story turned violent with footage of car race crashes. See partial selection below: the full selection will be announced in October.
Signed
Signed showcases the latest cinematic adventures of some of the most original filmmakers of our time. The program celebrates those with a unique artistic signature, beyond the canon.
“This edition’s selection is illustrious, bringing together the most well-known filmmakers and a younger generation of exceptional auteurs,” writes the festival. Among them, award-winning filmmaker Radu Jude presents found-footage documentary Eight Postcards from Utopia, showing the commercials from Romania’s transition to a capitalist democracy, and impressionist desktop film Sleep #2, capturing live stream recordings of Andy Warhol’s grave. With a singular artistic approach, Mati Diop’s widely celebrated Dahomey critically examines questions of repatriation of African artefacts from Europe.
Several renowned directors push the boundaries of music film in this year’s program. Andrei Ujică revisits 1965 in TWST – Things We Said Today, offering a poetic yet unembellished look at The Beatles as they captivate New York while the Watts riots erupt in Los Angeles. Kevin Macdonald’s One to One: John & Yoko creatively collages early ‘70s footage, exploring Lennon and Ono’s idealistic vision for a better world. The full program will be announced in October.
Best of Fests
The expansive Best of Fests section presents the year’s most eye-catching and celebrated films from various festivals from around the world. The selection uses vastly diverse styles and genres to take us to the world’s most burning topics.
The pressing urgency of conflict is ever-present in the selection. The outstanding film No Other Land by Yuval Abraham, Hamdan Balal, Rachel Szor, and Basel Adra documents ceaseless Israeli attacks on a network of Palestinian villages in the West Bank. The film received IDFA Bertha Fund support in 2022. In Sudan, Remember Us, Hind Meddeb captures young activists in their struggle for a liveable and democratic Sudan.
Other films traverse the world to depict heartfelt stories of resistance. After experiencing sexual assault, journalist Shiori Ito’s Black Box Diaries documents her search for justice in the face of a Japanese culture of silence. Following the discovery of unmarked graves near an indigenous reserve, Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie’s Sugarcane reveals a long history of abuse and neglect of indigenous children in Canadian state-led boarding schools. The full selection will be announced in October.
Paradocs
Paradocs showcases the year’s experimental documentary art. Several established names in the visual arts present their explorations into filmmaking. Avant-garde legend John Smith reflects on his life and career by means of his nondescript name in Being John Smith.
In Misty Man, Ansuya Blom alternates powerful scenes of a young man behind barbed wire with 8mm footage from the family archive and footage shot more recently in Suriname. Showcasing filmmakers experiment into form, highlights include the visceral and harrowing first-person documentation of the trenches in Ukraine in Real by filmmaker Oleh Sentsov. The full selection will be announced in October.
Selected films: IDFA Competition for Short Documentary
- Archipelago of Earthen Bones – To Bunya, dir. Malena Szlam (Canada/Australia/Chile), 20’ – European Premiere
- Bloodline, dir. Wojciech Węglarz (Poland), 12’ – World Premiere
- Cohabitants, dir. Viesturs Kairišs (Estonia), 20’ – International Premiere
- Echoes Within, dir. Pranami Koch (India), 26’– World Premiere
- Entretierra, dir. Emanuel Licha (Canada), 22’ – World Premiere
- The Flowers Stand Silently, Witnessing, dir. Theo Panagopoulos (United Kingdom), 17’ – International Premiere
- How to Suture the Soil?, dir. Wil Paucar Calle (Ecuador), 17’ – World Premiere
- The Iron, dir. Vitaly Mansky (Latvia), 40’ – World Premiere
- Lanawaru, dir. Angello Faccini (Colombia/United States/Mexico), 16’ – World Premiere
- Mama Micra, dir. Rebecca Blöcher (Germany), 24’ – World Premiere
- Noise: Unwanted Sound, dir. Hyejin Jung (Netherlands/South Korea), 20’ – World Premiere
- The Other Side of the Mountain, dir. Shirley Yumeng He (United States/China), 20’ – World Premiere
- Paci, dir. Juliette Roudet (France), 33’ – International Premiere
- Tokkotai Paquetá, dir. Cao Guimarães (Brazil), 28’ – World Premiere
- Tough Love, dir. Pat Heywood (United States), 16’ – World Premiere
- Unwritten Letter, dir. Silvana Alarcón Sánchez (Peru), 5’ – World Premiere
Selected films: IDFA Competition for Youth Documentary Films in the 9-12 category
- A Place to Call Home, dir. Parisa Aminolahi (Netherlands), 10’ – World Premiere
- The Flower by the Road, dir. Giorgi Parkosadze (Georgia/Hungary/Portugal/Belgium), 15’ – World Premiere
- The Invisible Ones, dir. Martijn Blekendaal (Netherlands/Belgium), 75’ – World Premiere
- What’s the Film About, dir. Poorva Dinesh (India), 16’ – Dutch Premiere
- With Grace, dir. Julia Dahr, Dina Mwende (Norway/Kenya), 29’ – World Premiere
Films in the 13+ category
- Crushed, dir. Camille Vigny (Belgium), 13’ – Dutch Premiere
- Hey Dad, dir. WeiFan Wang (Taiwan), 6’ – Dutch Premiere
- My Homeland, dir. Tabarak Allah Abbas (Switzerland), 13’ – Dutch Premiere
- Simply Divine, dir. Mélody Boulissière (France), 15’ – Dutch Premiere
- Somewhere to Be, dir. sara fattahighahnaviyeh (Netherlands), 8’ – World Premiere
