Social responsibility

The diversity of the festival program is tested and monitored annually. Of the films and projects selected in 2025, 35.1% were from Western Europe; 14.6% from Asia; 13.2% from North America; 12.2% from Southern Europe; 7.8% from Latin America and the Caribbean; 7.1% from Northern Europe, and 4.4% from Eastern Europe. The goal for the period 2025-2028 is to increase the percentage of non-Western films wherever possible to 50%.

In terms of female makers, the annual target is the percentage achieved in 2019: 50%. In 2025, the films and projects in the IDFA program were directed by 105 men, 104 women and 7 non-binary people. 22 directors preferred not to specify their gender identity when submitting their projects.

IDFA Forum also contributes through its selection process, guests policy and programs to making the organization’s priorities reality: a pluriform range of filmmakers from diverse cultural and geographical backgrounds. In recent years, scouting, intensive cooperation with the IDFA Bertha Fund and a sliding scale of prices have led to an increase in the share of projects from Africa, South America, Asia and Eastern Europe. In 2025, 44% of the projects selected for IDFA Forum were from Western Europe; 19.3% were from Asia; 10.5% from Eastern Europe; 8.8% from North America; 8.8% from Latin America and the Caribbean, and 1.8% from Oceania.

IDFA strives to be a diverse, inclusive organization. In recent times, the Supervisory Board, Board of Directors, staff, selection committees and the team of scouts have all taken on a more diverse composition. Together with the HR Manager, the Board of Directors devotes a great deal of attention to inclusion and the wellbeing of its employees. Active attention is paid to diversity when filling vacancies. In 2025, this resulted in a culturally diverse team made up of 99 team members, more than 20% of whom are international employees.

A Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DE&I) lead was appointed in 2025, and in 2026 we will embed DE&I even more firmly within our organization.

More than 1.7 million inhabitants of the Netherlands have a disability that makes it more difficult for them to access art and culture. This is why IDFA is working towards being a more accessible festival, and has taken significant steps in this direction in recent years.

For example, during the festival more films and screenings/exhibitions feature audio description (AD) and subtitling for the deaf and hard of hearing (SDH). Almost all of our films screen with English-language SDH. 4 reduced stimuli screenings were organized, including in Het Documentaire Paviljoen. For the second successive year, IDFA employees took on volunteer tasks in relation to this, leading to increased awareness of accessibility within the organization. A total of 118 accessibility options (such as AD or SDH) were added to screenings aimed at the general public during the festival in 2025 (as opposed to 83 in 2024). In addition, during the festival and throughout the year, accessible school screenings were organized for pupils with visual or auditory disabilities and/or developmental language or speech disorders. In 2025, 130 school children were reached in this way.

During the festival, a screening of Paikar (directed by Dawood Hilmandi) took place, organized in Tuschinski in cooperation with TYD (platform for Dutch Sign Language and cultural aspects of the deaf community), with subtitling for the deaf and hard of hearing and audio description using the Earcatch app. A sign language interpreter was also on hand during the introduction and the discussion after the screening, and live subtitling of the speakers was provided. After this screening, we organized our first ever Sign Language Café in the cinema’s VIP lounge, in cooperation with Stichting Welzijn Doven Amsterdam (a welfare association for the deaf in Amsterdam, SWDA), where Dutch Sign Language interpreters were present to translate conversations between hearing and deaf or hearing-impaired visitors.

In 2025, experiments were conducted with the addition of AI-generated subtitles to 13 screenings for the professionals target group as part of the Industry program.

Additionally, a special web page was published presenting all the information on accessible visits to IDFA.

Sustainability is important to IDFA, both in the documentaries we show and in how the festival is organized. For the third year in succession, IDFA has measured its ecological footprint, and is working continuously on improvements in use of materials, catering, transportation, and waste.

In 2025, IDFA’s ecological footprint decreased as compared to 2024. This is thanks mainly to a decrease of 19% in the number of trips booked for IDFA guests coming to Amsterdam. As last year, IDFA’s policy remains to reimburse the cost of flights only for journeys over 500 kilometers. Nevertheless, flights and transportation (also, for example, by local suppliers) remain the biggest component of IDFA’s CO2 emissions. This is why, for every flight IDFA books, we invest in CO2-reduction projects by the Fair Climate Fund. The aim for next year is to also invest in these types of projects for those flights not booked by IDFA, but the cost of which we reimburse.

Awareness is growing year on year within the organization, and each year IDFA is undertaking new initiatives towards a more sustainable festival. Last year saw a pilot project concerning the printing of film posters, in which IDFA asked filmmakers to have their posters printed in the Netherlands instead of shipping these to the festival. Backstage, IDFA worked almost exclusively with sustainable soft drinks from Roze Bunker, instead of the ‘usual’ bottles of soft drink, and we also made the transition to vegan snacks. Next year, IDFA's entire shopping list should be 100% sustainable. In addition, this year the volunteers’ T-shirts were washed after the festival for re-use, there was no merchandise, and disposable crockery and cutlery backstage was replaced by re-usable. Within Amsterdam, the entire festival fleet is fully electric.

The ultimate aim is for IDFA to be climate-neutral in 2050. Together with other film festivals in the Netherlands, we are taking the next steps on the path towards greater sustainability.