Read all the latest news from the festival and IDFA's year-round programs here, in addition to in-depth articles.
IDFA Meets and ROEF Amsterdam join forces for the second year! On Friday, August 27, head to the roof of the NEMO Science museum for a special screening of the Romanian festival hit Acasă, My Home while overlooking the Amsterdam skyline.
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On Thursday, September 2, IDFA presents the Dutch premiere of Pawel Lozinski's The Balcony Movie in Pathé Tuschinski in Amsterdam.
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On the surface, Viv Li and Lucy Parker have a lot in common. Both are up-and-coming women filmmakers currently participating in IDFA Project Space. Both have also enjoyed great acclaim in IDFA’s competition programs—Parker winning Best First Appearance in 2019 with Solidarity, Li earning a Special Mention in last year’s student competition with I Don’t Feel at Home Anywhere Anymore. Yet despite the apparent similarities, their films couldn’t be more different. Parker’s work is a testament to direct cinema, with the ability to transform politicized subjects into “a disquieting universal warning,” as the IDFA jury put it. Li’s filmmaking is a deeply personal, humorous affair that homes in on herself and her family within a broader cultural context. Nevertheless, speaking to the two talents as they research and develop new projects reveals an important affinity: a common process of discovery that is wholly creative, original, and often-times surprising.
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Malian director Ousmane Samassekou's second feature-length documentary The Last Shelter has become one of the biggest festival hits of the year so far, after winning the top prize at CPH:DOX. We took a close look at how this film, which was supported by the IDFA Bertha Fund and took part in IDFAcademy Summer School and IDFA Forum, was conceived, developed, produced, and funded.
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The summer period is no time for IDFA's programming team to sit back and relax. In the week before the submission deadline of July 15, hundreds of films are still being submitted by filmmakers. And that's before all the submitted films are even viewed and assessed. Joost Daamen, Senior Programmer at IDFA, explains how he and the team evaluate more than 3,000 documentaries and arrive at the final festival selection.
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Payal Kapadia's A Night of Knowing Nothing and Zhao Liang's I Am So Sorry have just world-premiered at Cannes, and they are just two among the films supported by the IDFA Bertha Fund or which took part in IDFA Forum and IDFAcademy that are currently making waves at festivals world-wide.
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In 2018 Dutch documentary maker Corinne van der Borch pitched the project Sisters on Track at IDFA Forum together with the Norwegian director Tone Grøttjord-Glenne. Now, three years later the film has been released. The documentary tells the story of three young American sisters who, because of a coverstory in the magazine Sports Illustrated, are propelled into national stardom. And with Netflix as distributing partner the film now reaches an worldwide audience of millions.
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IDFAcademy returns full force to IDFA this year, offering an intensive four-day program for selected filmmakers during the festival. Emerging documentary directors and producers who have proven their talent on a national scale and are ready to expand their careers internationally can now apply for the popular talent development program. The accreditation deadline is September 1.
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Get ready for the IDFA 2021 school screenings! The program selection is now available and registration has started. After an eventful corona year, we can't wait to welcome students and teachers back to the cinemas this fall. Not able to join in person? Part of the program can also be followed online.
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Looking ahead to its 34th edition, the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) announced a new market service today that brings international co-production to the forefront. The Producers Connection, the newest addition to co-financing and co-production market IDFA Forum, will serve as a bespoke platform for fostering international co-production, providing a necessary space for sustaining this collaborative model of realizing documentary projects. Parallel to the Forum’s selection of Pitches and Rough Cut Presentations, fifteen projects will be selected for the inaugural Producers Connection event, taking place in Amsterdam on November 20 and 21 during IDFA 2021.
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