News

During IDFA 2019, we organized the IDFA Industry Talk Filming 'the other'; entitlement or privilege?, which gathered international filmmakers to elaborate on awareness, gaze and entitlement in documentary filmmaking. Among the speakers was Rwandan filmmaker Kivu Ruhorahoza, whose latest film Europa, "Based on a True Story" world-premiered at the festival in our feature-length competition. After the Talk, we caught up with Ruhorahoza to discuss the representation of marginalized communities and, through making a film in the UK, his efforts to claim the same privilege that Western filmmakers take when making films in the Global South. Read the interview here.…

With a two-film program, IDFA shined a spotlight on Venezuelan filmmakers, whose country is in the grips of a humanitarian crisis.…

Towards the end of the festival, we caught up with Guest of Honor Patricio Guzmán as he looked back on a week filled with memories—of his own films and the ten favorites he selected.…

William Uricchio is one of the world's top media scholars, a professor of comparative media studies at MIT, and professor of comparative media history at Utrecht University. At MIT, Uricchio is the founder and principal investigator of the MIT Open Documentary Lab, a close collaborator of the IDFA DocLab Research & Development Program. We talked to Uricchio about his research with DocLab, the nature and development of new digital media as well as their relationship with traditional forms of expression, and the cultural and technological trends in the field that we can expect in the coming years.…

In the Industry Talk Surviving as a documentary filmmaker, Pauline-Durand Vialle from the Federation of European Film Directors (FERA), The Forum director Marcus Vetter, and Dutch filmmaker Aliona van der Horst (Docmakers) discussed the financial, emotional, and psychological stability of documentary filmmakers, as well as and the unquantifiable risks they take making films. Read the report below.…

For Sama (Waad al-Kateab, Edward Watts, United Kingdom, 2019. 95 min., Best of Fests) has won the VPRO IDFA Audience Award (€ 5.000), the grand public prize of the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam. The news was announced on Friday evening before screening the winning film in Pathé Tuschinski.…

The US-based media organization which supports international women non-fiction filmmakers brought its awardees Alexandria Bombach, Julia Bacha, Lana Wilson, Malika Zouhali-Worrall and Stephanie Wang-Breal to IDFA Forum.…

In this interview, film critic Dana Linssen sits down with directors Heidi Hassan and Patricia Pérez Fernández, winners of the IDFA Award for Best Feature-Length Documentary. How did a life-long friendship and 15 years of video letters become their award-winning film In a Whisper? Watch the video to learn all about the filmmaking process. …

Today, IDFA announced the winners of the competition programs during the IDFA 2019 Awards Ceremony at Eye Film Museum. The winner of the VPRO IDFA Audience Award will be announced on Friday, November 29th. The International Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) continues until Sunday, December 1st.…

The European Women's Audiovisual Network (EWA) held an Industry Meetup in Brakke Grond's Tuinzaal, where more than 50 participants gathered at round tables to discuss concrete steps that can be taken to tackle issues of access to women-led content, quotas for funding, workplace inequality, need for mutual support, and necessary structural changes. …