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“If one wins, we all win”: Six IDFA Bertha Fund-supported films up for Oscar nominations

Industry
January 20, 2021
Julia Yudelman

With Oscars season upon us, the race for nominations looks considerably different this year. Updated regulations from the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences—including an extended eligibility window as well as a general push for diversity—have opened the door for some fortuitous yet promising contenders. Among the titles up for pre-selection are six documentaries supported by the IDFA Bertha Fund (IBF). In the lead-up to Academy members voting on February 1, we caught up with the filmmakers to get their take on the possible nominations in an unparalleled year.…

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Renewed call to release producer Moataz Abdelwahab

Industry
December 22, 2020

Instead of being released, the film producer Moataz Abdelwahab has again been imprisoned. We, the International Coalition for Filmmakers at Risk (ICFR) and its founding institutions, the European Film Academy, International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam and International Film Festival Rotterdam, are very worried about his health and detention conditions and call on the Egyptian authorities to immediately release him.…

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IDFA Bertha Fund supports distribution of Once Upon a Time in Venezuela with 30k grant

Industry
December 17, 2020

Anabel Rodríguez’s acclaimed feature Once Upon a Time in Venezuela is the latest film to receive distribution support from the IDFA Bertha Fund (IBF). Following its premiere at Sundance Film Festival and subsequent screenings in IDFA’s Best of Fests section last month, the buzzy Venezuelan documentary will now receive €30,000 to support distribution in the US, Spain, Colombia, and Venezuela.…

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African-European relations: Stand up for the film you're making

Industry
December 1, 2020
Vladan Petkovic

Last week, Unifrance hosted a special Filmmaker Talk with directors of African films co-produced by France in the IDFA 2020 program. Myriam Bakir of Mothers, Mohamed Said Ouma of Red Card, and Dieudo Hamadi of Downstream to Kinshasa spoke about the benefits of co-productions with Europe, but also of the risks and downsides this often-necessary production approach entails.…

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Documentary art in all the wrong places: Disruption leads to innovation

Industry
November 27, 2020
Vladan Petkovic

On November 24, the Industry Talk: Documentary art in all the wrong places welcomed William Uricchio, founder of MIT Open Documentary Lab and collaborator of the IDFA DocLab R&D Program, Myriam Acchard of Montreal's Phi Centre, and May Abdalla of ANAGRAM. The trio discussed alternative forms of distribution and exhibition from the angle of the pandemic: where, how, and with how many people we can now experience art? How public are public spaces really? And what pandemic lessons can we take to the future?…

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Firouzeh Khosrovani: I can't go back to classic documentaries anymore

Industry
November 25, 2020
Vladan Petkovic

Iranian director Firouzeh Khosrovani triumphed at IDFA 2020 with her fourth film Radiograph of a Family, winning the main award in the IDFA Competition for Feature Length Documentary and the IDFA Competition for Creative Use of Archive. After the film's world premiere on November 24, the director had a Filmmaker Talk with critic and curator Pamela Cohn.…

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Mila Turajlić and Carine Chichkowsky on creative producing and finding the right partners

Industry
November 25, 2020
Vladan Petkovic

On Tuesday afternoon, Serbian director Mila Turajlić and French producer Carine Chichkowsky talked about their work on the 2017 IDFA winner The Other Side of Everything at the IDFAcademy Plenary Session entitled "Creative producing: Whose story is it?". In the talk, the director-producer team focused on the creative process and how the filmmaker can stay true to their project as they navigate stormy production waters.…

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IDFA titles find sales and distributors

Industry
November 24, 2020
Vladan Petkovic

Several films from the IDFA program and Docs for Sale catalogue have been picked up for distribution in different territories. …

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Discover upcoming Catalan docs at IDFA

Industry
November 24, 2020

In addition to having films and projects across the IDFA program, the Catalan delegation arrives at the festival with five new projects directed by women, which will be presented at their Meetup on November 25. …

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Framing of Us: Call to shape a new perspective on our cultural ethics as a documentary industry

Industry
November 23, 2020

Dutch filmmakers Tessa Boerman and Shamira Raphaëla have launched the initiative "Framing of Us" for a drastic change in the handling of documentary narratives, including an urgent call to action: they call upon filmmakers who have been confronted with this colonial gaze to share their stories. They also call upon everyone else in the field: producers, critics, journalists, lecturers, programmers, broadcasters, commissioning editors, financiers, and all decision makers to join them in dismantling this system by having a brutally honest look at ourselves as an industry. …

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“If one wins, we all win”: Six IDFA Bertha Fund-supported films up for Oscar nominations

Renewed call to release producer Moataz Abdelwahab

IDFA Bertha Fund supports distribution of Once Upon a Time in Venezuela with 30k grant

African-European relations: Stand up for the film you're making

Documentary art in all the wrong places: Disruption leads to innovation

Firouzeh Khosrovani: I can't go back to classic documentaries anymore

Mila Turajlić and Carine Chichkowsky on creative producing and finding the right partners

IDFA titles find sales and distributors

Discover upcoming Catalan docs at IDFA

Framing of Us: Call to shape a new perspective on our cultural ethics as a documentary industry

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