Focus: It Still Hurts

A compelling and empathetic investigative documentary about the passengers of a ship that sank off the Libyan coast during the 2015 refugee crisis. Through a variety of methods, researchers try to discover the identity of the victims.…

Every year on May 4 at exactly 8 p.m., traffic stops all over the Netherlands. People gather or sit alone for two minutes of silence to honor those who died during World War II. What is the significance of this annual ritual today?…

Archive footage of protest marches, Cold War clanging of arms and nuclear disasters contrast with the sublime beauty of the atomic world and achievements in nuclear medicine. The atomic age is a nightmare, but it has also made dreams come true.…

Through the life stories of two German men, Black Box Germany draws a picture of West Germany in the 1980s: a society riven by the legacy of World War II, which it had never fully processed.…

The German actress Maryam Zaree fled the Iranian regime as a small child with her mother. She knows she was born in prison, but nobody ever talks about it. Now she wants to know why.…

What better medium for documenting a land-grabbing conflict than a map? Forensic Architecture helped Bedouins to set up an interactive archive of their village, to chronicle its destruction by Israeli troops. …

During the making of a dance theater piece, a special friendship develops between director Réka Szabó and her two leads: the young dancer Emese Cuhorka and the elderly writer and activist Éva Fahidi. …

A chronicle of Germany through the prism of the director’s own family history. In voice-over, Thomas Heise reads documents from his family’s archive, accompanied by powerful black-and-white images of the “guilty” landscape of his homeland. …

For the first time since the Algerian War of Independence, witnesses talk about the rural resettlement camps, shedding light on an appalling and neglected episode in history. Why have people kept silent for all these years?…

This exhibition showcases three pieces by research agency Forensic Architecture as part of IDFA’s special focus program It Still Hurts. In anticipation of the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II, this program explores our post-war world. …

This monumental study takes on the widespread rape of women at the end of World War II, mostly—though not exclusively—at the hands of Russian liberators. After a long silence, the affected women and their children tell their stories.…

Each year on Independence Day, the former inhabitants of the Palestinian village of Ma’alul take their grandchildren to their ancestral ground. Together with many other villages, Ma’alul was erased from the map in the 1947-1949 Palestine War. …

This research project follows the high-profile forensic investigation of a body reported to be that of Nazi physician Josef Mengele. It marked a shift towards a new forensic approach to war crimes and crimes against humanity.…

A mind-boggling portrait of Fred Leuchter, self-appointed authority on execution equipment and expert witness for Holocaust denier Ernst Zündel. He makes a trip to Poland to investigate if the gas chambers at Auschwitz really existed.…

Like most young adults in Israel, Atalya is required to join the army. She refuses, though, because there’s no way she’s going to participate in the oppression of Palestinians. We watch closely as she grows into a staunch human rights activist. …

With the support of human rights organization B’Tselem, Palestinians made dozens of short films about the bullying and humiliation they encounter every day. From these, filmmaker Ehab Tarabieh edited this angry montage of provocations. …

In addition to being a shocking analysis and an indictment of the arms trade, this revelatory film is an emphatic rallying cry for humanity, truth and love, and the courage to act against the prevailing morality.…

An investigation into abuses in two prisons run by counterterrorist units in Cameroon. The crime scenes and the human rights violations that took place there are reconstructed using public sources.…

War is a drug, like a whirlpool you can’t get out of, says a British mercenary. In extensive interviews with two soldiers, director Romuald Karmakar investigates the culture and ethics of armed forces.…

War criminals are honored alongside fallen soldiers at Tokyo’s Yasukuni Shrine. Chinese-born Li Ying exposes the sensitive and largely unaddressed issue of Japan’s war past at a flashpoint for nationalists, demonstrations and riot police. …