Anny
For sixteen years Czech film veteran Helena Třeštíková followed Anny, who at the age of 46 took up sex work alongside her job as a restroom attendant. Always a smile, always a cigarette. In just one hour, we watch her life slip by.
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IDFA Competition for Mid-Length Documentary
Up until the festival's 33rd edition in 2020, IDFA presented the IDFA Competition for Mid-Length Documentary. Below, you can look back on the selection from the competition's last year: 12 titles that look to the fringes of society, where people live, work, play, and struggle to make ends meet outside the status quo. See the jury members.
Selected for the Mid-Length competition 2020
Selected for the Mid-Length competition 2020
Before the Dying of the Light
This glittering collage of posters, magazine covers, archive footage, jazz music, and cartoons takes you back to the art scene of 1970s Morocco. It was a time of excitement about the future, but was extinguished by repression.
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The Blue House
Alpha is an artist living in the Calais Jungle refugee encampment, where he has transformed his self-built cabin into an artwork. He calmly continues building and drawing, and becomes a local celebrity in this no man’s land.
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A Boy
23-year-old Vitaly Akimov portrays his family in the shrinking Russian provincial town of Arsenyev. His ten-year-old nephew Stepan acts as a guide to this grim environment, appropriately filmed in black and white.
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Diving Horses
A wistful portrait of a small American amusement park long past its heyday. Despite the lack of visitors, amid all the faded glory, the staff still pins their hope on their top attraction, the High Diving Horse Show.
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Green Bank Pastoral
In sleepy Green Bank there’s a huge radio telescope, which means Wi-Fi is officially prohibited. The offline village attracts a colorful procession of electro-hypersensitive people who hope to find the Wi-Fi-free paradise they have been searching for.
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Holy Bread
A stark account of the highly dangerous work carried out by Kurdish kulbars: men who become human beasts of burden and carry extremely heavy loads across the Iranian border to support their families.
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Mothers
In Morocco, unmarried women who become pregnant still risk criminal prosecution and social exclusion. The Oum El Banine association in Agadir, headed by 62-year-old feminist Mahjouba Edbouche, is there to support them.
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Rebel Objects
A personal film in which filmmaker Carolina Arias Ortiz returns to Costa Rica, the land of her youth. Research into the mysterious ancient stone spheres found here offer her a new perspective on her cultural and personal identity, and on death.
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Silent Voice
Khavaj, a young Chechnyan martial arts fighter, is hiding in Belgium because of his sexual orientation. The traumas he’s been through caused him to lose his voice. Cut off from his family and far from home, his only option is to reinvent himself.
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Ultimina
More than 80 years after her birth in Tuscany farming country, Ultimina looks back on a tough life in which men have always been the boss. But that hasn’t quelled her energy and rebellious nature one bit.
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The Wheel
In Mongolia, a third of the population lives in poverty. Is that why the suicide rate is so high? Suicide survivors and family members of those who took their lives relate their circumstances, far removed from the freedoms of traditional nomadic life.
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