Victor Kossakovsky’s Trillion is among the lineup for the 38th edition of International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), which runs No
Victor Kossakovsky’s Trillion is among the lineup for the 38th edition of International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), which runs November 13-23 and is the first edition under artistic director, Isabel Arrate Fernandez.
Trillion will world premiere in the 12-strong Envision Competition, for films from “visionary filmmakers forging new cinematic languages”. It is described as the second in the director’s planned ‘empathy trilogy’, which started with the award-winning Gunda. Kossakovsky’s most recent film was Berlinale title Architecton.
US director Katy Scoggin is among the filmmakers in the international competition, which includes nine world premieres. Scoggin’s Flood, about her experiences growing up with her devout missionary father, is her feature debut as a director. She was previously coproducer and cinematographer on Laura Poitras’s 2014 Oscar winner Citizenfour.
Also in international competition is Ukrainian director Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk’s Silent Flood. Produced through production outfit Tabor, it is the story of a religious community living in a river canyon in western Ukraine whose peaceful life is turned upside down by the Russian full-scale invasion.
The section also includes Tamar Kalandadze and Julien Pebrel’s Georgian-French project The Karti Kingdom, about a sanatorium in Tbilisi where refugees from the 1992-93 Abkhazian conflict have been living for more than 30 years.
Prolific UK director Marc Isaacs is also in international competition with Synthetic Sincerity.
Dutch titles in Envision include Love-22-Love, directed by Jeroen Kooijman, produced through Submarine, an archive-based film about the artist dealing with his own mental demons.
Envision also has the world premiere of Treat Me Like Your Mother, from Lebanese director Mohamad Abdouni, about the experiences of trans women in post-war Beirut.
Meanwhile, in the festival’s Luminous section, which has 27 titles including both features and shorts, premieres include Marjolein Busstra’s House Of Hope, which follows a Palestinian woman running a progressive ‘Waldorf’ school on the West Bank with her husband. This title was recently presented as a work in progress in Dutch industry showcase, NL Wave. It already has CineDeli aboard as its Dutch distributor.
The 15-title Frontlight section for “exploring urgent issues of our time” includes topical titles such as Gaza’s Twins, Come Back To Me by Mohammad Sawwaf, which follows a mother desperate to reach her two newborn babies in urgent care, but battling against travel restrictions and checkpoints.
Opening night
Unusually, IDFA is to open this year with a selection of tiny films rather than with a single feature documentary. The shorts selected are As I Lay Dying by Mohammadreza Farzad and Pegah Ahangarani, Intersecting Memory by Shayma’ Awawdeh, and happiness by Firat Yücel.
“We believe the selection of films set the tone for a festival that explores major issues of the present, that makes room for new voices, fresh forms, and unexpected perspectives,” Fernandez commented of her opening night selection.
Overall, 250 documentaries from 76 countries will be shown at the festival.
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