The International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) will open with the world premiere of Robert Mentov, Dwight Jantzi and Bryan Dickie’
The International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) will open with the world premiere of Robert Mentov, Dwight Jantzi and Bryan Dickie’s White Tiger Column, which follows a group of recruits through 45 days of training with Myanmar’s resistance movement on November 12.
White Tiger Column will play in IDFA’s main international competition, which unveiled its lineup today alongside documentaries by filmmakers such as Salomé Jashi, Elwira Niewiera, Mehran Tamadon and Juan Manuel Sepúlveda.
IDFA also announced the lineups for its Luminous, Frontlight and IDFA DocLab sections.
Scroll down for lineup
White Tiger Column is a debut feature filmed in a training camp deep in the jungle, capturing the daily lives of teenage volunteers as they prepare to fight for their freedom in Myanmar.
It joins 12 other documentaries in international competition, including Iran-born French filmmaker Mehran Tamadon’s Crack In The Head, Crack In The Sky, set within a French psychiatric hospital. Tamadon’s 2023 documentary My Worst Enemy world premiered in Berlin’s Encounters section.
Juan Manuel Sepúlveda’s Where The Fire Burns is set in an encampment of Haitian migrants in Mexico City, focusing on three women who fled violence and hunger. Sepúlveda’s Infinite Border played in the Berlinale’s Forum section in 2008.
Salomé Jashi’s An Incomplete Day In The History Of Georgia 10.06.93 is set in the early days of Georgian independence and is based on video recordings of Georgian parliamentary proceedings on June 10, 1993. Jashi’s Taming The Garden played in Sundance’s world cinema documentary competition and at the Berlinale Forum in 2021.
Elwira Niewiera will premiere Women And War, which explores the psychological toll of war through the personal journeys of four who have survived the horrors of Russia’s war against Ukraine. Niewiera won the 2017 Venice Classics award for best documentary The Prince And The Dybbuk.
International competition 2026
- Bardi (Mor) Dir. Tala Hadid
- Crack in the Head, Crack in the Sky (Fr) Dir. Mehran Tamadon
- Down the River (Ger) Dir. Ruslan Fedotov
- Hazara Town (Bel-Aus-Ger) Dir. Khadim Dai
- Here Where the Fire Burns (Mex) Dir. Juan Manuel Sepúlveda
- An Incomplete Day in the History of Georgia 10.06.93 (Geo) Dir. Salomé Jashi
- Lonan Tché (Fr-It-Ivo Coast-Sen) Dir. Joël Richmond Mathieu Akafou
- Mangabangabaka (Fr-Mad-Burk Faso) Dir. Michaël Andrianaly
- Morro Grande (Bra-Neth) Dir. Isabel Joffily, Rita Toledo
- Still Night, Burning House (Can) Dir. Carol Nguyen
- White Tiger Column (Can) Dir. Robert Mentov, Dwight Jantzi, Bryan Dickie
- Women and War (Ger-Pol-Ukr) Dir. Elwira Niewiera
- The Year of the Ghost (Neth-Chi) Dir. Louis Hothothot
Envision Competition
- Bahía Honda (Cub-Fr-Nor) Dir. Alejandro Alonso Estrella
- Between Revolutions (Bel-Neth) Dir. Ruben Desiere
- The Black Box Is Orange (Can) Dir. Yuula Benivolski
- Drop! Cover! Hold On! (Bel-Fr) Dir. Stéphanie Roland
- Lyrical Vengeance (Neth) Dir. wendelien van oldenborgh
- Memories (Bel-Fr) Dir. Anna Falguères
- Memories of Lightning (Fr-It) Dir. Riccardo Giacconi
- My Own Personal Gulag (Sp) Dir. Lina Gorbaneva
- Radiant Mountain (Bel-Port-Fr) Dir. Miguel Moraes Cabral
- Ragazzi al fiume (Swi) Dir. Pablo Briones
- Rivers Of Memory (Ind) Dir. Shishir Jha
- Vertigo Garden (Hong Kong SAR-China) Dir. Lei Lei
- You Don’t Die Two Times (Alg-Ger-Neth) Dir. Ager Oueslati
Selected films: Frontlight
- The Big Boom! (Swi) Dir. Gabriel Tejedor
- A Derailment (US) Dir. Nathan Truesdell
- The Dome Sessions (Leb) Dir. Firas El Hallak
- Hold Your Breath (Neth) Dir. Vincent Sparreboom
- Jenin & The Nakba Between Us (Can-Jor) Dir. Serene Husni
- The Message (Can) Dir. Guylaine Maroist, Eric Ruel
- A Minute Of Silence (Réunion-Fr) Dir. Laurent Pantaleon
- No Man’s Air (Neth) Dir. Peter Delpeut, Gerco de Ruijter
- Notes From A Besieged City (Pol) Dir. Mateusz Mularski
- Regarding Memory And Neglect (Bra) Dir. Ricardo Martensen
- Romare Bearden: A Life in Collage (US) Dir. Deborah Riley Draper
- Small Expectations (Rom-Bel) Dir. Alexandru Solomon
- Tehran, Under the Skin (Fr-Iran-Swe) Dir. Afsaneh Salari
- Then I Saw a Beautiful Horse (Tur-Ger) Dir. Altay Erlik
- Water Cooler (US) Dir. Emma V.F.
- Wood Street (US) Dir. Caron Creighton
Selected films: Luminous
- Agaar (Chi-Fr) Dir. Bo Yang
- Alter Ego (Leb-Fr) Dir. Mohammad Ali Atassi
- Back Before 3 P.M. (Fr) Dir. Gaël Lépingle
- The Blood Of the Covenant (Port) Dir. Fábio Silva
- The Brush In Your Hand (Neth) Dir. Charlotte Dumas
- Cuscú (Pan-US) Dir. Risseth Yangüez Singh
- Dreams Of The Wild Oaks (Iran-Sp-Fr) Dir. Marjan Khosravi
- Every Death Diminishes Me (Ukr) Dir. Sergii Bazhenov
- How Much Longer (Neth) Dir. Niels van Koevorden
- The Last Season (Fr) Dir. Yohan Guignard
- Mentor (Pol) Dir. Krzysztof Tomaszewski
- The Middle Room (It-Swi) Dir. Enrico Maisto
- A Modern Roma Fairytale (Neth) Dir. Raluca Lupaşcu
- The Sacred Circle (Iran) Dir. Elahe Esmaili
- Scenes From Departure (Taiwan-Hong Kong) Dir. Ray Kamhei Chan
- She Was Not Alone (Iraq-Saudi Arabia-Qatar-US) Dir. Hussein Al-asadi
- Tonight is Forever (Fr-Sp-Japan) Dir. Fernando Souza
- Up In The Air (Ukr-Cz-Lith) Dir. Oksana Koklonska
- Waves Of Time (Chi) Dir. Weicheng Hua
- We Had A Plan (Neth-Philippines) Dir. Suzanne Raes
- Where The Sun Is Born (Honduras) Dir. Laura Bermúdez, Jorge García
