The Film Verdict: IDFA Festival Reviews 2022

IDFA 2022: THE AWARDS

IDFA 2022: THE VERDICT

VERDICT: Lea Glob’s 'Apolonia, Apolonia', an exploration of what's at stake in an artist's life, wins the International Competition at IDFA 2022.

Oris Aigbokhaevbolo, November 19, 2022

INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION

IDFA AWARD FOR BEST FILM Apolonia, Apolonia (Denmark, Poland, France) directed by Lea Glob

IDFA AWARD FOR BEST DIRECTING Simon Chambers for Much Ado About Dying (Ireland, UK) (Continues next page)

VERDICT: Documentaries by Lea Glob, Simon Chambers and Angie Vinchito, all major prizewinners, show the diversity and topicality of the post pandemic Dutch festival.

In the end, it was Apolonia, Apolonia. Lea Glob’s sprawling account of the life and times of the titular actress had received early acclaim and it ended its run on a high, winning the main IDFA award for best film in the international competition. The festival itself was just as uniformly great.

At last year’s event, a layer of constraint had been added to the proceedings. You needed bands

bands to enter venues, and those bands needed proof of vaccination to be received. All of that disappeared at the 35th edition and the city literally poured into the venues. Sold out shows, some for first and second viewings of the same film, were common on the IDFA website, which this year seemed to work much better than it did last time out. Full Verdict

THE AWARDS (Continued)

IDFA AWARD FOR BEST DIRECTING Simon Chambers for Much Ado About Dying (Ireland, UK)

IDFA AWARD FOR BEST EDITING Mario Steenbergen for Journey Through Our World (Netherlands)

THE IDFA AWARD FOR BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY Paul Guilhaume for Paradise (France, Switzerland)

ENVISION COMPETITION

BEST FILM Manifesto (Russia) directed by Angie Vinchito

BEST DIRECTING Roberta Torre for The Fabulous Ones (Italy)

OUTSTANDING ARTISTIC CONTRIBUTION

Ishtar Yasin Gutiérrez for My Lost Country (Costa Rica, Iraq, Chile, Egypt)

IDFA DOCLAB COMPETITION

AWARD FOR IMMERSIVE NON FICTION Darren Emerson for In Pursuit of Repetitive Beats (United Kingdom)

THE SPECIAL JURY AWARD FOR CREATIVE TECHNOLOGY Miri Chekhanovich and Edith Jorisch for Plastisapiens (Canada, Israel)

IDFA DOCLAB COMPETITION FOR DIGITAL STORYTELLING Taylor McCue for He Fucked the Girl Out of Me

THE SPECIAL JURY AWARD FOR CREATIVE TECHNOLOGY Eline Jongsma and Kel O’Neill for His Name Is My Name (The Netherlands)

IDFA COMPETITION FOR SHORT DOCUMENTARY Away, directed by Ruslan Fedotow

IDFA COMPETITION FOR YOUTH DOCUMENTARY

THE IDFA AWARD FOR BEST YOUTH FILM (14+) Home Is Somewhere Else (Mexico, United States) directed by Carlos Hagerman and Jorge Villalobos

THE IDFA AWARD FOR BEST YOUTH FILM (9 13) Ramboy (Mexico, United States) directed by Matthias Joulaud and Lucien Roux

BEST FIRST FEATURE

The Etilaat Roz (Afghanistan) directed by Abbas Rezaie

BEST DUTCH FILM

Journey Through Our World directed by Petra Lataster Czisch and Peter Lataster

THE BEELD & GELUID IDFA REFRAME AWARD Janaína Nagata for Private Footage (Brazil)

INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION

A fair bit of the political history of the Congo is required to fully enjoy Colette and Justin, the thoughtful debut documentary from Alain Kassanda. But without it, it still is possible to understand the film’s central point about knowing our heroes and our families and the inevitable disappointment when one grasps the pathetic humanity of the people who occupy those two categories simultaneously.

At least, that seems to be what happens with Kassanda, whose initial idea was to get something about the lives of his grandparents on video after shoving a recording device in their faces. Along the way, a throwaway statement between grandma and grandpa reveals details of a war their daughter’s son hadn’t heard of.

COLETTE & JUSTIN

VERDICT: Alain Kassanda connects Congolese history to family history in this revealing debut documentary.

Oris Aigbokhaevbolo, November 18, 2022

Programmers and platforms interested in historical stories of the West and of Africa should find this fitting. Imaginative

acquisition execs interested in family stories will just as easily find a spot for this documentary. Full Review

CASPAR SONNEN DISCUSSES CRYPTO AND NFT IN THE ARTS

Part two of Daniel Gusinski’s interview with Sonnen

make money, and hopefully give back. It’s problematic. It works for some and doesn’t for others. It’s not merit driven. It’s about making fast money. It’s investing in the art world combined with investment. It has its downsides I would say.

With new forms of art, there are new monetization models, of course – how do you feel about unregulated crypto currency and NFTs being used within indie cinema markets? I know one of your projects is using NFTs right now.

I think that the blockchain and applied NFT crypto culture has been an interesting cultural phenomenon to observe and has brought out a lot of things explicit. It gave new eyes on tech bros and hype culture, and showed gaps in the funding models of digital art.

Personally, I would say that NFT culture is a little bit of a first come first serve culture. I’ve seen amazing artists get work funded through it, but what I’m seeing currently is that the NFT market isn’t doing so great. It seems the hype was very active but also very volatile. The ones who made money are like what we saw in the gold rush with people selling the shovels and buckets.

I know struggling artists who were making amazing works who are now suddenly in the position to fund new artists and friends of theirs. That’s great for them, but on a macro level it is a way to get art funded, but I feel a little bit… I tend to like democracy included when discussing how money should be spent. Philanthropy is essentially what the NFT model is going for you make an investment,

Right now, I’m seeing a presentation we have of an NFT platform that was built to support African digital art that didn’t go so well. The AI photography project is a beautiful project but right now the sales are on hold because it’s waiting for the NFT market to pick up again if that ever happens at this point. In your perfect world, how would these integrations go if at all?

That’s a tough question I’ll make an attempt to answer. I think, one of the reasons I’ve been enjoying working in this emerging media space for over a decade just like earlier moments of innovation just like earlier moments where new media was invented, from cinema to performance art to a new form of photography those are exciting moments where art can be more international where art can be more open and undefined.

Meaning there are a lot of people from different backgrounds working and not knowing where they are heading. It’s about inventing the box, not breaking out of it. New media beginnings are things I have enjoyed a lot.

Growing that, I would love for that attitude not to go away too much. For example, 15 years ago during one of the first or third editions of the program, podcasting was something a lot of people didn’t know about what it was how to access it. We invited Eric Glass to do a live show at our festival of This American Life and we had all these audio experiences that weren’t happening in radio that we could include in his performance.

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CASPAR SONNEN INTERVIEW (Continued)

Now we are at a moment where all of that is becoming formatted. I spoke to an artist who said a couple years ago I had to convince producers to fund a 6 episode experimental podcast that won many awards but now years later now producers have defined this box and they are all mimicking that very same 6 episode podcast. The podcast world is not more formulaic, predictable, and less exciting.

That excitement of doing it for the first time, of exploring the unknown, is a thing that all art is trying to treasure and to savor. I make DOCLAB with a team of people who look for what works, but to try things that we don’t know will work. To figure it out. You feel that when you see Man With a Movie Camera, if you watch it today you see cinema being invented, and they clearly weren’t sure whether it will work.

That same feeling is present in a great new VR project or any kind of immersive experience of someone exploring a new form that hasn’t been explored yet. That’s the thing I would love to

retain and treasure. There should also be more funding available for artistic production and creation. We shouldn’t expect new media to answer all questions at the same time. It’s rewarding but challenging to create these new projects to get them seen. They are shown and then disappear.

Instead of seeing some artists join an NFT scheme to get their next project funded, lets instead put these works in a traveling exhibition that can display them for longer, to people who don’t have a VR headset at home, to people who need a little bit more time to experience it. One thing

we are supporting in our initiative is to bring VR to regular Dutch cinemas. It’s there to reach VR out to those who don’t know this space.

It would be really great if like in the early days of cinema, when film was a global media and traveled the world, to see a point where artistic production will become more accessible and it would be great if we could figure out a way to make immersive and interactive art a more global ecosystem. It would be a simple shortcut to create more simple stories. To generate more surprises.

A South Asian Queer at DocLab

BEST OF FESTS

MOTHER EARTH’S INNER ORGANS

and footage that abstract footage that evokes the tearing of the earth to reveal the molten core of the planet below. However, after an intertitle that introduces the Wayuu region in northern Colombia, there follows an almost five minute scene of this train passing. The shot takes up nearly a quarter of the film’s total length. The train is carrying coal, being transported to the coast before travelling on to Europe, and in maintaining her unflinching gaze upon it, the enormity of what Bravo Perez is presenting here is made startlingly clear.

Ben Nicholson, November 22, 2022

About seven minutes into Ana Bravo Perez’s discomforting new 21 minute documentary short, Mother Earth’s Inner Organs, there is a static shot of a train passing. Everything that has preceded this shot has been grainy, febrile, and ominous –stories of strange smelling air in the Netherlands

The scale of the extraction operation is made evident elsewhere an interactive map teems with red dots that signify cargo ships, aerial shots hover above heaps of slag, and local women are interviewed and discuss the impact of mining on communities but this shot of the train symbolises everything perfectly. It’s about the duration, about various moments throughout the shot that the mind wonders when the train will finish passing, and yet it goes on and on Bravo Perez combines these more straightforward documentary elements with a number of more experimental impulses. Full Review

VERDICT: Ana Bravo Perez searches for the demons released by the extraction of fossil fuels from her native Colombia in this disquieting hybrid documentary.

UNITED KINGDOM

Makers & Shakers Awards to honor Film Commission Initiative of the year

Maker & Shaker Awards celebrates excellence in Global Cinema, by honoring innovative and impactful contributions from professionals who work tirelessly to facilitate and support the work of creatives

Other awards include Outstanding Ceative use of a Location, Initiative to Grow Local Industry and Sustainability award.

The Makers & Shakers Awards takes place on December 7 at BAFTA Piccadilly, London.

More information click here

PUERTO RICO

screened in a new sidebar called Oscar on Skis.

Godland, a film by Hlynur Pálmason, will be screened in the Hauteur program.

Raise the Bar, a documentary by Gudjón Ragnarsson and Margrét Jónsdóttir, will be a part of the Youth Screenings program

JORDAN

accolade will be awarded for an enterprise outside of official cash/tax rebate or credit schemes.

Honor highlights inventiveness which has made a significant impact on their territories and created an interesting proposition for film, TV movie, series, episode, advertisement or short form.

Finalists include:

Cherokee Nation Film Office

Dominican Republic Film Commission

Film Queenstown Lakes

The National Film Authority of Ghana

Roma Lazio Film Commission

Trentino Film Commission, Green Film DOC

The Ukranian Content, Global Cooperative Initiative (by MRM)

Hurrricane Destroyed Hotel used in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

One of the key locations used in the film was the facade of the old Ritz Carlton Hotel and Casino in Avenida Los Gobernadores in Carolina (pictured above). This former luxury hotel was completely destroyed by a hurricane and the ruins were used by Marvel Studios for the production of certain flashback scenes in the film

According to The Cosmics Circus, the film crews redecorated the main hall, fully rethinking the original style, and locals were used as extras.

ICELAND

Three Icelandic films have been selected for the Les Arcs Film Festival taking place Dec. 10 17. Beautiful Beings, by Gudmundur Arnar Gudmundsson, will be

Dune: Part 2 completes filming scenes in Jordan

The sequel to the Academy Award winning film, Dune from Legendary Pictures and Warner Bros. Pictures has completed filming certain scenes in Waki Rum and Wadi Araba as well as new terrains south east desert of Jordan.

The epic action adventure film benefitted from the support of the Royal Film Commission for the scenes shot in Jordan.

Herbert Gains, EVP Physical Productions at Legendary Entertainment commented “The film will once again showcase the iconic sandstone and breathtaking rock formations in the adaptation of Frank Herbert’s best selling novel. Local crews have been an amazing resource and the logistics and production support have been outstanding.”

AFJ Photography

LUMINOUS

UNCANNY ME

VERDICT: As we stand on the edge of increasing digital frontiers, Katharina Pethke’s thought provoking film explores the mechanics and implications of creating a virtual doppelganger. Ben Nicholson, November 22, 2022

In Katharina Pethke’s absorbing new documentary Uncanny Me a young model named Lale contemplates the possibility of generating a full body scanned avatar of herself. A little bit like the premise of Ari Folman’s The Congress, the notion here is that this digital rendering of Lale will be able to be deployed to represent her in work rather than her having to physically be involved. The concerns raised, however, are complex; how will she maintain control over her digital self? What are the repercussions if that self is abused in some way? What if the avatar becomes autonomous? While the film doesn’t attempt to answer these expansive and challenging questions, they constantly linger as we watch the process meticulously unfold.

Early on, Lale is recording a diaristic musing to the camera and wonders aloud how she feels about ageing a fair and constantly pertinent question in her line of work. She decides that she is happy to be getting older: “I don’t want to look like I do now forever.” The fact that she is changing proves that she is here, she asserts. Nevertheless, Lale is very actively exploring the possibility of having a virtual clone made and, as that undertaking progresses and she begins to come face to face with her own computer generated twin, one wonders what it will mean when she no longer publicly, at least changes. Is she still here? Full Review

YOUTH DOCUMENTARY

Documentary films have often branched into innovative animation techniques to tell stories that allow viewers to decipher hidden truths. Waltz with Bashir (2008) recorded the voices of Israeli soldiers who committed a massacre and Persepolis (2007) captured the childhood memories of a girl growing up in Teheran. Now Mexican filmmakers Carlos Hagerman (Those Who Remain, 2008, codirected with Juan Carlos Rulfo) and Jorge Villalobos (4 maneras de tapar un hoyo, 1996, codirected with Guillermo Rondón) tell the stories of young Mexican immigrants who suffer fears of deportation and family separation due to U.S. immigration policies. Full Review

HOME IS SOMEWHERE ELSE

VERDICT: A bilingual “animentary” uses the voices of Mexican immigrants, both legal and undocumented, to reveal their fears and dreams through imaginative drawings that allow for greater intimacy and understanding.

Patricia Boero, October 26, 2022

Free Press Unlimited and IDFA presented a talk after the documentary 'Mariupolis 2' and the awards ceremony of the Free Press Awards at Eyefilm Amsterdam.

Blue ID wins NPO Audience Award at IDFA

The film is an intimate account of the eventful gender affirmation of former actor Rüzgar Erkoçlar, who must endure incessant media attention in traditional Turkish society on the path to self realization. Blue ID world premiered in IDFA's Luminous section.

EO wins Arab Critics’ Award for European Films at CIFF

Academy Award entry for best foreign film sent greetings to Cairo “I am incredibly happy that EO has been appreciated by the Arab Critics' Circle as it must mean that my simple story of a donkey has moved people's hearts across different cultures. It is especially important to me that this plea for empathy for animals seems so universal. I thank all viewers who decided to watch the film and all the critics who voted for EO. We are also very proud to have Front Row as our distributors in the territory who will be bringing our film to local audiences soon."

Asian World Film Fest celebrates Snow Leopard Winners

Special Jury Award –World War III (Iran) Houman Seyedi, Director

Best Actress

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Hui Fang Hong for Ajoomma (Singapore)

Polish Italian co production EO by Jerzy Skolimowski has won this year's Arab Critics' Awards for European Films, which is being presented for the fourth time by European Film Promotion (EFP) and Arab Cinema Center (ACC) at the Cairo International Film Festival.

During the award ceremony at the Cairo Opera house, Jerzy Skolimowski, who is in Los Angeles promoting EO as this year's Polish

The 8th annual Asian World Film Festival (AWFF) has unveiled its competition winners at a star studded event last week at Beverly Hill's Saban Theater. The closing award ceremony was hosted by John Locker and Krista Kleiner.

Winners include:

Best Film Last Film Show (India) Pan Nalin, Director

Best ActorMoshen Tanabandeh for World War III (Iran)

Launches in Barcelona

This week launches the 1st European Animation Convention (Animar_BCN)

Taking place at the modernist Casa Convalescència, in Barcelona, the event offers a platform for dialogue in which the European associations and federations of animation producers exchanges ideas with key players in the funding of audio visual projects.

Organized by the Federation of Audio visual Producers (PROA), this convention was attended by representatives from more than 20 EU countries. For the first time, the European animation industry in total, from associations of producers to political representatives, public television broadcasters funding bodies, will come together in the same space to discuss the current state of the sector and outline the audio visual strategy for the future. The European animation industry has talent and ability and produces excellent work, but the industry’s products are often overlooked in the market.

ALL YOU SEE

VERDICT: A highly stylised, thought provoking meditation on being stared at without being truly seen, as female immigrants to the Netherlands reflect on their experiences across generations.

Boyd van Hoeij, October 27, 2022

The dehumanising experience of being looked at and exoticised or scrutinised as a strange entity, as opposed to being really seen and recognised in one’s authentic selfhood, is at the heart of Niki Padidar’s debut feature All You See, a stylised, highly conceptual documentary about the reductive perceptions and microaggressions that migrants to the Netherlands are subjected to on a daily basis, even after living there for decades. Padidar, who moved to the Netherlands from Iran when she was seven years old, enters into dialogue with three others who have relocated there. Full Review

WEEKLY SPOTLIGHT

ORWA NYRABIA SPEAKS OUT

THE FILM VERDICT: As head of IDFA, you occupy an interesting position in European film festival culture. Given the political changes in the period of your stewardship, has your job gotten harder or easier over the years?

ORWA NYRABIA: I am not one for easier. I believe a festival with IDFA’s size and importance needs to keep on reinventing itself non stop. So, the job must get harder and harder. The entire documentary landscape is going through a transformation phase: asking difficult questions and trying to understand and manage its growing audience, the new

politics, and the new economy that such growth entails. For a festival to remain relevant, useful, influential, there’s no time for resting on laurels. We are in Europe, but we’re not about Europe. We like the Europe we believe in are global and we prioritize the artistic proposals of those who are less seen, less privileged. Eurocentrism is boring, in addition to being inherently unjust.

TFV: What role does the unstoppable rise of streaming platforms around the world play in IDFA programming?

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Interview conducted by Oris Aigbokhaevbolo and Carmen Gray

ORWA NYRABIA SPEAKS OUT

ON: We welcome everybody. But keep in mind that documentary filmmakers are much less privileged than others. They’ve been making great documentary films for a century, no matter where they end up financed and screened. In this edition of IDFA, I’m happy that we’re celebrating the world premiere of a Netflix film (The Last Dolphin King, by Luis Herves and Ernest Riera) in our Frontlight section. Also, we’re celebrating the European premiere of an Amazon Studios film (Wildcat, by Melissa Lesh and Trevor Beck Frost) in our Best of Fests section. The streamers’ effect on the documentary world is still a work in progress. I hope that the streaming space will be much more diverse over time, within each streamer’s catalogue, but also in a global landscape with various streamers, small and large, regional or global, niche or not. Currently, there’s a visible commercialization effect. Major streamers are proposing an American dream pathway to filmmakers, where a few will break through and receive millions of dollars for a documentary film. This could turn the rather committed, risky and personal quest of filmmaking

into a poker game. They do that also by focusing on populist productions that are ethically questionable, such as the haphazard avalanche of serial killer stories being offered. Still, everybody, streamers included, is looking for some kind of balance. From where I sit here, the main issue is how they will (or won’t) make space for smaller films, for an open taste palette that is not limited to the conventional, and with less populist proposals. In any case, streamers are big and influential, but cinema distribution is not dead, and neither is TV. The landscape is richer with them around, and it is not a unilateral affaire. Full interview

Screening at IDFA in the Best of Fests section, Armenian director Inna Sahakyan’s Aurora’s Sunrise is intended to guard against the erasure of history. It recreates the remarkable life of Armenian genocide survivor and sometime Hollywood actress Arshaluys Mardigian (later known by her American stage name of Aurora Mardiganian) through a blend of animation, archival interviews with an elderly but sprightly Aurora (who died in 1994 in Los Angeles), and excerpts of rediscovered black and white fragments of the 1919 silent film she starred in, Auction of Souls, which was based on her own experiences in Armenia, and was for some time considered lost. The United States only recognised the Armenian genocide in 2021, joining the 33 other nations to have done so, while Turkey still denies it. This fact, set out in an end title, lends additional gravity to Aurora’s testimony of atrocities, and the importance of the film as a vehicle to circulate awareness. An ambitious project with glossy, high production values, it is Armenia’s official Oscar entry. The biographical tale is told chronologically and rather conventionally through animation with a naturalistic palate that is intricately drawn but hardly innovative, making this bleak chapter of history as accessible as possible, while not shying away

AURORA’S SUNRISE

VERDICT: A powerful, accessible blend of animation and archive that bears witness to the Armenian genocide through the eyes of survivor and Hollywood silent star Aurora Mardiganian. Carmen Gray, November 9, 2022

from depicting the reality of the genocide’s more graphic horrors.

Arshaluys is fourteen years old in 1915, as World War I rages. Events are narrated from her point of view (voiced in Armenian by Arpi Petrossian). After her father, a prosperous silk manufacturer, and one of her brothers are taken by Ottoman soldiers from their hometown of Chmshkadzag, the remainder of the family are displaced, forced into a death march for weeks to the Euphrates, which was by then full of corpses. The harrowing succession of atrocities Aurora experiences first hand is carefully, matter of factly set out, in a tone

favouring accuracy over excessive sentiment, from seeing most of her remaining relatives shot in front of her, to being kidnapped by Kurdish bandits for sale into sex slavery, and escaping into the mountains where she encounters members of the Fedayi (Armenian freedom fighters.) Making it to Erzarum, which by then was in the hands of the Imperial Russian Army, she gains passage by ship to America via Tbilisi and Saint Petersburg (then in the throes of revolution), with the help of a national liberation leader who exhorts her to tell the world what is happening to her people. In this sense, the film shows fidelity to that promise. Full Review

FRIDAY NOV 11

IDFA FILMTALKS

SATURDAY NOV 12

Film Talks are special conversations between filmmakers, protagonists and experts following the screening of the film.

15:30 THE HAMLET SYNDROME + TALK

Hosted by the European cultural Foundation. Screening and talk with Elwira Niewiera & Piotr Rosolowski @ Tuschinski

15:45 Master Talk: Laura Poitras In a public interview, IDFA Artistic Director, Orwa Nyrabia talks to Laura Poitras about her rebellious creative trajectory, Top 10 favorite films, and the political power in documentary art @ Carré

17:00 Colette and Justin + Talk

Screening and talk with Alain Kassanda @ Eye: Cinema 1 FOR COMPLETE LIST OF TALKS CLICK HERE

18:30 White Balls on Walls + Talk Hosted by Het Parool. Screening + talk with director Sarah Vos, Stedelijk Museum Director Rein Wolfs, and Head of Research & Curatorial Practice at Stedelijk Charl Landvreugd, moderated by Hadassah de Boer @ Carre

13:30 Alis + Talk Screening + talk with Clare Weiskopf & Nicolas van Hemelryck @ Tuschinski 1

14:00 IDFA Dialogue: What gender are film festivals? Inspired by Not Yet Yes program, IDFA Artistic Director Orwa Nyrabia sits across Simon(e) van Saarloos to discuss unarticulated power dynamics in documentary and filmmaking @ De Balie: Grote Zaa

DEVIL’S PEAK

VERDICT: Simon Liu utilises his familiar febrile aesthetic as a way to explore and represent Hong Kong’s tumultuous recent history, to deeply disquieting effect.

Ben Nicholson, November 9, 2022 Hong Kong American filmmaker Simon Liu has made several films in recent years that have adopted a frenetic experimental sensibility as a way to capture otherwise unquantifiable aspects of his hometown. Using oblique angles, incandescent electrical lights, breakneck editing, and forcefully shaking imagery, he has found his own mesmerising syntax to convey the unstable psychogeography of a place undergoing substantial change. In his most recent film, Devil’s Peak, which has adorned several festivals throughout 2022, he deploys these same techniques to arguably their most unsettling effect yet.

Perhaps this is primarily the result of the film’s sound design undertaken by Liu himself which seems to draw some of his pictorial motifs that already gave a slightly uncanny impression into a realm significantly more perturbing. Often, when his shimmering Super 8 and 16mm photography races by at speed, blurring the populace into a fluid mass, it can feel a little destabilising, but it’s a common enough element of cinematic language. When presented in unison with the Devil’s Peak soundtrack, filled with distorted droning songs, echoed snatches of dialogue, and discordant tones, those same images take on a far more haunting demeanour. Those indistinct faces are suddenly all the more spectral.

There are a series of recurring shots in which colour filter effects are applied to otherwise incidental moments… Full Review

IDFA‘S AROUND MASCULINITY PROGRAM

A Robust Heart

IDFA’s Around Masculinity program explores the problematic social construct that is masculinity from a variety of perspectives. The curated section homes in on a blind spot in film history, inviting audiences to take a hard look at their heroes by re reading classics such as Les Blank’s Burden of Dreams and the Maysles Brothers’ Meet Marlon Brando. Fragility comes to the fore in Heddy Honigmann’s Crazy, as do the inherent paradoxes of masculinity in Pirjo Honkasalo’s The 3 Rooms of Melancholia. Elsewhere in the program, Anand Patwardan’s Father, Son and Holy War takes up the subject through its the subject through its relation to religion and nationalism, while lesser seen titles such as Bitch Academy by Alina Rudnitskaya turn to the institutional domination of women by men.

12th & Delaware (2010)

Directed by Rachel Grady & Heidi Ewing

The 3 Rooms of Melancholia (2004)

Directed by Pirjo Honkasalo

Bitch Academy (2007)

Directed by Alina Rudnitskaya

The 3 Rooms of Melancholy

Burden of Dreams (1982) Directed by Les Blank

Der Busenfreund (1997) Directed by Ulrich Seidl

Caesar Must Die (2011) Directed by Paolo and Vittorio Taviani

Crazy (1999) Directed by Hedddy Honigmann

Erase and Forget (2017) Directed by Andrea Luka Zimmerman

Father, Son and Holy War (1994) Directed by Anand Patwardan

His Name is My Name (2022) Directed by Eline Jongsma & Kel O’Neill

The Hour of Liberation Has Arrived (1974) Directed by Heiny Srour

Labyrinth (2022) Directed by Annie Marr

Light Falls Vertical (2022) Directed by Efthymia Zymvragaki

Meet Marlon Brando (1966) Directed by Albert Maysies & David Maysles

Gigi la Legge (2022) Directed by Alessandro Comodin

Der Busenfreund

Innocence (2022) Directed by Guy Davidi

Look What You Made Me Do (2022) Directed by Coco Schrijber

Meet Marlon Brando

The Yellow Ceiling (2022) Directed by Isabel Coixet

Is There a Pine on the Mountain? Directed by Chongyan Liu

Innocence

A Robust Heart (2022)

Directed by Martin Benchimol

The Natural History of Destruction

Directed by Sergei Loznits

AMSTERDAM VENUES ARE

RICH IN HISTORY

Every Film Festivals’ exhibition partners are as unique as their film line ups and a reflection of their host cities whether an historic theatre, a museum or a school auditorium, the venues are a distinct piece of the make up of each festival.

IDFA takes place throughout much of Amsterdam in over 15 venues, including The Theater Tuschinski, considered the Netherlands' most beautiful cinema and one of the greatest ever erected; The Eye Museum, which endevours to stimulate a passion for film among the widest possible audience; and the Artis Planetarium, where DocLab activities take place.

In 1940, after the German occupation of Holland, it was re named Tivoli Theatre, and began screening German made Nazi anti Semitic films, while Tuschinski, his family and most of the theatre directors were deported to Auschwhitz.

In 1945 the name Tuschinski was back on the façade. It became the most popular cinema in Amsterdam, and also hosted live concerts featuring such celebrities as Judy Garland, Marlene Dietrich, Edith Piaf, Dizzy Gillespie, Fats Domino and Dionne Warwick. The site was declared a national monument in 1967.

PATHE TUSCHINSKI

THEATRE

The Theatre Tuschinski was founded by Abraham Tuschinski, (who already owned four theatres in Rotterdam) in partnership with Hermann Gerschtanowitz and Hermann Ehrlich. It opened in 1921, with an original seating capacity for 2,000, an orchestra, a balcony and upper circle levels. It also boasted the first theatre organ in the Netherlands.

Designed by architect H.L. DeJong, with interior by Pieter den Besten and Jaap Gidding, the building is a cross between Art Deco and Gothic styles.

In 1983 the Nöggerath Cinema, which was located on the same block, was acquired and renamed Tuschinski 3. The entire complex was sold in 1985 to Cannon and again in 1991 to MGM Cinemas.

The French based Pathe acquired the Netherlands MGM Cinemas chain including Tuschinski in 1995. They renovated the cinema to its original style and a corridor was constructed to Tuschinski 3, giving the complex a total of 6 auditoriums.

Pathé renovated the complex again in 2021 for its centennial

anniversary. This time auditorium 2 was brought back to its former glory, including the lost murals of Pieter dan Besten. The former Nöggerath auditoriums were given an update and in their foyer Bar Abraham opened. The theatre was renamed the Royal Theater Tuschinski.The historic auditorium ‘Grote Zaal’ currently seats 784. The additional five screens seating ranges from 105 to 191 seats, and are located in an adjacent building.

THE EYE FILMMUSEUM

The Eye Filmmuseum building is designed by Delugan Meissi Associated Architects, also known for the design of the Porsche Museum, Stuggart.

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AMSTERDAM VENUES ARE RICH IN HISTORY

(Continued)

The building features two gallery exhibition spaces, one 300 seat cinema, two 127 seat cinemas, and a fourth intimate cinema of about of about 67 seats.

One of the gallery spaces is devoted to a permanent exhibition on the technical and aesthetic histories of cinema. The exhibit includes historical equipment drawn from the Museum's collection of approximately 1,500 cinematic apparatuses, as well as an immersive presentation of about one hundred film clips from the Museum's archive from the silent era and beyond.

Eye strives to stimulate a passion for film among the widest possible audience. Eye is meant for connoisseurs, enthusiasts, and anyone else who wants to be enticed by the image. To realize this mission, Eye actively cooperates with various parties in the cultural sector and the business world.

This huge planetarium is located in the Artis Zoo complex, which also houses a botanical garden and aquarium.

The Amsterdam Planetarium first opened to the public on May 2, 1988, in conjunction with zoo’s 150th anniversary. It includes an area of 628 square meters. In 2007 the planatarium was renovated and became much more advanced and innovative.

The planetarium has its own mascot, a kind of green alien doll, which Dutch astronaut Andre Kuipers took with him in 2012.

ARTIS PLANETARIUM

2023: IDFA CINEMA DREAM TO REALITY

IDFA has been looking for a suitable new office location, together with the Municipality of Amsterdam, for years. A year ago today, they were offered an opportunity for moving into the Vondelpark Pavilion, providing opportunity to make IDFA Cinema a reality! A space where they can offer audiences, professionals, and school children an IDFA program year round.

Next came the development of establishing IDFA as an institute for creative documentary film including a fund, talent programs, two documentary markets, an R&D Lab, and an educational department.

A year later, plans were developed, partners sought and found, programs brainstormed, negotiations conducted; plans drawn and redrawn. Founding partner Fonds 21 Extra committed to supporting their plans from the get go, and conversations are ongoing with other partners. Crowdfunding campaign has launched with the support of the community.

Renovations begins in December with plans for the doors to open in May 2023.

2023 will be the year a dream becomes reality. IDFA will be the home for documentary year round.

Coen Dijkstra

ALL THE BEAUTY AND THE BLOODSHED

VERDICT: Artist Nan Goldin’s activism in holding the Sackler family accountable for the opioid crisis is seen as a natural extension of her rebellious, freely lived and proudly messy life in Laura Poitras’ well structured, powerful documentary.

Jay Weissberg, September 3, 2022

The Sackler family’s criminal responsibility for the opioid crisis is well known, but less familiar is artist Nan Goldin’s involvement in holding them accountable. Laura Poitras (CitizenFour) weaves that story in an intimate collaboration with Goldin, who in typical Goldin fashion forthrightly lays out the ups and downs of a life we thought was well documented, until now. All the Beauty and the Bloodshed is a documentary one expects will check all the usual boxes: a David and Goliath story ending with the kind of satisfied exhilaration that comes from seeing a worthy cause triumph. While there is that element, Poitras’ aims are more penetrating, using the Sackler crusade as a way of delving into Goldin’s life and teasing out the sources of her commitment to living openly, proudly, and with no excuses. Festivals have already nabbed the title, which will certainly find a welcoming home in rep houses and streaming.

Full Review

IDFA PROGRAM: PLAYING REALITY

Bringing the drama of documentary film center stage, the titles in this program creatively reimagine the concept of theatricality. Clio Bernard’s The Arbor, on renowned playwright Andrea Dunbar, foregrounds the performativity of language and voice. Werner Herzog’s Little Dieter Needs to Fly iconically uses re enactment as a documentary film instrument, while Lola Arias’ Theatre of War experiments with mise en scène as its protagonist revisit memories of the Falklands War. Eduardo Coutinho’s Moscow, on the other hand, deals directly with the physical space of the theater.

EVERY LITTLE THING

See full lineup here.

ALL THAT BREATHES

THE HAMLET SYNDROME

VERDICT: Shaunak Sen's Sundance World

Documentary winner is a gorgeous portrait of two New Delhi brothers who look after the city's increasingly in trouble kite population.

Boyd van Hoeij, February 2, 2022

Two brothers in New Delhi look after black kites and other birds of prey after they’ve “fallen from the sky” because of heavy air pollution in All That Breathes. In his second feature documentary, director Shaunek Sen (Cities of Sleep) paints an incisive and yet poetic portrait of the way in which the duo and a volunteer have dedicated their lives to helping out the “non vegetarian” bird population of the Indian capital, even though they don’t have much in terms of funding. Gorgeously shot to underline that animal life is everywhere in the city, whether it is wanted there or not, the film touches on ecological issues as well as political ones, with the fact that the men are Muslims in an increasingly hostile environment taking on more importance in the final reels. This winner of the Sundance World Cinema Documentary category should see a solid festival run and cement Sen’s reputation as a name to watch in the non fiction arena.

The film opens with a slow pan right across an unoccupied patch of land somewhere in the teeming metropolis the brothers call home. It is dusk and the camera is almost on the ground as we slowly take in the environs and see small critters run across the screen, finally ending with the sense that there might be more rats per square metre here than there are humans living in the city. Is it off putting or are they just a part of city life, like all the other creatures living there? The director and his German cinematographer Benjamin Bernhard, who has worked with Viktor Kosakovsky on visually impressive documentaries like ¡Vivan las antípodas! Full Review

VERDICT: An intense reckoning with the trauma that violence has inflicted on a wartime generation of Ukrainians, through emotionally charged rehearsals for a theatre production.

Carmen Gray, October 17, 2022

A few months before Russia’s full scale invasion of their country began, a group of five young Ukrainian men and women, not all of whom were professional actors, collaboratively developed a theatrical production. They examined their experiences of armed conflict and persecution against the backdrop of the Maidan uprising of 2013 and the onset of war in the country’s East. The motifs of Shakespeare’s tragedy Hamlet (and German playwright Heiner Mueller’s postmodern riff on it, Hamlet Machine) provided a loose, thematic framework for the production, H Effect. Guided by theatre director Rosa Sarkisian, it served as a therapeutic vehicle for navigating psychological wounds and reintegrating the cast’s experiences into the nation’s collective memory.

This rehearsal process is captured in Elwira Niewiera and Piotr Rosolowski’s The Hamlet Syndrome, an intense and raw insight into the sheer scale of trauma that a generation of young Ukrainians are carrying. Conversations between the individual cast members with their relatives and other survivors of recent political violence open the film out from the closed theatre environment, adding further emotional texture and testimony for a harrowing, multi layered reckoning with modern day Ukraine’s psychological landscape, that has only gained in urgent resonance as Russia’s invasion has drastically escalated, with no end in sight.

Only two members of the cast are professional actors; several have been active on the war’s front lines. Full Review

ITVS Open Call

CIFF to feature 6 Egyptian films

ITVS’ open call for funding and support to complete your single nonfiction program for broadcast on public television whether you’re an emerging filmmaker or a veteran producer.

ITVS is looking for exceptional storytelling that’s in line with their mission: stories that take risks, tackle important issues, address the needs of underserved audiences, and are seldom seen in public media.

Open Call offers independent producers up to $350,000 to complete production for a standalone broadcast length documentary to air on public television. The documentary can be on any subject, viewpoint or style as long as it is in active production already, as evidenced via a ten to fifteen minute work in progress sample.

Open Call is not a grant. You will receive funding in the form of a co production agreement that assigns ITVS certain broadcast and streaming rights to your project during the term of the contract.

Be sure to allow sufficient time (2 4 weeks) to complete the application. Deadline is December 16, 2023.

Click here to submit.

The 44th edition of the Cairo International Film Festival (CIFF) will be featuring a total of six Egyptian Films, including:

Tickets for the 38th IDA Documentary Awards Ceremony are now on Early Bird Sale!

Purchase your tickets until November 15 to save up to $150 and join us at the world's most distinguished event dedicated exclusively to the documentary genre, celebrating and honoring the year’s best nonfiction films, series, audio documentaries, and programs.

The ceremony will take place in person on December 10, 2022, at the Paramount Theater in Los Angeles.

INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION FILM 19 B by Ahmad Abdalla

HORIZONS OF ARAB CINEMA FILM Far From The Nile by Sherief Elkatsha

SHORT FILM Mama by Naji Ismail

SHORT FILM My Girlfriend by Kawthar Younis

SHORT FILM The Interview by Hind Metwali

From the Work of the Devil by Dessil Mekhtigian

CIFF 44th international Film Festival takes place Nov. 13 22 IDA

MONEY, FREEDOM, A STORY OF CFA FRANC

CASPAR’S NERVOUS SYSTEM ELECTRIFIES IDFA

VERDICT: Lena Ndiaye's documentary be the most important contemporary document on francophone Africa's malignant economic relations with France.

Oris Aigbokhaevbolo, November 16, 2022

In one of the early scenes of Money, Freedom, a Story of CFA Franc, a speaker says that the financial system has been made difficult to understand but yet has a power so extensive it is kind of supernatural. It’s hard if not impossible to disagree with that assertion. And yet, from time to time, something happens to give non initiates a peek behind the curtain.

For anyone interested in the relationship between Full Review

The Film Verdict’s very own Daniel Gusinski had an opportunity to sit with Caspar Sonnen, IDFA DocLab Curator. He found Caspar so intriguing, that TFV developed a two part interview series. Part one focuses on his thoughts of the NERVOUS SYSTEM, IDFA and Immersive, and Part two on the world of Cypto and NFT’s in the world of media and art.

What is the Interactivity present at IDFA? Why the nervous system? What does it say about or interaction? How has it grown?

DOCLAB is entering its 6th edition, 16 years ago VR was a failed experiment from the 90s, the iphone didn’t exist yet, myspace

still existed, and twitter was the new kid on the block. When we started the program, it was experimental digital lab, and we called it that because we wanted a laboratory to create work but also to make it a physical collective experience.

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INTERNATIONAL DOCUMENTARY FESTIVAL AMSTERDAM

APOLONIA, APOLONIA

VERDICT: A multi layered, intensely personal exploration of what's at stake in an artistic life, through a sprawling portrait of French painter Apolonia Sokol.

Carmen Gray, November 12, 2022

The question of what it takes for women to live a creative life, and what is at stake, is at the heart of Danish filmmaker Lea Glob’s Apolonia, Apolonia (2022). Chiefly a portrait of French figurative painter Apolonia Sokol, but extending its thematic net beyond straightforward biography, the ambitious, sprawling documentary was filmed over

thirteen years across multiple cities (mainly Paris, New York, Los Angeles and Copenhagen). Glob, who is also very much in the frame, started shooting Sokol in 2009 as a film school assignment, when the young French artist was living in the Lavoir Moderne Parisien, a ramshackle performing arts theatre in Paris that her parents founded in a nineteenth century bathhouse. In a voiceover narration prone to sink into cliché, the director describes the Lavoir’s lively community as just how she’d imagined Bohemia to be, far from her own Danish countryside upbringing. But any concern that the film will be limited to a wide eyed portrait of an underground Parisian art scene romanticised as a free utopia quickly dissipates. Instead, a multi layered, intensely felt and complex examination of Sokol and several of the women she is closest to emerges. As they seek a sense of home and purpose in an often hostile environment, the documentary becomes as much about migration and marginalisation as it is about artistic self expression, with the latter a life raft that does not always stay afloat. Especially given its up close insight into several familiar names within the worlds of art and activism, the film should find ready spots at festivals and possibly streaming. Full Review

Caspar Electrifies IDFA (Continued)

How do you take these digital, ephemeral, undefined things and physically present them? A festival, all artistic experiences, are things you need to share. Even though you consume them individually, you always want to share what you consume, books, music, everything you want to read or listen to individually and together. Film is all about seeing and hearing, with interactive art there are other senses that come to the foreground. Even an audio walk opens a new artistic language. The nervous system is central to it. We chose nervous system as our theme for two reasons, one because the senses we have as human beings are the things that make us conscious of the world around us. You can see yourself in relation to the world around you. You make meaning by interacting with it with all your senses. It is our interface. It is our touch screen. Two, it’s a pun wordplay the systems placed around us for years especially heightened by the last couple years because the systems around us are nervous. Let’s look at tech culture, the nervousness around the meta verse. Is it one big hype or is it one of the biggest newest things? The answer is yes both. I am excited to see what is to come. Just look at what is happening with twitter. The owners are nervous. The way we perceive the world around us is our nervous system and the more we realize we should strive for different systems. One of the projects, in pursuit of competitive beats, using multisensory VR tech you transport back to 1989 when rave culture in the UK was blossoming with drugs it was another time when capitalism wasn’t at its best, but you see people from all different backgrounds teaming up and having this moment together.

SOCIAL BOUQUET

After the pandemic I see this very same thing again. Forgoing commercialism in favor of DIY clubs and parties. It’s a nervous time, but it’s a time of motion.

PLASTISAPIENS

The pandemic has suffocated many artists, taking from them their platform to express themselves. This is where your interactive media platforms come in. How do you see these platforms growing. Where do you see them growing to.

I think the pandemic has been a great kickstarter for existential questions. For everyone but also for the immersive industry. Why do we do this? What works and what doesn’t? It’s like a discussion of whether we should have a farmers’ market or wholesale? Which is more efficient? It’s nice to have a farmers’ market but all these trucks driving to a market is inefficient by comparison.

It's hard to make those calls. We’ve done amazing experiments online parties, amazing serendipitous moments yet they were never physical. They are different beasts. We can’t replace a physical experience with a virtual one a mediated experience is not a fully physical experience.

In that sense most of what immersive media is good at and can do is a continuation is a continuation of the pre pandemic era. An amazing in headset experience doesn’t have to be networked. Compare it with a film, you can stream it live collectively but I still prefer to watch it in a great cinema palace with 1500 other people. That’s a feeling that we will never be able to replace in VR.

But that doesn’t mean we don’t get to have an amazing experience going to an online concert in VR chat. We commissioned a 1 on 1 interactive experience called TM as a theater company if you want to create meaningful intimacy online, they felt they had to go on a 1 on 1 experience.

We are having a 1 on 1 connection right now, like a phone or video connection. The moment it becomes ephemeral, undefined things and physically present them? (Continues next page)

Caspar Electrifies IDFA (Continued)

appeal to the younger crowd maybe just finding their footing in film festivals. Is this a conscious effort to capture them? Or is this simply a biproduct of these new technologies?

THE ANTICIPATION OF RAIN

A festival, all artistic experiences, are things you need to share. more, 5 other squares on our screen, the conversation would become a lot less intimate. It kills the intimacy; it kills the connection.

These new forms of cinematic art seem to be explicitly focused on the today and the tomorrow very rarely do they look backward like much cinema does. Why do you think that is?

I’m not sure if I agree is that different than other media? Is the statement you just posed regarding the reflection not representative of all media? All art reflects the present it was created in. It is always seductive to use new technology to predict where it will go to create speculative fiction.

We created a film about someone’s Ghanian roots building on the history of Ghana. It’s speculative fiction about it. It comes from the present of him working in Germany and seeing his own identity reflected through the eyes of others. It’s projecting forward.

You cover topics spanning from Trans identity to Mukbang videos, something that is sure to

We don’t try to make a program for young people, but these things attract a more adventurous audience and there is a correlation between age and adventure as I get older, I get this impression about myself. Netflix and chill is a great example of what we already like. We like to surprise our audiences. But we aren’t explicitly in the game to just surprise them. The projects you mentioned are there for younger demographics, that’s one of the nice things about being a part of the larger framework of IDFA. We attract these combined types of audiences. People who are both familiar and unfamiliar with

them. People coming from all different walks of life.

We tend to lean toward the more adventurous audience, regardless of their age. We don’t want you to feel unwelcomed to this exhibition if you don’t know what “Mukbang” means it’s not just for the in crowd. The artistic language of VR and digital art have been developing for decades and we’re at a point where you don’t have to be deeply involved in multi sensory VR installations to enjoy the project.

Daniel Gusinski

Part 2 to come November 24

Metaverse To Get Its First Film Festival

The MILC Platform announced today the launch of ALPHA FILM FESTIVAL (AFF), the first film festival exclusively hosted on The MILC Platform, a Web3 Metaverse and social community platform, in collaboration with The Film Verdict. The festival will take place across five days, 3rd 7th March 2023.

Ben Nicholson has been appointed the festival artistic curator based in London and has been involved in programming

for Sheffield Doc/Fest and the London Short Film Festival. In 2019 Ben founded ALT/KINO which screens and publishes writings about experimental film and artists’ moving image. Ben currently is a contributor critic for The Film Verdict, specializing in TFV Shorts (short films).

(Continues page 7)

KRISTINE IS NOT WELL

Metaverse To Get Its First Film Festival (Continued)

AFF’s theme in 2023 is “The Future” and the central film program will feature a selection of the best recent shorts on that theme. Alongside those films will be several curated screenings that will embrace topics such as visions of the future and artificial intelligence, as well as exploring the potential crossover between filmmaking and gaming. The festival will offer live events and panel discussions with filmmakers and industry leaders who are shaping the future of the film industry. Audiences will have the chance to participate in the festival, by voting for their favorite short film from the main program. The winning film will be the recipient of the AFF Audience Award at the closing ceremony.

"We're incredibly excited to be crafting a program of screenings and events that will really engage, in a variety of ways, with future potential, whether that is in the subjects that the films deal with, the techniques they're using, or the next steps the industry is taking into bold new areas,” said Ben Nicholson.

About MILC

The MILC Platform aims to become one of the leading business and entertainment Metaverses. A melting pot, connecting the professional media industry with its fans. Through its own Open Web GL Metaverse and Web3 social community platform, it offers the possibility for all users, for the first time, to interact directly with the media and entertainment industry. In addition, MILC Platform offers a blockchain based multimedia marketplace for professional content providers to trade licenses for movies, television, streaming, online publishing, music, gaming, and art. It provides NFT supported financing models for media projects as well as extensive small business opportunities for every market participant and user. The MLT (Media Licensing Token) serves as a medium of exchange, contract signing vehicle and revenue sharing medium across all platforms within the MILC Metaverse.

MUCH ADO ABOUT DYING

VERDICT: Simon Chambers’ family filming family masterpiece is a tender and often funny chronicle of a dying man who secretes his brilliant charisma every moment the camera finds him awake.

Oris Aigbokhaevbolo, November 14, 2022

The title of Simon Chambers’ documentary showing at IDFA recalls one Shakespeare play but in the film itself it is another, King Lear, that is called upon again and again. That comes down to the man at the centre, David Gale, a former actor who, in one scene, says he never got the chance to play Lear but could have been a good one.

Well, he is this sad, funny, and tender film’s King Lear. It may not be Shakespeare but it is a wonderfully realised project and a masterpiece of the family filming family subgenre. First, Chambers takes us through his own life as a bit of a roving man seeking a story. He is in India filming what is supposed to be a documentary on cars when his elderly uncle David calls him. He believes he’s dying. He could call Chambers’ sisters they are geographically closer to him but, as he says, they are “bossy”. This is the first indication of the sort of person David, as Chambers calls him, is. And it is because of David’s lively ways on camera that this documentary should find home in any festival with an adult audience. Rights buyers looking for films for a wide range of ages, except for the very young, should also take a look at this intimate masterwork. Chambers does return to London and heads to his uncle’s flat. The man is not actually dying he does quite a dance with his upper body and flapping arms but he is in a bad shape. His flat is even worse. One of his brilliant moves involves squirting his sockets with toothpaste because he learned rats are not great fans of mint. Chambers gets out his camera and begins filming the old man. Full Review

ADVOCATING UKRAINE

Tribute to Ukranian Filmmaker Mantas Kvedaravičius

Mariupolis 2 Screening

Extended Program with Free Press Unlimited

In 2022, Mantas Kvedaravičius returned to the ruined city of Mariupol in Ukraine to film the people he met for his 2016 documentary Mariupolis. There, he was killed in early April by Russian troops while documenting the Russian invasion of Ukraine. His fiancée managed to escape with the footage. After his death, producers and crew gave their all to edit his final, unfinished film and show it to the world.

The Lithuanian filmmaker and anthropologist sought to film with careful attention, far removed from the commotion of media and politics. Mariupolis 2 shows a hell on earth, but also how life goes on in the midst of the bombardments.

Mariupolis 2 Screening and talk was held Nov. 16

IDFA Bertha Fund Supports Ukraine Filmmakers

The IDFA Bertha Fund aims to stimulate and empower the creative documentary sector in Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and parts of Eastern Europe. With the support of the Open Society Foundation 9 Ukrainian projects as part of the iDFA Bertha Fund

Selecting the Ukrainian projects proved to be a monumental task for the selection committee, as there was no exception to the urgency behind the submitted projects, nor to the resilience of those behind it.

Committee member and film producer Yulia Serdyukova: “I was humbled and deeply touched to have a glimpse of what my colleagues are working on at this tragic time. Once again, I saw how cinema becomes a tool for attempting to make sense of the reality that is falling apart.”

IN DEVELOPMENT

The Days I Would Like to Forget, dir. Alina Gorlova, Maksym Nakonechnyi, Yelizaveta Smith, Simon Mozgovyi

Red Zone,dir. Iryna Tsilyk

Ashes Settling in Layers on the Surface, dir. Zoia Laktionova

Dad’s Lullaby

PRODUCTION & POST PRODUCTION

Dad's Lullaby, dir. Lesia Diak (Ukraine)

Expedition 49, dir. Alisa Kovalenko (Ukraine)

Fragments of Ice, dir. Maria Stoianova (Ukraine)

A Picture to Remember, dir. Olga Chernykh (Ukraine)

Just Announced with funding of 25K

Displaced, dir. Olha Zurba

The Elf’s Tower, dir. Polina Kelm

MERKEL

VERDICT: The rise and tenure of Germany's first female leader gets favourable treatment in this politically star studded documentary by Eva Weber. Oris Aigbokhaevbolo, November 16, 2022

Eva Weber’s 2022 documentary, Merkel, will find not a shred of resistance from European or even American streamers, TV, or festival programmers. A lot of that will be because Angela Merkel is immediately recognisable and extremely important in the West. It also helps that a lot of the interviewees are themselves political and media powerhouses: Condoleezza Rice, Tony Blair, Susan Rice are among them. Actually, Merkel and her successor Olaf Scholz might be the only persons who know enough about the subject to show up, but do not do so directly.

Part of Weber’s remit is to explain how that this former research scientist rose to become one of the most important figures in Europe’s recent history. A different part of her task is simply to laud the lady’s achievements. Weber reveres Angela Merkel and she wants you to be just as reverent. In pursuit of that reverence, her film begins in Boston, Massachusetts, a weird choice: why America for a woman who was in charge of Germany for more than a dozen years?

Full Review

The IDFA Forum Award Winners Announced

migration through the family members that stay on the continent. We’ve been first very sensitive to this exploration of the other side of the story we have often heard of and we’re happy that it comes from this artist. “

KVIFF Classics

"The idea to organise a showcase of films that have made their mark in the history of cinema in Prague has been long in the making. Now is the right time to start a new tradition and December is the best time to do it," says KVIFF’s executive director Kryštof Mucha.

SLAMDANCE 2023 RETURNS TO PARK CITY

Best Pitch Niñxs, by Kani Lapuerta Best Rough Cut

The Tuba Thieves, by Alison O’Daniels

Doc Lab Forum Award

We Speak Their Names in Hushed Tones by Omoregie Osakpolor

“The award for Best Pitch goes to a project with a very strong and compelling character while bringing a universal and timely theme. The jury values the sincere and close connection between the protagonist and filmmaker and the witty tone of the trailer” said jury members Gugi. Marieke van den Bersselaar and Natalia Libet regarding Niñxs

About the Tuba Thieves, the jury said “This project the jury has chosen makes viewers aware of sound in an engaging and unique way, and we are looking forward to watching the 90 minute cut soon.”

And regarding We Speak Their Names in Hushed Tones, the jury commented “It tells the story of

In the Karlovy Vary film festival’s tradition of presenting digitally restored films and retrospectives, the festival’s organizers have decided to dedicate a separate event to legendary films KVIFF Classics

Held in Prague, the festival presents such masterpieces as Singin’ in the Rain, The King of Comedy, Belle de Jour and Punch Drunk Love. The first edition of the festival, held from 1 to 3 December 2022 in Prague’s cinemas Světozor and Ponrepo, will open with a digitally restored version of Vera Chytilova’s Daisies.

The 29th Slamdance Film Festival announced today the festival’s Opening Night film, Punk Rock Vegan Movie, directed by Moby, as well as its partnership with the University of Utah dedicated to the first in person showcase of the Unstoppable Program, which will be free to the public. The 2023 Slamdance Film Festival will return to in person programming with events in Park City and Salt Lake City, Utah from January 20th to 26th and online on the Slamdance Channel from January 23rd to 29th A showcase for raw and innovative filmmaking.

From Left to Right: Alison O’Daniel, Antoinette Engerl, Omoregie Osakpolor, Anke Peterson, Kani Lapuerta, Dirk Manthey

Belle de Jour

FREE MONEY

PARADISE

VERDICT: Lauren DeFilippo and Sam Soko examine a newfangled Western method of aid to Africa and return with predictable answers in this largely agreeable fare.

Oris Aigbokhaevbolo, November 14, 2022

Free Money. Who doesn’t want it? The tricky part is finding someone who is willing to give it away. Fortunately, a non profit organisation called GiveDirectly decided to do so. The company probably has reams of paper to back its action. But it is a simple idea, really: rather than the roundabout manner NGOs undertake to enable economic prosperity, why not be direct? Why not put the cash in the hands of the people who need it? Cut out the middleman and have each adult handle their own lives. Pretty simple.

But as Lauren DeFilippo and Sam Soko’s documentary shows, the idea may be simple but the troubles start from the very idea of receiving free money. As with all projects concerned with African poverty, Free Money will find its place across Western festivals and platforms seeking to either understand the nature of African poverty or feel good about the West’s relatively elevated position in global economics.

As said, the problems GiveDirectly encounters begin with the idea. In the areas targeted, questions arise from potential beneficiaries: Why should they accept the money? At a meeting to discuss the coming windfall, someone says he has heard that you have to give your firstborn as a sacrifice when you receive the money. Someone else says the money is probably from the Illuminati. There’s enough weirdness around the concept of free money that one of the more reasonable queries is a simple one: what do the beneficiaries have to do to get this free money? Full Review

VERDICT: In stunning images, Alexander Abaturov’s debut shows global warming heroes in far flung northeastern Siberia, abandoned by the Russian government.

Oris Aigbokhaevbolo, November 14, 2022

A brief note at the start of Alexander Abaturov’s Paradise tells us that Russia has something called “control zones”. These are areas that cannot expect a lot of help from the government on the occasion of wildfires. It’s nothing personal. It’s just numbers. If the expenditure outweighs the devastation, then what’s destroyed is not worth saving.

But, of course, that is merely the view from the centre. For the inhabitants of those control zones themselves, fires and blazes are not just figures on a sheet. It will be their responsibility to help themselves when tricky, dangerous situations arise. And such a situation did arise last year in Shologon, a village on the fringes of north eastern Siberia. Abaturov shows real life heroism and his approach is, broadly, poetic. The first words spoken by a voiceover tell of an “unchained wind that never knew borders and blew without ever exhausting its forces”. When the film settles on its first couple of characters, a little girl is trying to memorise the words, “Tell me, Sacred Mountain, do you see the whole Earth from here? Advise me, Secret Mountain, how to reconcile men?” Those words are for a performance, but that is hardly the story being told. This really isn’t a story of people as much as it is a story of groups: one is seen onscreen, the other is entirely off screen.

Those on the screen battle to save their land; the ones offscreen have the privilege of neglect.

Full Review

Periscope

Roxy opened "Critic's Picks" of Tallinn Black Nights Film

A Periscope Interview with Director Dito

Tsintsadze

Tell us about your new film ROXY that’s opened Tallinn?

This film is very important for me because it's about metamorphosis. The metamorphose of a person who is faceless in the beginning and becoming the most important guy in the story at the end.

For me, it's always interesting in life how people are changing. I find it fascinating how people are changing in a short period. I have seen people who start to change in front of my eyes. I mean, in front of me. It was unbelievable with this procedure how slow or sometimes fast a human being or person can change. Because of their circumstances and because of many things which are happening around them. This procedure of changing, that's exactly the story of Roxy. And I want to share this story with the audience.

What was it like to work with Devid Striesow for the character of Thomas?

has this kind of ambivalence, you know, he could be everybody. He could be a victim, but he easily could be an aggressive, violent guy. You can find every element that I needed for the main character, for Thomas. So, when I asked him to play this role, I was hoping David and me to work together to break some stereotypes and to get to another sort of level of his acting and I think it worked out very well.

His character is invisible in the beginning. It's kind of a gray guy whom you never will notice, as he mentions himself in the film. And this invisible man becomes not only visible, but at the end, he's a game changer. He is like a spider, who decides every moment around him and who is active and precise in his reactions. And that's very interesting. Exactly this procedure from a faceless man to an active person who is winning everything money, success and so on. What is most important for me is that this is surprising, especially for himself, because he's finding some absolutely new qualities, which he never even thought he had.

And this transformation of an ordinary guy is triggered after he meets some passengers who are obviously on the run from a certain group or system.

Is this why you gave Thomas his backstory of his father and grandfather, who were both victims of their respective systems?

The same transition as I have and so many other people in Eastern Europe. This is why I have always wanted to create a character, a German character, who has gone through this system change, just like I have. And then if you go further back in German history, obviously most of the people, for instance who were working for the Stasi, their fathers were probably fighting in the Wehrmacht, so politically on the exact opposite side, but in the end there’s not so much difference between the systems for the individual. I find it really fascinating, how in Eastern Germany you had two system changes all within half a century. So, you have people who have lived through both of them and where one generation was raised in one system and the next in the other.

You have been making films in Germany for over 20 years now, but you still also make films in your native country of Georgia. Do you feel like a German director or a Georgian director?

Why I loved to work with Devid Striesow on this film is because he is a great actor and at the same time, he

You know, I was born in the Soviet Union, and I guess that is something that has shaped me. I have seen people’s lives get affected by institutions like the KGB or Stasi, which were very similar in how they were acting against people. I know it very well. I've seen people under interrogation or under pressure. And for me, it's very important to contain this and to remind people what hell it is and how this system of Stasi, KGB, FSB or other systems can ruin human beings, ruin humanity, and ruin all human qualities, which we have because it's based on ruining it, based on the humiliation of normal human beings.

I see myself as a European director. When I made my first movie in Germany, “Lost Killers”, it travelled to Cannes in the Certain Regard section, other movies have travelled to and won in Locarno and San Sebastian. So, these films somehow established me in the European film scene. I also made my movies in Georgia, just recently I finished one of the movies I made in Georgia. And if you ask me where I feel better, it's quite difficult. It doesn't matter. Germany is very interesting to my movies but also in Georgia when you are making movies it's a special condition, which I enjoy.

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STUNTWOMEN

VERDICT: A fascinating and troubling behind the scenes look into the work of female stuntwomen, who must frequently portray victims at the hands of violent men.

Carmen Gray, November 13, 2022

A woman in period attire is hurled from a carriage and thuds to the cobblestones, before we hear the word “cut.” The brutal shock to her body is palpable. Being thrown from vehicles or down stairs, sworn at, kicked and spat on is all in a day’s job for the workers we meet in Elena Avdija’s documentary Stuntwomen, tasked with performing the most dangerous scenes on behalf of actresses in the global film industry.

There tends to be more glamour associated with doing stunts in the popular imagination, but that’s because men outnumber women in the job, and their stunts are scripted to reinforce the macho aptitude of the action heroes or villains they shadow. Women, on the other hand, are usually framed as victims, their stunts simulating the humiliation and pain of being raped or beaten senseless. That females often die in horrible ways at the hands of men on screen, and that gender based violence in cinema shores up patriarchal power in the real world by reinforcing the illusion that the status quo is natural and necessary, is hardly a revelation today, even if actual industry changes are slow. But in casting a light on an unsung profession integral to a movie business obsessed with action and violence, and showing the realities of female stunt work on productions in both Europe and the United States, Avdija offers an ingenious, insightful new angle on industry power balances.

MANIFESTO

VERDICT: A profoundly disturbing found footage assemblage portraying a young Russian live streaming generation brainwashed by militarised education and normalised violence.

Carmen Gray, November 12, 2022

For found footage filmmakers, there may well be no darker source of material than the internet and live streaming apps, where endless hours of amateur videos capture the collective terrors and anxieties of our era, unfiltered. In her profoundly disturbing

assemblage of clips shot and publicly shared by youth in Russia, Angie Vinchito follows in the footsteps of web content mash up artists such as Dominic Gagnon, who scour the recesses of free content distribution platforms for reflections of weirdness on the margins of our technology connected age. Vinchito’s cumulative vision, Manifesto, is of a militarised Russia brainwashed by endemic violence, and an education system in disarray that is geared toward indoctrination and control rather than cultivating minds. The documentary’s chilling bleakness and graphic violence (despite blurred and blacked out images designed to reduce their explicit shock), as well as its non conventional, experimental form, will confine it to more niche documentary festivals and platforms. But the argument it advances regarding a Russia in cultural breakdown that has failed a new generation and instituted the brutal abuse of power in civic life has an urgent, albeit un nuanced, topicality. It strongly echoes the nation’s perceived cultural imperialism on the global stage, amid its ongoing full scale invasion of Ukraine.

Full Review

IDFA’S BERTHA FUND & DOC FORUM SUPPORTED PROJECTS MAKE A SPLASH ON THE FESTIVAL CIRCUIT

All That Breathes

Directed by Shaunak Sen

Winner: Grand Jury Prize, World Cinema Documentary, Sundance

IDFA SELECTION: Best of Fests

Alis

Directed by Clare Weiskopf, Nicolas van Hemelryck Winner: Crystal Bear, Berlin

IDFA SELECTION: Best of Fests

The Golden Thread

Directed by Nishtha Jain

IDFA SELECTION: Masters

Cine Guerrillas: Scenes from the Labudović Reels

Directed by Mila Turajlić

IDFA SELECTION: Luminous

Dear Mother, I Meant to Write About Death

Directed by Siyi Chen Winner: IDFA Award for Best First Feature

IDFA SELECTION: Luminous

How To Save a Dead Friend

Directed by Marusya Syroechkovskaya

IDFA SELECTION: Best of Fests

Anhell 69

Directed by Theo Montoya

Winner: Young Director Award

IDFA SELECTION: Best of Fests

Non-Aligned: Scenes from the Labudović Reels

Directed by: Mila Turajlić

Apolonia, Apolonia

Directed by Lea Glob

IDFA SELECTION: Best of Fests

Blue ID

Directed by Burcu Melekoglu & Vuslat Karan

IDFA SELECTION: Luminous

A House Made Out of Splinters

Directed by Simon Lereng Wilmont

IDFA SELECTION: Best of Fests

The New Greatness Case

Directed by Anna Shishova

IDFA SELECTION: Best of Fests

Winner: IDFA ReFrame Award

IDFA SELECTION: International Competition

The IDFA Bertha Fund aims to stimulate and empower the creative documentary sector in Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and parts of Eastern Europe.