The International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (Idfa) (November 22 to December 2) in the Netherlands will celebrate its 20th anniversary in some style with five world premieres in its feature competition line-up and what are bound to be some very heated debates.

Among the special guests at this year's event, which has decamped to new screening and office facilities in the historic centre of Amsterdam, will be the flamboyant Hustler publisher, political activist and free speech advocate Larry Flynt for Joan Brooker-Marks' Larry Flynt: The Right To Be Left Alone. Also in town will be Werner Herzog, at Idfa for the first time for the competition screening of his Encounters At The End Of The World. He will also give a film-making masterclass.

Idfa will open with the world premiere of Operation Homecoming: Writing The Wartime Experience, from Richard Robbins, which centres on American soldiers serving in Iraq. Twenty years ago, the first Idfa opened with Dear America - Letters Home From Vietnam by Bill Couturie.

The festival began as an informal event with an emphasis on screenings and debate, but quickly turned into a key industry gathering. The establishment of pitching market The Forum in 1992 meant Idfa was soon Europe's largest gathering of TV commissioning editors and independent documentary producers. Many projects being pitched this year will come in two versions - one of around an hour for TV and one of feature length.

The main Joris Ivens Competition section for documentaries of at least 60 minutes will screen only world or international premieres. Any documentary well received in Amsterdam is likely to receive an immense amount of exposure. There will be more than 100 festival programmers in attendance as well as a small army of broadcasters. However, the downside is that most films which have screened at other documentary festivals won't be eligible for competition.

Festival director Ally Derks is unapologetic about the emphasis on new work. "If we want to celebrate documentary and have this gathering of professionals, we need the premieres," she says. "We don't want to become a 'best of the fests' festival."

Keeping it real

When a film succeeds at Idfa, it is given an excellent launchpad. Last year, for example, Paul Taylor's We Are Together, about an orphanage in South Africa, won the audience prize following its Amsterdam world premiere. It has subsequently gone on to play at many other festivals, Tribeca and Edinburgh among them, and will be released theatrically in the UK at the end of November.

One key area of debate - given recent controversies about faked documentaries - will be how "real" a documentary has to be. Derks believes documentary is a far more protean form than some critics might like to admit. "The word in the end is transparency," she says. "Show what you are doing and let the people know what you are doing."

Broadcasters remain the key financiers in the documentary world. The recent news that one of the pivotal funders, the BBC's Storyville, was being threatened with a budget cut from $4m (£2m) to $2m (£1m) has created great disquiet. In the event, Storyville has been left with a budget of $3m (£1.5m).

"We need to make the money go further," says Storyville's Nick Fraser of the mooted cuts. In such a tough environment, he suggests, events such as Idfa which foster co production are becoming more important. "Our imperative is to raise the number of co-productions rather than simply buying completed films."

The BBC is not the only broadcaster questioning the amount it spends on documentary. As Fraser puts it: "Life is very tough indeed for documentary film-makers but broadcasters have to get more ingenious in dealing with this situation."

RULE CHANGE OPENS UP FUNDING

The Forum, Idfa's market for co-financing documentaries, has tweaked its rules. Now Idfa will accept some "seedling" projects that do not yet have 25% of their budgets in place. It will also accept some "rough cut" projects - films close to completion but needing extra funding.

Several notable names have projects looking for finance. These include Alfonso Cuaron and Jonas Cuaron's The Shock Doctrine: The Rise Of Disaster Capitalism (Renegade Pictures), Leslie Woodhead's How The Beatles Rocked The Kremlin (Blakeway 3BM) and Victor Kossakovsky's Vivan Las Antipodas!

The Forum has an impressive record. According to the festival's annual surveys, around 95% of the projects pitched are eventually financed. "Sometimes it takes a year, sometimes it takes three years," says Adriek van Nieuwenhuyzen, head of the Industry Office. "Forum is also a great networking opportunity for producers and commissioning editors."

Docs For Sale, now in its 11th year, offers a chance to buy creative documentaries, none of which are more than a year old.

JORIS IVENS COMPETITION LINE-UP
- All White In Barking (UK)
- The City Devouring Its Daughters (Mex)
- Darfur Now (US)
- Desert - Who Is The Man' (Switz)
- Encounters At The End Of The World (US)
- Faces (Neth-Fr)
- Hold Me Tight, Let Me Go (UK)
- How To Become A Hero (Serb)
- If We Would Know (Neth)
- Mechanical Love (Den-Fin)
- Night (Aus)
- Operation Homecoming: Writing The Wartime Experience (US)
- Septembers (Sp)
- Shadow Of The Holy Book (Fin)
- Stranded (Fr)
- Up The Yangtze!(Can)