The International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA, November 8-19) will open with the world premiere of Ukrainian filmmaker Olga Chernykh’s A Picture To Remember as the festival unveils the line-ups for the international and Envision competitions.
A Picture To Remember explores the war in Ukraine through three generations of women, including the director herself, and is a co-production between Ukraine, France and Germany. The film is screening in Envision and has received backing from the IDFA Bertha Support fund.
The international competition features 11 titles, seven of which are world premieres, including Anand Patwardhan’s The World Is Family, which explores Indian Independence through the lens of the director’s parents.
The Clinic, from the Taiwanese director behind 2019 Cannes Un Certain Regard title Nina Wu, is also screening. It has been nominated for best documentary feature at Taiwan’s Golden Horse Awards.
Further titles include Juan Palacios’s As The Tide Comes; Sebastian Pena-Escobar’s The Last; and Life Is Beautiful from the Palestinian-born Norwegian filmmaker Mohamed Jabaly.
Envision
The Envision section is dedicated to films which deviate from conventional documentary filmmaking. Eight of the 12 titles are world premieres, including opening title A Picture To Remember. Among the selection is Mud, the new documentary from Russian filmmaker Ilya Povolotsky who played in Cannes earlier this year with his fiction feature debut Grace.
Thunska Pansittivorakul’s Damnatio Memoriae is also screening, The documentary explores the “missing jigsaw pieces” of Asian history from Hiroshima to Teresa Teng. It first premiered at South Korea’s DMZ Docs.
Further titles include Kaori Oda’s Gama, about a cave where many people lost their life during the Battle of Okinawa in Japan; Kumjana Novakova’s Silence Of Reason, about rape camps during the Bosnia and Herzegovina war; and Yaser Kassab’s Chasing The Dazzling Light.
The festival also announced the 13 titles screening in its IDFA DocLab Competition for Immersive Non-Fiction and the 10 in its IDFA DocLab Competition for digital storytelling as well as the Cross-section award nominees.
International competition
*world premiere
1489* (Arm)
Dir. Shoghakat Vardanyan
As The Tide Comes In (Den)
Dir. Juan Palacios
The Burden* (Central Afr Rep-Fr-Con-It)
Dir. Elvis Ngaibino Sabin
The Clinic* (Tai-Mya)
Dir. Midi Z
Danger Zone (Pol-UK)
Dir. Vita Maria Drygas
Flickering Lights (Ind)
Dirs. Anirban Duca, Anupama Srinivasan
The Last* (Par-Uru-Fr)
Dir. Sebastan Pena-Escobar
Life Is Beautiful* (Nor-Pal)
Dir. Mohamed Jabaly
LimitaCon* (Geo)
Dir. Elene Asatani, Soso Dumbadze
Selling A Colonial War* (Neth)
Dir. In-Soo Radstake
The World Is Family (Ind)
Dir. Anand Patwardhan
Envision
La Cancha* (Can)
Dir. Mustafa Uzuner
Canuto’s Transformation* (Bra)
Dir. Ariel Kuaray Ortega, Ernesto de Carvalh
Chasing The Dazzling Light* (Syr-Qat-Swe)
Dir. Yaser Kassab
Damnatio Memoriae (Thai-Ger)
Dir. Thunska Pansittivorakul
GAMA (Jap)
Dir. Kaori Oda
Mud* (Rus)
Dir. Ilya Povolotsky
Paragate* (Bel)
Dir. Jialai Wang
A Picture To Remember* (Ukr-Fr-Ger)
Dir. Olga Chernykh
Silence Of Reason (N. Mac-Bos & Her)
Dir. Kumjana Novakova
Tales Of Oblivion* (Port)
Dir. Dulce Fernandes
Thermodielectric (Bra)
Dir. Ana Costa Ribeiro
The Wasp And The Orchid* (Tun)
Dir. Saber Zammouri
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