IDFA Industry Special 2015-3 by IDFA International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam

special industry

INCLUDING SCHEDULE

MON 23 & TUE 24 NOV

For more news & full industry programme, see www.idfa.nl/industry

“The universe is full of sound,” says musician and producer Nick Koenig, aka Hot Sugar. Saturday afternoon, the Melkweg venue was certainly full of great sound (and some wonderful visuals) as Hot Sugar gave a performance following the screening of Adam Bhala Lough’s portrait of him, Hot Sugar’s Cold World. According to the audience, it wasn’t cold at all. photo: Michiel Landeweerd

Strong currents The conflicts wracking the Middle East and their far-reaching repercussions loom large in the projects to be presented at IDFA Forum, which opens on Monday. “That’s one of the things we’re looking for at the Forum, projects that deal with current issues, but not in a current affairs way. Many of the projects we selected feel especially relevant right now,” says IDFA’s head of industry Adriek van Nieuwenhuijzen. A number of projects tackle the refugee crisis, such as Leonard Retel Helmrich’s The Camp, about the Majdal Anjar camp in Lebanon, and In the Middle, about a young Eritrean refugee who survived a shipwreck off the Italian island of Lampedusa. Others hone in on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, such as Gaza-based filmmaker Mohamed Jabaly’s Ambulance, following ambulance crews in the Gaza Strip, and Israeli production By A Thread, about the critically ill son of a wanted Hamas leader, living most of his young life in an Israeli hospital. A total of 59 projects, selected from a record 600 submissions, will be presented over the three-day Forum, 16 of them in the event’s flagship Central Pitches and the rest in round table sessions, which Van Nieuwenhuijzen says are increasingly popular. Alongside Retel Helmrich, who has taken the top IDFA prize twice (Shape of the Moon, 2004, and Position Among the Stars, 2014), other IDFA veterans at the Forum include Nima Sarvestani, who plans to return to Afghanistan’s jails with Prison Sisters, and Jean-Xavier de Lestrade, who will present the third instalment in his The Staircase trilogy. There are also a number of projects on aspects of

By Melanie Goodfellow

contemporary Western life – often in a lighter, more innovative way – such as Paula Schargorodsky’s Get Over It, on the art of moving on after a break-up, and interactive comic strip How to Create a Crisis, exploring the causes of economic global crises. “It’s interesting that these stories, with a particular appeal to younger audiences, are to be found in the cross-media section,” says Van Nieuwenhuijzen. The cross-media line-up for the first time includes two virtual reality projects: Oscar Raby’s Islands, reflecting on human interaction by exploring remote and intimate places, and Adi Lavy’s Once Upon a Sea, about the Dead Sea.

Top TEN

Docs for Sale 1

S onita Rokhsareh Ghaem Maghami

2 A Family Affair Tom Fassaert

3 A Strange Love Affair with Ego Ester Gould

4 Thy Father’s Chair Antonio Tibaldi, Alex Lora

5 Holy Cow

Imam Hasanov

“Many of the projects we selected feel especially relevant right now” “I’m really curious about what kind of response these projects get. It’s not for broadcasters, but because we have DocLab and the interactive conference, there are a whole bunch of other people coming for this type of content,” comments Van Nieuwenhuijzen. Other events on the fringes of the Forum include the launch of a new initiative focusing on Southeast Asia’s underfunded documentary makers called Dare to Dream, and the Documentaries for Children event on Wednesday.

6 Among the Believers

Hemal Trivedi, Mohammed Ali Naqvi

7 Walls

Pablo Iraburu, Migueltxo Molina

8 Next Stop: Utopia

Apostolos Karakasis

9 Don Juan

Jerzy Sladkowski

10 U krainian Sheriffs

Roman Bondarchuk

As of 4 pm, Sunday 22 November

Mind the (funding) gap Television is still the engine that drives documentary financing in Europe. As IDFA’s Forum begins, senior figures in Amsterdam this weekend have warned that this engine is in danger of sputtering to a halt, with potentially dire consequences for documentary makers. By Geoffrey Macnab

“I am surprised how few people are aware of the situation,” Nick Fraser, editor of BBC Storyville, says. “Part of the problem is that there is a real crisis in documentary funding among broadcasters and it [the funding gap] is not being closed by NGOs and non-profits, it really isn’t… I feel like Cassandra by now. You tell people but, it is not acknowledged.” In the UK, the BBC is facing severe cuts. The organisation is looking for savings of £700 million and there has been speculation that entire channels or departments (including possibly BBC4) may have to close in the long term. The Beeb’s travails are mirrored across Europe. Flemish broadcaster Lichtpunt recently confirmed its final broadcast will be in December, while Dutch channel NPO/DOC is also facing closure. Speaking on the eve of the Forum, EDN Director Paul Pauwels highlights the scale of the problem. “We’re in a really bad situation right now. If you compare it with 15 to 20 years ago, it is a completely different world, and it has to do with the lack of respect for documentary within the broadcasters – a lack of respect and a lack of knowledge.” continues on page 7

SANT & USANT PRESENTS 3 FILMS AT IDFA 2015

VARI CELL A

by VICTOR KOSSAKOVSKY

MEET DIRECTOR FOR Q&A TUE 24 NOV 16:15

SC REE N I NGS

TUE 24.11

FRI 27.11 SAT 28.11

DANCING

MAIKO

FO R YO U

by ERLEND E. MO

DANCING CHILD by ÅSE S. DRIVENES

SC RE E N I N GS

MEET DIRECTOR FOR Q&A

IN DUTCH (IDFA JUNIOR DAY)

SCR EEN I NG

TUE 24.11

FRI 27.11 SAT 28.11

SUN 29.11 10:30 & 13:30

MON 23 NOV 11:15

WED 25.11 22:30 TUSCHINSKI 2

Striking the match

Free radical

a idf ws e n Deckert Distribution attends IDFA 2015 with a slate of five titles in official selection and two projects in advance development, including Victor Kossakovsy’s upcoming iceberg-located doc Aquarela and Janet Tobias’ Memory Games, about people with an advanced sense of recall. Both are produced by Heino Deckert’s Leipzig-based ma.je.de production company.

Catherine Olsen, the former documentary supremo at Canadian state broadcaster CBC, where she was the commissioning editor for respected strand The Passionate Eye for 22 years, makes her IDFA debut as an independent producer and consultant this year, operating under the Passionate 4 Docs banner.

“I’m really proud of what I accomplished there because I developed the series over 22 years into what I think is one of the most successful documentary brands in North America, but I reached a point where I wanted to re-engage with the creative process and start working again more intimately with filmmakers. By the end, 75% of my energy was going into fighting the fight internally,” explains Olsen. Since her departure from CBC in June, Olsen has acted as an “editorial coach” on a number of projects – including The Forgotten Boys of Brazil and the Pakistan-set The Path – has run workshops, worked as a consultant with festivals and events such as Doc Barcelona, the Italian Documentary Screenings in Rome and now IDFA, where she is a moderator on a number of the industry sessions in the Carlton hotel, and is also offering script consultancy services to filmmakers. After IDFA, she heads to the Antalya Film Festival in Turkey, where she is on the jury, and early next year she will be in India for the DocEdge meeting in Calcutta. “This is my year to give back from the experience and wisdom I have acquired over the years. I’ve been working with the markets and the festivals and loving it,” says Olsen. In the long run, Olsen plans to start developing and producing projects of

photo: Corinne de Korver

her own. “I’m looking for a couple of special projects I can fall in love with and work with intimately and develop into what I hope will be award-winning films, but I haven’t found them yet... The kind of films I gravitate to tend to be contemporary, very political and with an edge, often very controversial; I like controversy and films with strong characters – for me that is always the starting point. ‘Who are your characters and what kind of intimacy have you been able to achieve?’ is always one of my first questions,” she explains. “What I bring to the table is years of working in the industry, knowing the players, knowing who has money and what people want. Hopefully what I will be able to do is play the role of matchmaker between a fantastic project and the appropriate funders.” Melanie Goodfellow

At IDFA, the Italian The Successor, screening in mid-length competition, tells of a man who inherits a weapons company and sets out to right previous wrongs by de-commissioning the landmines it manufactured in the past. “It is a very personal story about guilt and how to deal with it,” comments sales md Heino Deckert. The company picked up the North Koreathemed Under the Sun (Masters) by Vitaly Mansky at rough cut stage. “I have produced some of his films, and this is one of the strongest films he has made in years,” says Deckert, who claims he is receiving enormous interest from theatrical distributors and festivals worldwide. Deckert’s Cologne-based Blinker Filmproduktion is co-producer on the Finnish Return of the Atom (Best of Fests), about the endlessly drawn-out construction of a nuclear power plant in Finland. “It is a film about bureaucracy, and about a landscape populated by people with different interests. It is very funny, but you have to understand the Finnish humour,” he warns. Deckert is also selling the “radical” Every 28 Days by Ina Borrmann, about the director’s desperate attempts to have a child, as well as Say Something, about family members coming to terms with the domestic violence they suffered in their recent past. Both films screen in Panorama. “As a producer and sales company you must have your profile, a way that people can identify you and your films, so there has to be a clear editorial line,” comments Deckert. “My films must be strong author films that cross the divide between theatrical and TV. And they must be special and radical in their own way. I always say I am not so interested in the theme, more so in the director. What did he or she do before? Do I want to follow them? The subject is of course important, but it always comes second to the director.” Nick Cunningham

Piano Man New Zealand producers Rebecca Tansley and Lyn Collie are attending IDFA with the feature-length Crossing Rachmaninoff in Docs for Sale, and a project in development about devotees of Benedict Cumberbatch. Crossing Rachmaninoff, also directed by Tansley, is about Flavio Villani, a gay piano soloist making his orchestral debut with Rachmaninoff’s Concerto No. 2. The film was shot by Simon Raby (Lord of the Rings) and post-produced at Peter Jackson’s Park Road site. “My film follows Flavio on this journey to prove himself as a pianist – to himself, to his family,” comments Tansley. “And the concerto was also famously Rachmaninov’s own redemption, which proved him as a composer.” Tansley is looking for sales representation for all rights outside Australasia.

Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution

Alive and kickstarting Over 5,000 documentaries have successfully raised financing on Kickstarter, the Brooklyn-based crowd funding platform. Liz Cook, head of documentary film outreach at the company, will be holding a special IDFA session titled Get To Know Kickstarter at the Industry Office on Tuesday, November 24 (13.30 to 14.30 hours).

As Cook makes clear, Kickstarter is now thoroughly engrained in the world of doc financing. Last year, one third of Oscar shortlist titles accessed Kickstarter finance. Such titles as Stanley Nelson’s Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution (screening in IDFA Masters), Finding Vivian Maier and Oscar-winning short doc Inocente all used the platform. As did documentary legend D.A. Pennebaker, for his forthcoming film Unlocking the Cage. A doc on TV science teacher Bill Nye also recently raised $860,000. Cook says the average amount raised per doc is around $10,000. “It’s really a portion of the overall budget. Obviously, feature-length films that go on to have robust festival runs and theatrical campaigns are raising a little bit more.” Kickstarter may be a New York-based platform, but Cook suggests filmmakers worldwide are now aware of it. “My goal in coming here [to IDFA] is to really connect with people who have works in progress and to offer myself as a resource to them in terms of helping them think about how best to use

Kickstarter as a tool to engage with their audience and raise some funds for their films,” Cook explains. Predictably, the Kickstarter exec encourages filmmakers to tailor their campaigns as carefully as possible in advance. “The biggest takeaway I end up having in conversations is the preparation – making sure that you really have a clear sense of your audience, how you’re going to reach them and what your messaging will be – before you launch your campaign.” Another tip is: be focused. “A common pitfall is to think of your audience as a vague, large swathe of people. The internet operates in niches. In order to contact specific people, you’re really going to have to figure out specifically who the audience is; what community you are speaking to, where they get their news, where they are active online, and really narrow down your message to speak to a specific community, rather than a one size fits all.” Europeans who have received some broadcaster support but don’t have their full budgets in place will turn to Kickstarter to close the gap in their financing. Another attraction of the platform is that filmmakers can maintain complete creative control of their projects. Campaigns last between one and 60 days, with 30 days being the average length. Kickstarter is an “all or nothing” platform. You have to reach your goal to get any of the funds. If the campaign is successful, Kickstarter takes a 5% fee. Geoffrey Macnab

Crossing Rachmaninoff

The film’s co-producer Collie is also in Amsterdam to discuss her project in development Unrequited, about worldwide fans of Cumberbatch, star of Sherlock and the voice of Smaug from The Hobbit. “It’s an exploration of what being a contemporary fan is all about. People are giving their energy and their lives and intellect and everything to being fans. Sometimes that’s fantastic for them, but other times it’s not so healthy. It’s all about looking at that, but on another scale. What does it all mean? What is all the other stuff they are not doing? And why Benedict Cumberbatch?” Collie also has A Place to Call Home (not in Docs for Sale), a documentary feature on social housing, which premiered at Documentary Edge in New Zealand and is currently screening at the Hawaii International Film Festival. Nick Cunningham

IDFA

Feature-Length Competition: Don Juan by Jerzy Sladkowski

Best of Fests: Every Face Has a Name

Kids & Docs Competition:

I Am Dublin

Masters:

Nice People

Ruth by Hanna Heilborn

by Magnus Gertten

by Ahmed Abdullahi, David Aronowitsch, Sharmarke Binyusuf, Anna Persson

Becoming Zlatan

by Anders Helgeson, Karin af Klintberg

Ingrid Bergman – In Her Own Words

Panorama: Martha & Niki

by Fredrik Gertten, Magnus Gertten by Stig Björkman

The Swedish Theory of Love by Erik Gandini

sfi.se

M A R T H A & N I K I BY TO R A M Å R T E N S , P H OTO : M E I V I S I O N S

by Tora Mårtens

Say Something by Åsa Ekman

Willing sinners New York-based Indian film-maker and LGBT activist Parvez Sharma is at IDFA for a screening of his latest film A Sinner in Mecca, which has been programmed as part of the festival’s Queer Day on Monday.

Barenboim doc takes shape

Swiss director David Bernet is preparing a new documentary following the opening of renowned Argentine pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim’s new music academy, aimed at musicians from the Middle East, in Berlin in 2016.

“It’s early days, but we’ve secured the access. For now, the simple line on the project is that it’s about music and war,” says Bernet, who will co-direct with Stefan Schwiertert. Going by the working title of Voyage to the Other, it is a co-production between Zurich-based Ican Films and German Lichtblick Media, backed by MEDIA, the Swiss Federal Office for Culture, Succès Passage Antenne and Film Board Berlin-Brandenburg. The new academy – called the Barenboim-Said Academy – is a spin-off of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, founded by Barenboim and the late Palestinian writer and academic Edward Said in 1999 to bring young musicians from across the Middle East, including Israel, together under the same roof. Bernet is at IDFA for the English-language premiere of his latest film Democracy, exploring the European Union’s institutions through the timely topic of its data protection reform. Melanie Goodfellow

The documentary follows Sharma, who is gay and Muslim, as he faces his darkest fears and makes the annual Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia – a country where homosexuals face imprisonment, corporal punishment and even death. It builds on ideas he explored in his debut feature A Jihadi in Love, looking at what it means to be Muslim and gay around the globe. Sharma, who takes part in a Q&A for the film on Monday, admits he was initially a little surprised at the inclusion of A Sinner in Mecca in the Queer Day programme. “For me, A Jihadi for Love was the film where I came out as a gay man and that was my film about Islam and homosexuality. From my vantage point, this film is about me coming out as a Muslim,” says Sharma. “It’s really a film about Islam, especially Saudi Arabia’s version of Islam, which is a Wahhabi Islam. It’s an interesting choice that they put it there, however, and it’s an important choice perhaps because it might be an empowering film for gay Muslims, especially gay Muslims who want to be religious.” “I come to the conclusion in my film that the question is no longer whether Islam is going to accept me: the question is whether I, as a gay Muslim, am going to accept Islam. Today, I accept Islam on my own terms and I am no longer bothered about Islam giving me its divine sanction.” Above and beyond the film’s exploration of whether gay Muslims can reconcile their faith with their sexuality, Sharma stresses that the film has a further and, for him, more important message. “It’s a call to action to all Muslims,” he says. “The time has come for Muslims to look inwards within our own communities, especially after what has happened in Europe. There are extreme factions growing amongst us and people within our own communities are becoming radicalised. It’s becoming increasingly hard for me to say in a Q&A that Islam is a religion of peace.”

a idf ws e n

All lives matter

Parvez Sharma – photo: Corinne de Korver

Five documentaries touching on gender and LGBT rights will show as part of the Queer Day programme. The line-up also comprises Oriented, about three Palestinian gay friends living in Tel Aviv; Call Me Marianna, a portrait of a Polish transgendered person who pays a high price to finally be herself; Chemsex, exploring the drug-fuelled, gay sex party scene in London; and Tig, about Lesbian stand-up comic Mathilde “Tig” Notaro. Melanie Goodfellow

The past twelve months have been pretty momentous for young Dutch filmmaker Morgan Knibbe.

“I wanted to aim very high with my debut,” says Knibbe. “I was always thinking about a form that would really pull in an audience and give them a very emotional cinematic experience. They don’t have to understand all the metaphors – I think it is kind of interesting if they don’t – but the experience itself had to be very exciting from the very beginning of the film until the end. That can be the problem with many documentaries: they can be boring with too much talking.” Knibbe points out that the one compromise he made with his film was to follow advice from the Film Fund in restricting his budget. “We wanted to get more finance at some point and we asked the Fund if we could get money from a broadcast network, but they strongly advised us not to do a collaboration, warning us about the creative compromise that we would have to make. So we didn’t do that, and I am very happy that we didn’t because in the end everything was made for €50,000, and we had no creative restrictions.” Given the polemical stance of his debut, does Knibbe see himself as a political filmmaker? “The drive that I have within me is to tell urgent stories that might be very political, but in a very non-political way. I think it

Mashing up Palestine

An increasingly important funder in the world of feature-length documentaries, Al Jazeera is now making in-roads into the interactive world too. By Melanie Goodfellow

Burning talent His debut feature Those Who Feel the Fire Burning, financed by the Netherlands Film Fund through its Wildcard system, world-premiered at IDFA 2014, was selected for some 40 international film festivals (garnering numerous awards in the process) and is now up for Oscar consideration. The film is a painfully acute but highly cinematic study of the plight of refugees knocking on the door of Fortress Europe.

Lampedusa in Winter director Jakob Brossmann has been appointed ambassador of For A Thousand Lives, an initiative supported by 5,000 filmmakers (including the Dardenne brothers, Aki Kaurismäki, Mike Leigh and many other equally prominent figures). Here at the weekend ahead of a screening of his doc, Brossmann read out the appeal made in For A Thousand Lives, directed at national governments and at the EU and calling for humane and practical treatment of asylum-seekers in Europe. “The European countries must create living conditions for refugees that embrace human rights, personal freedom, dignity and physical safety without restriction, and devote the necessary means to ensure that refugees can work legally, get access to education and build a new life,” reads part of the appeal. Brossmann is calling all fellow filmmakers and festival workers to sign up, talk and write about the initiative. Geoffrey Macnab

Morgan Knibbe – photo:Ramon Mangold

is politics that really divides us. I don’t want to pretend I really know the answers to the bigger questions in life, but there are a lot of people who pretend to know, and that’s where I think a lot of them mess up and act from fear or ego or lust for power. My ambition is to look at the very important subjects that concern all of us and to try and find a way to tell a story in a universal way that unites the people, rather than divides them.” Knibbe has just returned from the AFI festival in Los Angeles where, in addition to presenting Those Who Feel the Fire Burning, he met with Hollywood execs about his proposed fiction feature debut about the ‘atomic soldiers’ who were forced to operate within the nuclear testing zones in the 1950s. “Even though they [Hollywood] are looking for daring talent, they are looking to make money as well, and you need to prove yourself in many ways,” he stressed while in LA. “I just want to do this [project]. I am going to try and get as far as I can. There are definitely risks, but that’s what makes it exciting. I want to go into fictional filmmaking because I want to take a step forward in controlling the images and sounds I want to share with people.” Nick Cunningham

The Qatar-based broadcaster has been showcasing its award-winning, multilingual interactive site Palestine Remix this week on the IDFA website. “It’s Al Jazeera’s biggest Interactive project to date,” says Al Jazeera Arabic commissioning editor Rawan Damen, who oversaw the project. “People are more and more into the web rather than TV. We have great content that a lot of youngsters are not aware of, so we wanted to find a way to get their attention. It’s something I had been thinking about for more than five years.” Created by an in-house Al Jazeera team using open source technology, the site allows users to do key word searches related to Palestine, which then throws up footage where the word is used. “The fascinating thing is that you can search any word and go directly into the documentaries to the section where it was mentioned,” explains Damen. Popular enquiries include ‘Jerusalem’, ‘Zionism’, ‘1948’ and ‘Arafat’. Users can then remix the footage to recreate a new film. “When you click on it, you automatically share the footage on a variety of social networks and then you can mix and match the extracts to create a new film.” The footage, she explains, has been drawn from Aljazeera Arabic’s monthly documentary strand Palestine in Focus, which has also been translated and broadcast on Al Jazeera English as well as its channels aimed at Turkey and the Balkans. To date, three million people visited the site and there have been more than 10,000 remixes, says Damen. The work has also won a series of awards, including Best Technical Innovation and Outstanding Digital Team of the Year at the Online Media Awards in London in June. The project has also been embraced by Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. “They did a live tweeting in Gaza last week in which 1,000 tweets were sent mentioning Palestine Remix.” Al Jazeera is also at IDFA with Patrick Reed and Michelle Shepherd’s Guantanamo’s Child: Omar Khadr, which the broadcaster helped finance.

Erratum

The photograph of Sean McAllister, Amer Daoud and Benjamin Barber in issue #2 of the IDFA Special was taken at the extended Q&A for McAllister’s film A Syrian Love Story as part of the Benjamin Barber: Jihad vs. McWorld programme in the Kleine Komedie theatre (not Democracy & Media panel).

by Sylvain Biegeleisen

a idf ws e n

Give ‘em enough rope

To boldly go

At IDFA this week, Errol Morris has not only programmed his Top 10, but has also been sharing insights about his approach to documentary.

The Fund can contribute up to €50,000 to any production in which a Dutch company has a minority stake. This funding applies to all countries although, she admits, there are reciprocal agreements already in place with countries such as Belgium and Norway. The complex futuristic animation sequences in the Danish IDFA feature-length competition title Natural Disorder were created in the Netherlands. “You have to spend 100% of Fund contribution in Holland,” Van Voorst tells international producers. “The more the Dutch can be part of the production, the more beneficial that will be to the application.” She was also eager to flag up the new Netherlands Film Production Incentive which offers cash rebates of up to 30% on Dutch production spend.

New Netherlands Film Fund documentary consultant Suzanne van Voorst yesterday underlined the funding opportunities available to international doc producers. By Nick Cunningham

By Geoffrey Macnab

One of the most fundamental of these is that, if you want to understand someone – be it a mass murderer or a prominent US politician – just give’ em enough rope and let them talk. “People fill silences in various different ways. My belief is that people, through how they speak and the words they use, reveal an enormous amount of themselves.” In the course of his filmmaking career – and even before that, when he was working as a private detective – Morris has often been startled by just what his subjects say. For example, when Morris made The Thin Blue Line (1988), a supposed eyewitness to a murder revealed to him that, actually, she hadn’t seen anything at all. “In one of my very favourite lines I’ve ever recorded, she said, ‘Everywhere I go, there are murders, even around my house.’” By listening carefully, Morris was able, eventually, to free a man from Death Row. Perhaps he will be able to do something similar on his new project, another true crime doc that he is to make for Netflix (but about which he has been sworn to secrecy until the project is launched officially). One convicted murderer whose case Morris has investigated in depth is Jeffrey MacDonald, a doctor who was charged with murdering his wife and two daughters. MacDonald has been the subject of TV movies, novels and a celebrated short book, The Journalist and the Murderer, by New York writer

Errol Morris phot0: Michiel Landeweerd

Janet Malcolm. Morris tackled this story in a 2012 book, A Wilderness of Error: The Trials of Jeffrey MacDonald. (The book has been optioned and will be made into a movie, but not by Morris himself.) “He is still very much in prison and probably will remain in prison,” Morris says of MacDonald. His own book hasn’t succeeded in overturning MacDonald’s conviction. On the weight of the evidence available, Morris argues that MacDonald “shouldn’t be in prison, period… it’s an odd, odd, odd case. I can’t prove to myself that he is innocent, but I can prove to my satisfaction that the case against him doesn’t hold water. There is really no case against him.” As a doc maker, Morris sees his role as being akin to that of the private eyes in the stories and movies he used to love as a kid. He has very different views about what constitutes truth from those held by his friend and fellow filmmaker, Werner Herzog. Ask him about Herzog’s notion of “ecstatic truth” and he responds that this is “bullshit… I sometimes say that another word for ‘ecstatic truth’ is lies.” Not that this makes Morris think any the less

continued from page 1

Twenty years ago, Pauwels continues, commissioning editors were decisionmakers who could sit at round tables and make funding decisions. Now, they have been relegated to more of an advocacy role. They make the argument to their bosses as to why docs should be supported, but no longer always control the purse strings themselves. “They have lost their powers… the people in charge, the management, are completely overlooking the knowledge and they are completely overlooking what the role of public broadcasting is.” Fraser agrees, referring to the “obligation to refer everything to central office. That has created a lack of risk-taking, and that is quite serious.” “It is getting easier in America because people can go to places like Netflix, but in Europe this enormous heritage in documentary is getting damaged. It is becoming very had to see how people in their 20s and 30s can have any kind of lucrative career – or even a sustainable career – making documentaries,” Fraser continues. BBC Storyville has faced cuts in basic funding of around 30%, but has been able to “counteract” these by finding “bits of money” elsewhere in the BBC and by doing docs not just for BBC4, but also for BBC2.

Bolshoi Babylon

The paradox is that documentary as a form is flourishing. Festivals – IDFA foremost among them – are in rude health and docs are being seen in cinemas in bigger numbers than ever before… and yet they are becoming harder and harder to finance as the level of backing from broadcasters shrinks.” Doc funding from broadcasters remains relatively robust in France and Germany, but elsewhere in Europe the situation is increasingly precarious. Slots for documentary are disappearing and money is ever less plentiful. This is one reason why EDN is organizing a special congress in Brussels in 2017 on “Media & Society: The Role of Documentary in A Fast Changing Media Landscape.”

For screenings, see the schedule in the middle of this paper

of Herzog as a director. “One of the reasons I am a filmmaker is that I’ve been incredibly influenced by him over the years… but that doesn’t mean I buy into all of his bullshit!” “You can think of him – and I often do think of him – as a recrudescence of German romanticism. It is the love of primitive people, the journey to the far ends of the earth, the interest in versions of insanity. I suppose the part of Herzog I have always responded to most strongly is a kind of existential element or an absurdist element; that the world is inherently nuts.” As a youngster going to films at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, Morris was in one of the very first American audiences to see Aguirre, Wrath of God. “There is that scene where they are going down the Amazon and someone asks what the natives are saying, and the answer is “meat!” He is very funny, he has a great love of the ridiculous and I think we share that. Maybe this is true of all filmmakers, but they are in part salesmen for themselves. They are selling a way of seeing the world or thinking about the world. That is certainly true of him, and it is probably true of me also.” “The irony is that the prestige and reach of documentary has never been higher, but the funding is in crisis,” Fraser comments. Doc makers, Fraser suggests, are sometimes victims of their own resourcefulness. “Documentary filmmakers are so good at doing something for nothing that the question of their poverty and lack of funds is not really being addressed. They are very good at putting deals together. In a way, we broadcasters have been complicit in the impoverishment of documentaries and documentary filmmakers.” Pauwels adds: “If public broadcasting goes out of the game and the politicians say, ‘Why should we give money to films no one sees?’, then the film funds will get less money and in a couple of years the whole financing model will dry up. What we want to tell the audience and the politicians is that we are not hobby filmmakers. This is a real profession.” One prominent filmmaker attending IDFA, Nick Read (director of Bolshoi Babylon), points out that “the BBC as an institution is going through massive upheaval and challenges. There is massive political pressure on it from the current government to toe a line I don’t think is consistent with the concept of public service broadcasting.” Read also warns that docs sometimes now risked “falling in the cracks” between television and cinema.

Natural Disorder

In her new role, Van Voorst is looking to up the ante in terms of high aesthetic return. “I see myself as the protector of the artistic element in Dutch documentary and I very much want to encourage and stimulate Dutch filmmakers to boldly go where no one has gone before. I am there to help them find more dynamic ways of visualising their story. That is the most important thing.” Van Voorst cites Ester Gould’s Fund-backed IDFA feature-length competition selection A Strange Love Affair with Ego. “She has found a new way of telling her story. Ostensibly the film is about the director’s sister, but she is not in the film at all, except in a few quotes. The story is told through a bunch of other people, but it still has a coherent narrative. It is a really interesting approach.”

A Strange Love Affair With Ego

The axing of the Dutch Cultural Media Fund, as of January 2017, has sent (and continues to send) waves of concern across the film community. The Media Fund currently invests €7 million in Dutch documentary, but in the future these monies will be administered by NPO, the umbrella organization of the Dutch broadcasters. How does Van Voorst assess this development? “A major concern for me is, will there be enough safeguards that the money will go to films that are not really creative documentaries at all, but maybe documentary series or reality TV, thus fulfilling the needs of the broadcasters but not necessarily the needs of the documentary makers? We’ll have to see how it goes, but I can envisage greater influence coming from within television – even more than there is now – so the role of the Netherlands Film Fund in looking to instill a cinematic vision will become even more important.” “It is the choice of the producers, of course,” she continues. “They have to choose – are we going to make this film within the confines of television, or do we want to seek other partners who want to have an artistic influence over our project? And I can imagine some producers will specifically want the Film Fund to be in there as a kind of counterweight to television.”

Our catalogue is available to screen online at www.nposales.com

NPO Sales Bart de Graaffweg 2 1217 ZL Hilversum The Netherlands T. +31356773561 info@nposales.com

Eritrea Stars > John Appel/VPRO Television Fotograaf: Bastiaan Heus

The Successor

WORLD premiere

a idf s film

Italian Mattia Epifani’s The Successor is an intimate portrait of former arms manufacturer Vito Alfieri Fontana as he lays bare his feelings about the legacy of the lucrative landmine business he inherited from his father.

Need for Meat

WORLD premiere

When director Marijn Frank had her brain scanned, it transpired that she responded more feverishly to images of meat than to images of sex. Her impulse was similar to alcoholics shown a bottle of whisky, or compulsive gamblers passing a betting shop. In her very funny but revelatory film Need for Meat, Frank tries to overcome this meat obsession by taking a job in an abattoir, before plumbing her own psychological depths during an intensive course of therapy.

“I never thought the film was going to have such a big impact on my life – I was completely a mess,” she stresses. “The therapy was pretty hardcore, and also working in a slaughterhouse I was constantly pushing my own boundaries and thinking, ‘If I can do this, what kind of person does that make me? Could I fight in a war now?’ It was much more intense than I expected it to be.” Frank is buffeted within a vortex of indecision as she witnesses her first animal slaughter and talks to committed vegetarians (eagle-eyed IDFA audiences will recognize Kees and Adie, who starred in Menna Laura Meijer’s 69: Love Sex Senior in 2013). She visits

battery chicken farms and is told that half a billion animals are slaughtered every year in the Netherlands to meet consumer demand. Nevertheless, when it comes to meat, Frank just cannot stop herself. So when sexy chef Joris comes on the scene, a man whose meat is ethically reared and lovingly prepared, her carnal desires re-surface once more – so much so that she dreams of a naked marinade massage beneath his professional hands. And the steak he cooks for her is lustily, greedily and messily consumed. “You need a little bit of lightness and humour just to digest a film about the subject,” Frank explains. “The dream sequences were important, so I could introduce a bit of fantasy and sexiness. It wasn’t all hardcore reality.” Frank is grateful to fellow Dutch filmmaker Suzanne Raes, to whom she accords co-director status. Raes’ Boudewijn de Groot – Come Closer plays at IDFA this year in Dutch Competition. “I did the research, but Suzanne came up with some very important ideas for the film, such as the therapy that put everything into the context of an addiction, but also the fantasies and the dreams,” underlines Frank. “She was always there for me when I was completely messed up, which was a lot in this film. She was a good friend, as well as my mentor.” Nick Cunningham Panorama

Life of a Butterfly Like his 2011 IDFA Student Comp doc Paparazzi, Piotr Bernas’ Life of a Butterfly, world-premiering November 23 in Mid-Length Competition, examines the life of an ostensibly boorish and brutish egoist.

Kickboxer Marcin Różalski is having an existential crisis. His career is coming to an end and he craves the crushing defeat that will hasten his retirement. Nevertheless, he is an extremely popular exponent of his art: huge, shaven-headed and tattooed, attracting enormous crowds of adoring fans (male and female) to see him break opponents. “I’m vulgar, I’m aggressive, I’m unpredictable. I’m a 200% freak,” he declaims early in the film. “This guy hates himself, but he also loves himself,” points out director Bernas. “At the same time, he wants to be hated and admired. He is completely

INTERNATIONAL premiere

between two extremes.” But as you might expect, a human heart beats beneath Różalski’s hulking exterior. He loves Marta, and is step-father to her son from a previous relationship. He is distraught on camera after a defeat in the ring and displays a touching degree of gratitude towards his girlfriend at the film’s end. “My characters have kind of lost their direction, are in the mist, not knowing where to go or what to do with their lives,” comments Bernas. “I am quite critical about the physical, masculine persona that has [developed] in the cinema,” he continues. “I want to puncture this myth, I want to destroy it. But I also want to see what real masculinity may consist of. It is not just showing your muscles or pretending to be tough. It is admitting your mistakes and making the best for your partner and family, being a grown-up person.” The film is beautifully crafted and offers sumptuous tableaux of Różalski as he trains, sweats, broods and recovers. The expressive sound design imagines his punch-drunk inner world, with snatches of muffled conversation receding like a recent dream, an insistent heartbeat and rapid breathing that whispers of defeat. “Through sound, I can make the perspective much more subjective, more distant. I like to separate the sound from the image and let them play their roles in those situations where they have most potential. Sometimes it is the sound that builds the scene for me, and sometimes it’s the image that the scene is built on. I see them as two separate entities that can co-operate and intersperse. One is never a servant to the other,” Bernas concludes. Nick Cunningham IDFA Competition for Mid-Length Documentary

For screenings, see the schedule in the middle of this paper

Epifani and producer Davide Barletti’s interest in the engineer was sparked by a newspaper article on his life. This appeared around the same time as the film commission for their home region of Apulia in Southern Italy put out a call for documentary projects about local figures from recent history. “We’re from the region, as is Vito Alfieri Fontana. We thought his story would make a good documentary and got in touch with his son, who is a journalist, who in turn connected us with his father. He was very open to the idea and was keen to tell his story,” says Epifani. The facts in the backdrop are intriguing. Born into a wealthy manufacturing family in the Southern Italian city of Bari, Fontana was destined to take over his father’s arms manufacturing business, a major producer of landmines. Wracked with doubts over the company’s activities, however, he broke ties with his family, became part of the Ottawa Treaty (or anti-personal mine ban convention process), which was ratified by 162 UN states in 1998. Epifani says he deliberately decided not to make a documentary giving a blow-by-blow account of Fontana’s struggles, or even the personal dramas in the backdrop. “We spent a long time with Vito Alfieri discussing the various aspects of his story and the best way to tell it. He was very keen to talk about his inner response to what he had lived through and we decided to focus on this rather than the external elements of his story,” says Epifani. Interviewing Fontana as he takes the ferry from Bari to Bosnia-Herzegovinia, the film intercuts the engineer’s thoughts as he ponders the bloody legacy he inherited with footage of landmine clearance teams working in Sarajevo and interviews with Nijaz Nemic, a former de-miner who lost his leg and went on to become a Paralympic skier. Chillingly, part way through the film Fontana reveals he is still fascinated by the design of the lethal mines he devoted his life to eradicating. “In a way, the film is also a metaphor for the ambiguity and dualism that can exist in one human being,” comments Epifani. Melanie Goodfellow IDFA Competition for Mid-Length Documentary

Thru You Princess

EUROPEAN premiere

YouTube fame is elusive. Just 5% of YouTube content generates 95% of the views, so while the music videos of Taylor Swift or Justin Bieber generate hundreds of millions of views, most people uploading their performances to the platform go unnoticed.

Israeli Ido Haar’s Thru You Princess charts the discovery of aspiring artist Princess Shaw, who was plucked from obscurity by music producer Kutiman in 2014 when he re-mixed one of her YouTube uploads and posted the new version to the platform. The idea for the film came to Haar after Kutiman gave him a sneak preview of his Thru You online music project, created out of samples of amateur music performance videos uploaded to the web. “I started thinking, who are these people who have no idea that their uploads are being used to create something new,” says Haar. “He showed me a song featuring Princess called Give It Up, and I was immediately intrigued by her character. As soon as I got home, I dived into her YouTube channel and tried to figure out who and where she was by listening to her uploads and her songs.” Shaw was very open in her posts. Haar figured out that she was living in New Orleans, was a care worker in an old people’s home, had had a difficult childhood and recently split from a long-time girlfriend. “I contacted her via Facebook and she agreed to meet me, but was very suspicious. She was like, ‘Who is this Israeli guy getting in contact via the internet?’ – but we very quickly felt comfortable with one another,” recounts Haar. Not mentioning Kutiman, he told Shaw he was making a film about people who upload their work to YouTube. She agreed to participate and invited him to accompany her on an open-mike night she was due to attend later that day. “I loved it. It was not a touristy part of New Orleans, but in the suburbs. It was rough but beautiful,” says Haar. He initially planned to follow other YouTubers across the globe, but as he spent more time with Shaw – doing all the filming using a discreet Sony NXR-X30 – he came to the conclusion that she should be the film’s sole subject. Back in Israel, he continued to chart Kutiman’s progress as he perfected Give It Up and got ready to launch it on YouTube, and then engineered being back in New Orleans with Shaw when the track was released and went viral. “There are so many people out there with unique voices and talents, but not necessarily born with the right cards in their hands to break into the exclusive worlds of art, culture,” says Haar. “For me, Kutiman and Princess are sort of putting up a fight in this cruel and unfair game of media, music and culture.” Melanie Goodfellow IDFA Competition for Feature-Length Documentary

RETURN OF THE ATOM

by Mika Taanila & Jussi Eerola

The construction of a nuclear reactor in the Finnish town of Eurajoki degenerates into a farce on administrative failings. IDFA 2015 / Best of Fests 19.11. / 12:45 Tuschinski 4 20.11. / 14:00 EYE Cinema 1 22.11. / 21:00 Munt 12 24.11. / 15:45 Munt 9 29.11. / 14:30 Ketelhuis Zaal 1

produced by Kinotar / Finland in co-production with Blinker Filmproduktion / Germany, YLE, WDR and ZDF in collaboration with ARTE advertisement supported by the Finnish Film Foundation

World Sales: Deckert Distribution GmbH, www.deckert-distribution.com

Bolshoi Babylon

a idf s film

Two years ago, British filmmaker Nick Read arrived at the IDFA Forum with a three-minute piece of video and a few pages of A4 notes to pitch his new project, Bolshoi Babylon. “We were very blessed because we managed to raise about 80% of our funding during the first three days of IDFA,” Read recalls.

Irrawaddy Mon Amour Irrawaddy Mon Amour revolves around a gay community living alongside Buddhist monks and locals on the banks of the Irrawaddy River in central Myanmar and its attempts to stage a gay marriage in the face of the country‘s ban on homosexuality.

Italian filmmaker Valeria Testagrossa, who co-directed the film alongside compatriots Nicola Grignani and Andrea Zambelli, discovered the village while on a tour of Southeast Asia in 2009. Unable to secure a permit to explore Myanmar’s countryside, she sneaked onto a truck carrying rice sacks as it left the city of Mandalay. A few hours later, her journey ended at a remote village on the banks of the Irrawaddy River in the heart of the country. To her surprise, she found herself in a remote gay enclave where glamorously dressed transgender men lived in harmony with Buddhist monks and local families, at a time when homosexuality was punishable by law with a minimum ten-year sentence. “I didn’t expect to see all these transgender people in the middle of rural Myanmar, but the surprise was mutual because the villagers hadn’t seen a foreigner for nearly 25 years,” recounts Testagrossa. While there, she was befriended by charismatic transgender shaman and gay rights activist Myo Nyunt, who invited her to one of his ceremonies revolving around spirits, or “nats” as

WORLD premiere

they are called in Myanmar. “After I returned to Italy, I couldn’t stop thinking about this village and knew I had to go back,” says Testagrossa. She finally returned in early 2014 with Grignani and Zambelli. The trio, who belong to the Bologna-based filmmaking collective Teleimmagini, previously worked together on the short Gaza Strip-set documentary Striplife. In the interim period, the military junta had stepped down and Myanmar was moving slowly towards democracy, although anti-homosexual laws remained in place. “We didn’t know exactly what we were going to find. I didn’t know whether Myo Nyunt was still there, how the situation had developed or if I could even find the village again... it was quite an adventure,” recounts Testagrossa. They managed to locate the village and discovered that Myo Nyunt had grown politically and was working with then opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi and fighting for LGBT rights. “Initially, we wanted to make a film focusing on him, but he told us about the plans to celebrate a gay wedding. We decided to make a choral film and went back in June 2014 to capture the preparations and the big day.” Testagrossa stresses she has not abandoned her plans to make a film focused on Myo Nyunt. “It’s called Time for Burma, but we’re still at the very early stages.” Melanie Goodfellow

The doc argues that, in the early 1970s, the Swedes decided to move away from old “out-dated family structures” and to free women from men, the elderly from their children and teenagers from their parents. In the “family of the future,” everyone would enjoy independence. Each individual was to be considered autonomous – not dependent on anyone else. The new Swedish theory of love was that all relationships should be based on complete equality. People began to live on their own, women to have babies on their own, using sperm donors and assisted reproduction. Gandini has a Swedish mother and an Italian father. He grew up in Italy before moving to live in Sweden at the age of 20. The filmmaker admits that he “had a hard time understanding how people relate to each other in Sweden.” The idea that “people should be free from each other” was very different from what he had encountered in Italy, where mutual dependence between family members was taken for granted. “I asked myself what was beyond this idea and if this is going to turn me into a lonely man, dying in an apartment, forgotten for two years,” Gandini reflects on the Swedish obsession with the self-reliant individual.

Urin may have been a Putin appointee but he wanted a new regime at the Bolshoi – one based on transparency. “We became part of that,” the filmmaker states. “He [Urin] said ‘as long as you are fair, you can come in.’” Read agreed, but also pointed out it would be impossible to avoid mentioning the acid attack. The doc was regarded by some as a real-life equivalent to Darren Aronofsky’s Oscar winner Black Swan. Read indulged such a notion, but also points out Black Swan was “entirely fictitious,” with “no basis in reality.” He wanted to make a doc that would “read the dancers’ emotions as they were performing and immediately before and after they had performed.” At first, the dancers, still reeling from the shock of one of the darkest events in the Bolshoi’s history, were suspicious of the filmmakers in their midst. However, true to his word, Urin ensured that Read had full access to every part of the Bolshoi. “We felt that we had keys to the building, almost.” “We were trying to pose the question of what makes the Bolshoi unique and how it reached a point where the acid attack could have happened. We had to go at it very gently but Mark speaks Russian fluently and won a remarkable amount of trust from these dancers.” The dancers have now seen the film. “They said it was painful to watch but it was fair and that they were glad they took part and glad it was made.” Geoffrey Macnab

Best of Fests

In Transit On one of his trips to IDFA a few years ago, legendary documentary maker Albert Maysles (who died earlier this year) spoke of a new film he intended to make about long-distance railway journeys.

IDFA Competition for Mid-Length Documentary

The Swedish Theory of Love “Everything was perfect in Sweden, people had comfortable lives, the highest standard of living,” begins the voice-over of Erik Gandini’s new feature doc, The Swedish Theory of Love.

One reason for the intense interest in events at the Bolshoi Theatre was that, in early 2013, the Bolshoi ballet’s director Sergei Filin had been attacked with acid. The incident had sparked a huge flurry of media interest worldwide. Read wasn’t a ballet fan himself (“I don’t know a pas de deux from a petit four”), but he was intrigued by the story. Read’s friend and producer Mark Franchetti, the Moscow Correspondent for The Sunday Times, had been assigned to report on the Filin case for his newspaper. He alerted Read to the fact that there might be a film in it. “It was such an unusual crime, and acid – even by the standards of the Russian underworld – is such an unusual weapon,” the director recalls. The filmmakers were already preparing the project when they heard that Pavel V. Dmitrichenko (a dancer at the Bolshoi) had been arrested for the crime. “I don’t think anyone in the [Bolshoi] building expected it to be one of their own. They really went into shock.” At that point, “the shutters” (as Read puts it) “came down.” It looked as if the doc might have to be abandoned. It was only with the appointment of Vladimir Urin as the Bolshoi’s new director that the situation changed. Read re-applied for permission to make a film. Many others were also vying to make films about the Bolshoi. “Mark [Franchetti] is extremely persuasive. We convinced them [the Bolshoi] we were the team to go with because we intended this film to be for the cinema. Everyone else was coming from a television background,” Read recalls.

So are the Swedes more unhappy than they used to be? “That’s a very tricky question,” the director muses. What can be stated without dispute is that “the level of loneliness in Sweden is high.” A recent Red Cross survey revealed that 40% of all Swedish adults are prey to loneliness. “They are ashamed about their loneliness.” Many people live on their own. It has been calculated that between 500,000 and a million people are socially isolated. The Swedes have achieved new levels of personal freedom – but at a considerable cost. “What I was interested in when making the film is the connection between this value of independence and autonomy and the type of distance I perceive very strongly between Swedish people and foreigners,” the director states. He lives in Stockholm and can’t help but notice the segregation in the city. “The centre is totally white and the suburbs are black, so to speak.” Together with his daughter, Gandini regularly visits refugee centres in the city. “The first time we went there, one of the guys there said ‘you don’t need to bring any clothes or food or money. We have absolutely everything. What they [the refugees] are really missing is human contact with Swedish people.’ That is the essence of what I am trying to explain in the film.” Geoffrey Macnab Masters

For screenings, see the schedule in the middle of this paper

He had already shot one or two sequences. These included an interview with a woman he met on a train coming out of Pittsburgh. This woman revealed that her parents had divorced when she was a kid and that she had lost touch with her mother. Now, many years later, she was headed to Philadelphia for a reunion – and she was terrified how it might turn out. “As she gets off the train, there’s a woman who comes rushing down the stairs and opens her arms,” Maysles recalled the end of the journey. “They embrace and they talk and the mother puts her head over her daughter’s shoulder and turns to me and says: ‘Isn’t she gorgeous?’” The film Maysles was planning has now finally been made. In Transit was one of the last projects he worked on. It doesn’t include the footage of the daughter but features many other equally poignant encounters. The doc was shot as a collaboration between Maysles and four other filmmakers: Lynn True, Nelson Walker, Ben Wun and David Usui. Lynn True oversaw the editing. “My partner Nelson Walker and I, who I make films with, had known Albert and his family for years on a personal level, as friends,” True recalls of how she came into Maysles’ orbit. “Albert was a fan our work. We make films in a very similar style, observational documentaries, Direct Cinema.” True and Walker had known of Maysles’ long-cherished plan to make a film on board trains. “It was very difficult for Albert to find funding for it. Originally, he wanted to make that film internationally, around the

world, but it was a very difficult film to get support for because it was quite unwieldy.” In the end, Maysles, then in his late 80s, recruited True and Walker as collaborators. They found financing from Al Jazeera America and were allowed to shoot aboard Amtrak trains. “We had four to six cameras rolling at any given time,” True explains. There were three shooting trips over the winter of 2013/2014. Maysles was on two of them.

True herself was on one of the trips. Nothing was set up in advance. The idea was that the directors would meet passengers and then tease their stories out of them. Over 400 hours was shot in all. “I was constantly pulling all the material back and doing the editing simultaneous with the shooting,” says True. Between them, the directors made a film true to Maysles’ spirit. He saw rough cuts along the way and had the opportunity to watch the final cut shortly before he died. “He did see it – and he was quite pleased with it!” Geoffrey Macnab Masters

Festival Venues

8 3

Take Buiksloterweg ferry

Festival Venues Cinemas/Theatres 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

Pathé de Munt – Vijzelstraat 15

Pathé Tuschinski – Reguliersbreestraat 26 EYE – Ijpromenade 1

De Brakke Grond – Nes 45

Melkweg – Lijnbaansgracht 234a Kleine Komedie – Amstel 56-58

Stedelijk Museum – Museumplein 10 Het Ketelhuis – Pazzanistraat 4

De Balie – Kleine-Gartmanplantsoen 10

Podium Mozaïek – Bos en Lommerweg 191

Bijlmer Parktheater – Anton de Komplein 240 Tolhuistuin – IJpromenade 2

DeLaMar Theater – Marnixstraat 402

Industry Venues

Café de Jaren – Nieuwe Doelenstraat 20-22

Festival Cafe & Restaurant/Guests Meet Guests

24 16

Hotel NH Carlton – Vijzelstraat 4, 1st Floor

Compagnietheater – Kloveniersburgwal 50

Industry Office/Guest Services/Guest Box Office

IDFA Forum/IDFAcademy 17

Docs for Sale 18

6 1

Calf & Bloom – Singel 461

IDFA Forum Kick-Off Drinks

25 15

Arti et Amicitiae – Rokin 112

Brasserie Harkema – Nes 67 IDFA Forum Lunches

S luizer – Utrechtsestraat 45 Filmmakers Dinners

21 20

NFA – Markenplein 1

IDFA Film Academy Day

Melkweg – Lijnbaansgracht 234a Awards Ceremony

IDFA Office – Frederiksplein 52

Hotels 24 25

Hotel NH City Centre – Spuistraat 288-292 Hotel NH Carlton – Vijzelstraat 4

11 7

Festivalcafé de Jaren All IDFA guests are invited to meet and exchange ideas at the daily Guests Meet Guests cocktail hour November 19 – 26 | 18:00 – 19:30 hours C afé open 09:00 – 01:00; Friday & Saturday until 02:00 R estaurant open 17:30 – 22:30 (1st floor) IDFA daily special €12.50

International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam

Program TUSCHINSKI TUSCHINSKI 1 1

Monday 23 November

TUSCHINSKI TUSCHINSKI 2 2

TUSCHINSKI TUSCHINSKI 3 3

TUSCHINSKI TUSCHINSKI 4 4

TUSCHINSKI TUSCHINSKI 5 5

TUSCHINSKI TUSCHINSKI 66

DE MUNT DE MUNT 4

DE MUNT DE MUNT 5

DE MUNT DE MUNT 9

DE MUNT DE MUNT 10 10

DE MUNT DE MUNT 11

DE MUNT DE MUNT 12 12

QUEER QUEER DAY DAY Queer Queer Day Day

9:00 9:00

10:00 10:00

Russian Russian 10:00 10:00TheThe

10:00 10:00

10:15 10:15

Woodpecker Woodpecker

TheThe Road Road

ChadChad Gracia Gracia

Zanbo Zanbo Zhang Zhang

Best ofBest Fests of, 82’ Fests, 82’

10:45 10:45

Feature-Length Feature-Length Competition Competition , 95’ , 95’

11:00 11:00

Garage Garage 2.0 2.0

Catherine Catherine van Campen van Campen

Martha Martha & Niki & Niki

11:00 11:00

Tora Tora Mårtens Mårtens

11:30 11:30

Panorama Panorama , 125’ , 125’

PaulaPaula Gomes Gomes

Frédéric Frédéric Guillaume Guillaume

First Appearance First Appearance Competition Competition , 80’ , 80’

Feature-Length Feature-Length Competition Competition , 75’ , 75’

13:00 13:00

Best ofBest Fests of, 98’ Fests, 98’

Panorama Panorama , 85’ , 85’

13:45 13:45

QingQing ZhaoZhao

Tomer Tomer Heymann Heymann

Please Please Remember Remember Me Me

14:15 14:00 14:0014:15

Credit Credit for Murder for Murder withwith Extended Extended Q&A Q&A

First Appearance First Appearance Competition Competition , 85’ , 85’

ClaraClara Peltier Peltier

BirdBird SkinSkin

Walls Walls

Karolina Karolina Bielawska Bielawska

PabloPablo Iraburu, Iraburu, Migueltxo Migueltxo Molina Molina

Aracati Aracati

AlineAline Portugal, Portugal, JuliaJulia De Simone De Simone

Land Land Grabbing Grabbing Kurt Kurt Langbein Langbein

Moein Moein Karimoddini Karimoddini Panorama Panorama , 62’ , 62’

17:30 17:30

Mid-Length Mid-Length Competition Competition , 52’ , 52’

Tell Tell Spring Spring NotNot to to 17:45 TheThe FogFog of Srebrenica of Srebrenica 17:45 Come Come ThisThis YearYear Samir Samir Mehanovic Mehanovic 3½ 3½ Minutes, Minutes, TenTen Bullets Bullets 18:00 18:00 Saeed Saeed Taji Farouky, Taji Farouky, Mid-Length Mid-Length Competition Competition , 60’ , 60’ MarcMarc SilverSilver McEvoy McEvoy Every Every FaceFace HasHas a Name a NameMikeMike Panorama, Panorama, Benjamin Benjamin BarberBarber Program Program , 98’ , 98’ Best ofBest Fests of, 82’ Fests, 82’

Magnus Magnus Gertten Gertten Best ofBest Fests of, 76’ Fests, 76’

17:30 17:30 18:00 18:00

OldOld Wives Wives

Galina Galina Krasnoborova Krasnoborova

18:30 18:30

20:15 20:15

Arlette Arlette - Courage - Courage Is a Is Muscle a Muscle Florian Florian Hoffmann Hoffmann

Student Student Competition, Competition, IDFA IDFA , 84’ , 84’ DOC UDOC Competition U Competition

20:00 20:00

MegMeg Smaker Smaker

VPRO VPRO Extra: Extra: Natural Natural Disorder Disorder

Student Student Competition Competition , 15’ , 15’

LifeLife of aof Butterfly a Butterfly

WithWith an introduction an introduction and and extended extended Q&A.Q&A. Moderator Moderator Marcia Marcia Luyten Luyten (Buitenhof). (Buitenhof).

PiotrPiotr Bernas Bernas

Mid-Length Mid-Length Competition Competition , 50’ , 50’

Natural Natural Disorder Disorder

Behemoth Behemoth LiangLiang ZhaoZhao

20:30 20:30

Masters Masters , 90’ , 90’

Afghanistan Afghanistan Night Night Stories Stories

Lampedusa in Winter in Winter 22:00 22:00Lampedusa Jakob Jakob Brossmann Brossmann Best ofBest Fests of, 93’ Fests, 93’

Panorama Panorama , 12’ , 12’

22:15 22:15

FelixFelix Röben, Röben, Ajay Ajay Koli Koli

Ina Borrmann Ina Borrmann

CoalCoal India India

Every Every 28 Days 28 Days

Student Student Competition Competition , 47’ , 47’

Panorama Panorama , 89’ , 89’

Jungle Jungle Sisters Sisters Panorama Panorama , 80’ , 80’

Guantanamo’s Guantanamo’s Child: Child: Omar Omar Khadr Khadr

Coming Coming of Age of Age

10:00

DE BALIE MELKWEG GROND BRAKKE BRAKKE GROND BRAKKE TUSCHINSKI 4GROND TUSCHINSKI 5 GROND MELKWEG TUSCHINSKI 6DE BALIE 2BRAKKE EXPOZAAL EXPOZAALRODE ZAAL RODE ZAAL RABOZAAL RABOZAAL

Woodpecker

Strung Out Strung Out

Birobidzhan

First Appearance12:00 Competition First Appearance , 110’ Competition, 110’

Panorama, 125’

Nirit Aharoni

12:00 12:00Clear Years

Frédéric Guillaume

12:15

Alexandra Kulak, Yulia Kurmangalina, Anna Kornienko

Jonas and the Backyard Circus

12:15

Paula Gomes

First Appearance Competition, 80’

Beyond My Grandfather Allende

Yun Ye

Best of Fests, 98’

14:30 14:45

Rebels

Kari Anne Moe

13:45

Panorama, 85’

Yun Ye

20:15 20:00 20:0020:15

NapolIslam NapolIslam

Ernesto Ernesto Pagano Pagano Panorama Panorama , 75’ , 75’

21:45 21:45

Next Next Stop: Stop: Utopia Utopia

22:00 22:00

Feature-Length Feature-Length Competition Competition , 91’ , 91’

Ada Ada Ushpiz Ushpiz Kristina Kristina Goolsby, Goolsby, Ashley Ashley York York

Apostolos Apostolos Karakasis Karakasis

VitaVita activa, activa, the the Spirit Spirit of Hannah of Hannah Arendt Arendt

Tig Tig

22:15 22:00 22:0022:15

Chechen Chechen

Panorama Panorama , 124’ , 124’

Best ofBest Fests of, 90’ Fests, 90’

Beata Beata Bubenets Bubenets

AfterAfter the screening the screening therethere will will be a be discussion a discussion withwith director director Ashley Ashley York.York.

First Appearance First Appearance Competition Competition , 76’ , 76’

23:00 23:00

Toomas Järvet Toomas Järvet

Panorama, 73’

First Appearance Competition First Appearance , 74’ Competition, 74’

15:30

Bird Skin

15:45

Clara Peltier

16:00 Industry Screening 16:00 Industry Screening

Walls

Panorama, 20’

Remember Remember Your 16:00 16:00 Your Name, Babylon Name, Babylon

Bernardo Ruiz

16:30

Aracati

Aline16:30 Portugal, Julia 16:30 De Simone

Pablo Iraburu, Migueltxo Molina Panorama, 83’

16:30

Panorama, 87’

Panorama, 100’

19:00

Best of Fests, 76’ Panorama, 100’

Best of Fests, 82’

Mid-Length Competition, 58’

19:30

13:00

Atlan

Moein Karimoddini Panorama, 62’

17:00

David Dawkins

First Appearance Competition, 92’

14:00

18:00

Chloe Ruthven

10:00

19:00

Table Pitch

21:00

Coming of Age Teboho Edkins

Student Competition, 63’

16:00

will be a discussion with the director.

IDFA DOC U Competition, 75’

14:00

The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution

Old Wives

Galina Krasnoborova

NPO Screening Eritrea Stars John Appel

Dutch Competition, 55’

19:00

A Boy’s DreamA Boy’s Dream 19:00

Walther Grotenhuis, Walther Grotenhuis, Cinta Forger Cinta Forger

16:00

16:30

Suzanne Raes

Boudewijn Groot - de Groot 21:00 deBoudewijn Come Closer Come Closer

22:00

First Appearance Competition, 77’

17:00

Song Room of Lahore IDFAinWriting IDFA Writing A Sinner Mecca Room

Sharmeen accreditedAndy guests. for allSchocken, accredited Wifi connection guests.and Wifi connection and ParvezWorkspace Sharma for all Workspace Obaid-Chinoy computers available. computers available. Best of Fests , 79’ Music Documentary, 82’

18:00

19:30

The Ladino Ladies’ Club

24:00

Boris Missirkov, Georgi Bogdanov

After the screening, Marc Hinfe- 19:30 Surire laar speaks with the directors Bettina Perut, Ivan Osnovikoff and other guests. Best of Fests, 80’

SOCIAL EVENTS SOCIAL EVENTS

De Jaren CaféDe – 09:00 Jaren Café – 09:00 Panorama, 80’

20:00

Best of Fests, 90’

Docs for Sale &Docs IDFAfor Forum Sale & passholders IDFA Forum passholders

After the screening there will be a discussion with director De Jaren CaféDe – 18:00 Jaren Café – 18:00 Ashley York.

Guests Meet Guests Meet Guests

Exchange ideas at Exchange the daily cocktail ideas athour! the daily Hosted cocktail by ARTE. hour! Hosted by ARTE.

1:00

De Jaren CaféDe – 22:00 Jaren Café – 22:00 IDFA Dance Night IDFA Dance Night

Let’s dance! ComeLet’s join dance! us and Come dancejoin the us night andaway dance inthe night away in Café de Jaren at IDFA’s Café de most Jaren renowned at IDFA’sDance most renowned Nights! Dance Nights!

1:001:00

International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam

MAANDAG MAANDAG MAANDAG 23 NOVEMBER 23 NOVEMBER 23 NOVEMBER

20:15

NapolIslam

Ernesto Pagano Panorama, 75’

22:15

Chechen

Beata Bubenets

First Appearance Competition, 76’

23:00

24:00

Admission freeAdmission free

1:00

Adam Sjoberg

Chemsex with industry, 19:00 documentary documentary from distribution industry, from to financing, distribution and to financing, and Extended Q&A from co-productions from toco-productions festival strategy. to festival strategy.

For all passholders For all passholders

24:00 24:00 24:00

I Am Sun Mu Panorama, 87’

, 51’ thirty showcases thirty IDFA Filmmakers IDFABreakfast Filmmakers Breakfast The DocLab: Seamless The DocLab: Reality Mid-Length exhibition SeamlessCompetition Reality showcases exhibition by meeting yourfellow day byfilmmakers meeting fellow filmmakers installations and interactive installations projects, and interactive includingprojects, experi- including experi-Kick-start your dayKick-start and IDFA staff over and coffee IDFAand staffcroissants. over coffee Hosted and croissants. by ARRI. Hosted by ARRI. ments with artificial ments intelligence with artificial and smell intelligence as a narrative and smell as a narrative 21:00 means. The selection means. includes The selection a strikingincludes numberaofstriking virtualnumber of virtual By invitation By invitation reality projects, transporting reality projects, the audience transporting to different the audience to different realities. Some installations realities. Some have installations varying opening have hours varying opening hours 21:45 21:45 Arti et Amicitiae Arti et – 17:00 Amicitiae – 17:00 (11:00–21:00). On site (11:00–21:00). reservation On may site bereservation required. may be required. Next Stop: Utopia Vita Spirit 22:00Docs for Sale Happy Docs for Hour Saleactiva, Happy the Hour Karakasis of Hannah Arendt Admission FreeAdmissionApostolos Free Hosted EYE International, by NPO Sales,Films EYE International, Transit, Autlook Films Transit, Autlook Tig Hosted by NPO Sales, 22:15 22:00 Feature-Length Competition, 91’ Ada Ushpiz Kristina Goolsby, AshleyFilmsales, York Filmsales, CAT&Docs and Rise CAT&Docs and Shine. and Rise and Shine. Panorama , 124’ Best of Enemies

23:00

18:00

Rawie answer your Rawie questions answer about yourall questions aspects of about the all aspects of the

Mid-Length Competition, 54’

Masters, 88’

Remember Your Name, Babylon

Documentary Jannie Langbroek experts Jannie and Marijke Langbroek and Marijke 19:00Documentary experts

Brakke GrondBrakke 9:00 – 23:00 Grond 9:00Reyners – 23:00 Masters , 90’ Christophe 21:00

16:00 Industry Screening Marie Brumagne, Bram Van Cauwenberghe

After the screening journalist Hassnae Bouazza talks to director Parvez Sharma about NH Carlton E-floor NH Carlton 9:0017:30 – 21:00 E-floor 9:00 – 21:00 his pilgrimage to Mecca.

Chemsex Best of Fests, 26’ Behemoth DOCLAB EXPO: DOCLAB SEAMLESS EXPO: SEAMLESS REALITY REALITY William Fairman, Liang Zhao Coups de foudre Max Gogarty

21:00

Salim Abu Jabal

15:00

First Aid Doc Clinic First Aid Doc Clinic

Ivan S. Tverdovskiy

20:00

Roshmia

Masters, 114’

NH Carlton E-floor NH Carlton 10:00 – 17:00 E-floor 10:00 – 17:00

Grumant: Island of Communism

14:00

Stanley Nelson

DAILY SERVICES DAILY SERVICES

17:00

18:00

First Appearance Competition, 110’

Panorama, 70’

14:45

A Sinner in Mecca with Extended Q&A

18:00

Nirit Aharoni

13:00

IDFA Forum passholders IDFA Forum onlypassholders only First Appearance Competition,

Panorama, Benjamin Barber Program, 94’

Strung Out

Feature-Length, Dutch & DOC U Competition, 110’

One-on-One One-on-One Industry Session: Industry Session: consultancies:consultancies: MEDIA Dangerous MEDIA Docs Dangerous Docs Telling truth to power Telling with truth as to power with as Programme with Programme with 14:15 little risk as possible. little risk as possible. Julie van Herck Julie van Herck Book your One-on-One Book your meeting One-on-One meeting Call Me Marianna For all passholders For all passholders

Table Pitch Round Table Pitch Round Table 15:15 Pitch

Morgan Neville, Robert Gordon

23:00

After the screening there will be a discussion with director Jake Witzenfeld.

12:00

11:30 Industry Screening

Dutch Competition, 70’

7 Projects will be pitched 7 Projects will be In pitched this genre specific In this pitch genre specific pitch DOC projects U in an intimate setting in anfor intimate setting session, for 7 cross-media session, projects 7 cross-media the Earth an audience of potential an audience of potential will be pitched in will an intimate be pitched inWhen an intimate 15:45 Seemsofto Be Light financiers. financiers. setting for an audience settingoffor an audience Land Grabbing Salome Machaidze, Tamuna potential financiers. IDFA Forum passholders IDFA Forum onlypassholders only potential financiers. Karumidze, David Meskhi Kurt Langbein

Dutch Competition, 75’Dutch Competition, 75’

20:00

specific questions.specific questions.

(upon registration) (upon registration) After the screening there IDFA Forum Round IDFA Forum Round IDFA Forum Cross-media IDFA Forum Cross-media

15:00