Docs for Sale during IDFA

Our daily Happy Hours are the premier networking event at the markets, offering a great opportunity to connect with professionals informally. Happy Hours are open to all guests of IDFA Forum and Docs for Sale.

IDFA's Industry Program offers an extensive array of services, sessions, talks, and meetups to inspire our professional festival guests and to keep them up to date on the latest developments in the documentary industry. Refer to the accreditation page to review access rights.

Every day, IDFA invites its guests for plenty of networking opportunities, including the Guests Meet Guests cocktail. More information about our social events will be made available closer to the festival. Refer to the accreditation page to review access rights.

Passholders have access to the Docs for Sale lounge, an exclusive networking space for Docs for Sale accredited guests.

All Docs for Sale passholders have access to the IDFA Guest List. There, you can filter on attending professionals, for instance, by profession or accreditation type.

In October, the Docs for Sale team holds an online introduction meeting for all first-timers at the market. The session is designed for Docs for Sale Participant passholders with a film in the catalogue. To sign up, please email docsforsale@idfa.nl and we will follow up with Zoom details.

Be sure to check out our guide for first-timers at Docs for Sale as well, which includes helpful tips to do before, during, and after the festival, and some seasoned advice from Docs for Sale regulars.

If you are new to Docs for Sale and need some help finding your way around, matchmakers are available at the Docs for Sale Lounge during the market.

In collaboration with the Industry Talks department, Docs for Sale offers Participant PLUS passholders significant opportunities to network, do business, and gain industry knowledge through a series of consultations and group meetings.

The program will open in October. 

For more access to the festival, participants can be offered a Docs for Sale Participant PLUS pass. Visit our accreditations page for an overview of the various rights tiers and to find out which pass is right for you.

Docs for Sale offers a limited number of videotheque-style screening booths where Acquisition passholders come to peruse the annual catalogue of approximately 300 titles, including many that premiere at IDFA. Viewing booths can be booked on site for a maximum of three consecutive hours and are exclusively available to Docs for Sale Acquisition passholders.

Every year, the Docs for Sale Catalogue presents a leading showcase of the most recent documentary films, series, and shorts seeking distribution and exhibition opportunities. The Catalogue includes roughly 300 titles and comprises IDFA-selected films, sales agent offers, and market-ready titles selected by the Docs for Sale team. Acquisition passholders also have access to the Catalogue year-round through an online viewing subscription.

The full 2025 catalogue will be published on our website November 1 and can be accessed by Acquisition passholders by logging into your MyIDFA account. Once you are logged in, you can keep track of the titles you have watched in the ‘Professionals’ space.

In the Rough Cut Presentations, approximately six teams showcase their rough cuts by introducing a twenty-minute excerpt of their films. Following the Rough Cut Presentations, the full rough cut files will be available online for a limited amount of time. The Rough Cut Presentation program is a co-presentation between Docs for Sale and IDFA Forum.

The selected rough cut projects will be announced October 2. If you are interested in meeting with a rough cut project, please email docsforsale@idfa.nl and we will follow up with more info. See last year’s rough cut selection here.

The Rough Cut Presentations are open to all Forum passholders and Docs for Sale Acquisition passholders.

For more access to the festival, participants can be offered a Docs for Sale Acquisition PLUS pass. Visit our accreditations page for an overview of the various rights tiers and to find out which pass is right for you.

If your film is selected for Docs for Sale 2025, it will be included in the online catalogue where it will be available to potential buyers in a secure, password-protected environment for one year. During the festival, Docs for Sale hosts a limited number of screening booths where professionals attending the festival in person can watch the film in the Docs for Sale hub. Films selected for IDFA 2025 are automatically eligible for inclusion in the 2025 catalogue.

The applicant will:

• guarantee to have secured clearance from the copyright holders of any copyrighted materials included in the entered film and any photographs entered relating to the film for all purposes for which the material will be used, including screening, promotion during the IDFA festival, press publications, and inclusion in the online IDFA Collection, among other purposes. 
• guarantee to hold IDFA harmless from any claims from copyright holders in relation to use of the entered film by IDFA for the agreed purposes. 

IDFA reserves the right to disqualify any film with unauthorized inclusion of copyrighted materials.

All entries are submitted to a selection procedure.

• Only creative documentaries completed after September 1, 2024 are eligible for Docs for Sale 2025.
• Films must be complete at the time of entry.
• Only English versions will be included in Docs for Sale: either English voice-over and/or English dialogue, or in the original version with English subtitles.

• Innovative and creatives documentaries suitable for theatrical release, festival entry, television broadcast, streaming platforms, and more are eligible to apply.

All documentaries selected for the IDFA festival (finished after September 1, 2024) are invited to be included in Docs for Sale and will need to fill in a short Docs for Sale form.

Docs for Sale welcomes a wide range of documentary formats, including journalistic or topic-driven television documentary, formatted aesthetics, and more.

When considering your finished film for Docs for Sale entry, keep in mind that the film should fulfill one or more of the following criteria:

• The film must be technically good, and the form should fit the subject.
• The film will be relevant for the type of professionals that use Docs for Sale, that is: festivals, including those with niche mandates, broadcast and platform buyers catering to very wide as well as to niche audiences, sales agents, distributors, etc.
• The film has international appeal and can speak to different territories and audiences.
• The film is innovative, rethinking formats, presenting new ways to tell wide appeal stories.

Please note that the following films do not meet the Docs for Sale criteria:

• Genres such as nature documentaries, travelogues, and corporate and informational films are not eligible for selection.
• While the topic of a film does not have to precisely address inclusion as a topic, it should never propagate discrimination.

IDFA reserves the right to accept or reject an entry. Unfortunately, due to the high volume of submissions, Docs for Sale cannot give personal feedback on films.

Selection team is comprised of the IDFA programming team at large as well as dedicated Docs for Sale programmers.

In order to enter a documentary to Docs for Sale we need a complete entry, which consists of the following:

• A completely filled out and submitted entry form.

• A downloadable preview link of your film (preferably a password-protected Vimeo link), provided in the entry form.
• The file of your completed film provided through the upload link you will receive shortly after submitting the entry form (once you submit the entry form you will receive an email about how to submit the file). Please follow Vimeo's compression guidelines. For films which are not spoken in English, please encode your video using hardcoded English subtitles.
• Film stills (landscape orientation, with no graphic elements, JPG/JPEG, high resolution, at least 300 DPI or 3 MB)

Pricing for Docs for Sale in 2025 is as follows. Fees will only be charged for documentaries selected for Docs for Sale.

• Film in Docs for Sale: €210 (excl. 21% VAT)*
• Short film in Docs for Sale: €105 (excl. 21% VAT)*
• IDFA-selected film in Docs for Sale: €80 (excl. 21% VAT)
• Films presented at IDFA Forum: Free of charge

• Films supported by the IDFA Bertha Fund: Free of charge
• Films that participated in IDFA Project Space: Free of charge

*A 20 % fee waiver is available for films where the main producer is from and living in a country on the IDFA Bertha Fund Country List.

You can enter multiple versions of your documentary for an additional fee. This could include, for instance, a TV version of your feature-length film or an additional episode of your series.

• If selected for Docs for Sale, €27 (excl. 21% VAT) will be added to your invoice per additional version
• A maximum of two additional versions can be accepted

As soon as your film has been selected for Docs for Sale you will receive an invoice with instructions on how to pay by credit card through a secure internet site. We cannot guarantee your participation until we have received your payment.