Selecting films for the 2025 festival

Film entries are considered for IDFA’s competitions, Luminous, Frontlight, Youth Program, Signed, Best of Fests, and Paradocs. Films can also be actively scouted for these sections, which is handled by the program team in collaboration with regionally based associate programmers. In all cases, the films undergo an extensive selection process that starts with all filmmakers sending in an entry form.

The entire selection process is overseen by IDFA’s Artistic Director.

Programmers María Campaña Ramia, Joost Daamen, Sarah Dawson, and Laura van Halsema collaboratively work on the selections for the International Competition, Envision Competition, Luminous, and Frontlight. For these sections, the four programmers each work with their own team of program advisors to put forward a shortlist of films. Once the films are shortlisted, the programmers collectively curate the selection for the two main competitions, Luminous, and Frontlight.

For short films, programmer Jasper Hokken and associate programmer Makiko Wakai work together to make a selection for the IDFA Competition for Short Documentary. Jasper and Makiko also select the short films for Best of Fests, Signed, Luminous, and Frontlight.

Programmer Joost Daamen is responsible for selecting films for the Paradocs section, taking input from the programmers and program advisors of the other sections.

All programmers are involved in selecting the films for the program sections Best of Fests and Signed, which together make up the bulk of the festival selection.

Filmmaker Niki Padidar, the director of IDFA's opening film All You See in 2022, will continue to lead the selection for the Youth Program this year. In 2023, Niki published a statement on youth documentary film programming on how we should take younger audiences more seriously in IDFA’s publication: Notes on a Festival 2023.

Finally, entered films are sometimes also considered for IDFA’s thematic Focus Programs. These sections are curated by IDFA’s programmers and include both new and historical films.

María Campaña Ramia is an Ecuadorian film curator based in Rio de Janeiro. She holds an MA degree in Documentary Filmmaking from the University of Strasbourg. As a programmer, she has worked for MajorDocs (Spain), Ambulante (Mexico) and Encuentros del Otro Cine - EDOC (Ecuador), where she served as Artistic Director for ten years. María has organized festivals and showcases in Ecuador, Brazil, Colombia, and the United States. She writes for international journals and film publications and collaborates with funds and institutions evaluating projects.

Joost Daamen is a senior programmer at IDFA. He holds an MA degree in Film Studies from the University of Amsterdam. Since 2005, he has been working for IDFA’s program department. Over the years, he has contributed to and programmed the main (non-)competition programs and Paradocs program, and he has (co-)curated focus programs.

Sarah Dawson is a programmer and festival organizer from South Africa, where she began her career lecturing and writing about film and presenting grassroots film exhibition programs to nurture a local culture of film appreciation. She has gone on to contribute to festival programs, including Durban International Film Festival, where she served as festival manager, as well as Africa in Motion, Sheffield Doc/Fest, London Short Film Festival, and IDFA. She has an MA in Film Studies from the University of KwaZulu-Natal.

Laura van Halsema has an MA degree in American Studies from the University of Amsterdam. She has been working for IDFA since 2002, where for many years she developed and curated focus programs on several elements of documentary film art. The focuses ranged from the purely artistic aspects of filmmaking to investigations of complex questions relating to individualism, global politics, the role of media, and democracy. As senior programmer, she is part of the selection committee of the main competitions and responsible for the focus programs and talks program.

Jasper Hokken is a programmer at IDFA, where he is responsible for IDFA’s Short Documentary Competition and the short film selections for Best of Fests, Signed, Frontlight, and Luminous. Between 2019-2024 he curated the IDFA on Stage program, which presented unique live events that explored the space between documentary cinema, new media, and performing arts. Before that he worked on IDFA’s Music Documentary program and concert series in collaboration with the Melkweg music venue. He holds an MA degree in Preservation and Presentation of the Moving Image from the University of Amsterdam.

Wakai Makiko is New Asian Currents program coordinator of the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival (YIDFF), that aims to showcase and bring together emerging filmmakers from across the region. She is programmer, feminist, activist, filmmaker and beer-enthusiast based in Tokyo.

Filmmaker Niki Padidar is leading the selection for the Youth Program again this year. Niki studied photography at the New School University in New York, did an orientation year at the Gerrit Rietveld art academy and got her master's at the University of Amsterdam, specializing in youth & media and representation. Ever since she has written and directed many stories for children, teens, and twenty-somethings on everything from the pressure to comply in groups, to sexual education, to an egg escaping his egg carton in search of a better life. Niki's youth film Ninnoc won 7 international prizes, including at IDFA and Berlinale. She prefers working with children and teens because they are funny, brutally honest and won't let you get away with bells and whistles.

Camilla Baier is a German/Brazilian film programmer, curator, and researcher based in Edinburgh. She holds an MSc in Film, Exhibition and Curation, and has worked across film and contemporary art in the UK and Mexico since 2012. She is the co-founder of feminist film collective Invisible Women, which champions the work of women and marginalised filmmakers through exhibition, research, and editorial projects. With Invisible Women, she has staged events for organisations including BFI Southbank, Sheffield DocFest and CineTonalá, worked as an archive producer for documentaries, and contributed a chapter to Stretching the Archives: Toward a Global Women’s Film Heritage. As an independent programmer, she has curated programmes for the Goethe-Institut and the inaugural edition of SXSW London, among others. She also advises on festival strategy for new releases and writes about film and moving image culture for a variety of outlets.

Ela Bittencourt writes regularly about art and the moving image for publications such as Artforum, Frieze, Film Comment, Hyperallergic, and Sight & Sound. She's served on numerous festivals and work-in-progress juries, contributed to festival catalogues, and mentored in critics academies, most recently at Porto/Post/Doc, in 2023. In the past, she also presented documentary, experimental film and video art, at the True / False Film Festival, São Paulo International Film Festival, CineSesc, Instituto Moreira Salles, and the Museum of the Moving Image. In addition to IDFA, she advises for Venice Days. She holds an MFA in writing and an MA in arts management, both from Columbia University, New York.

Kees Brienen is a film programmer, curator, and teacher. Digital moving images and their consequences for our visual language have been the subject of his experimental film programming, exploring various disciplines of art and their relationship with cinema. Over the years he has curated many (special) programs for cinemas, television, museums, and festivals such as IDFA, IFFR, Movies that Matter, Pluk de Nacht, Los Cabos IFF and Cinema Planeta in Mexico. Since 2000, he has been a member of IDFA’s selection committee.

Inadelso Cossa is a film director, producer and DOP, member of the (AMPAS) Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science. His first feature-length documentary A Memory in Three Acts made a world premiere at the festival IDFA - International Documentary Festival in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Inadelso was invited as a jury at IDFA 2018 and Doc Sheffield 2018. His second feature film The Nights Still Smell of Gunpowder made a world premiere at Berlinale Forum 2024 and international premiere at CPH: DOX 2024. The film won the Special Jury Prize at Olhar de Cinema – Curitiba International Film Festival 2024, Special Mention at Lima Alterna International Film Festival and Porto Post Doc, Jury Prize at Doc Lisboa International Film Festival 2024.

Hawa Essuman is a film director based in Nairobi, Kenya. Her 2017 feature-length documentary Silas, co-directed with Anjali Neyar, tells the story of Liberian environmental activist Silas Siakor's fight to preserve the country's rainforests from commercial logging. The film won multiple awards, including the Amnesty International Durban Human Rights Award (2018) and the Audience Award for best documentary at the RiverRun International Film Festival (2018). Hawa's first feature film, Soul Boy (2010), also received a series of awards. In addition, Hawa has produced a range of TV programs, commercial films, music videos, and adverts.

Film curator and critic Katarina Hedrén has worked as a curator, co-programmer, and moderator for film festivals and events worldwide, including the European Film Festival in South Africa, Berlinale, Addis Ababa African Film Week, Film Africa UK, Göteborg Film Festival, and FESPACO. She regularly serves as a consultant, advisor, mentor, speaker, and moderator for film festivals, markets, funds, and other industry events across the globe.

Luna Hupperetz is a film curator and PhD researcher at the University of Amsterdam, specialising in critical audiovisual heritage. Her research explores activist documentary cinema, audiovisual re-use practices, and collaborative film archival methodologies. As a curator, she researches and distributes the recently restored anti-colonial film Oema foe Sranan (Women of Suriname, 1978). Following this restoration, she co-produced and co-directed the short film A Battle Restored (2022). Currently, her work focuses on the digitized 16mm materials from the unfinished Unknown Suriname trilogy (Cineclub Vrijheidsfilms, 1973-1978) and the cinematic works of post-independence Surinamese filmmakers. In 2024, she curated a retrospective on militant Cuban filmmaker Sara Gómez for IDFA’s Spotlight on Cuba.

Since 2013, Wood Lin has served as the program director of the Taiwan International Documentary Festival (TIDF), and since 2020, as the program advisor of the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam (IDFA). Additionally, he supervises the research and program division at the Taiwan Film and Audiovisual Institute, overseeing responsibilities such as research, publication, film programs, and TIDF. He is also the editor-in-chief of "FILM APPRECIATION," the magazine and he has been honored with the prestigious Golden Tripod Award. The program he curated, "Imaging the Avant-Garde: Taiwan's Film Experiments of the 1960s," has been featured at various international film festivals and institutions. Wood Lin has also served as a juror for esteemed film festivals, including the International Film Festival Rotterdam, Ji.hlava IDFF, Sheffield IDFF, ONE WORLD, RIDM, and more.

Myriam Mouflih is a curator and writer based in Glasgow, working across film and contemporary visual art. Myriam currently is a programmer at Berwick Film and Media Arts Festival and has programmed for festivals like London Film Festival and Africa in Motion Film Festival and organisations such as South London Gallery, Pavilion (Leeds) and The Mosaic Rooms.

Paramita Nath is an independent nonfiction filmmaker. She works in both traditional and emerging platforms, experimenting with new approaches to storytelling. Her works have been described as “visually remarkable” (Huffington Post) “like a poem… a cinematic gem” and travelled to festivals around the world. In 2019, Paramita made her debut as stage director for a multimedia opera double-bill production featuring two works by acclaimed Japanese composer Toshio Hosokawa at the University of Toronto New Music Festival. Born and raised in India, Paramita has lived in Canada (1996-2016), New York (2016-2023) and recently moved to the Netherlands. She brings into her art practice a diverse lived experience and understanding of the socio-political complexities of our times, and intricate questions of belonging and unbelonging.

Belgrade-born and Zagreb-based Vladan Petkovic is a film journalist, critic and festival programmer. His programming experience includes ZagrebDox, Rab Film Festival, Eastern Neighbours Film Festival, Cinema City Novi Sad, FeKK Ljubljana, Kratkofil Banjaluka, and Belgrade Short & Documentary Film Festival. He is also the industry talks editor at IDFA, a correspondent for Screen International, senior writer for Cineuropa, film critic for Documentary Magazine, and head of studies of the GoCritic! training program for emerging film critics.

A graduate of Anthropology (1997) and Urban Arts studies (2020), Lulu Ratna is an Indonesian short film activist based in Jakarta who programs, promotes, and distributes Indonesian short films. She has been working as a film festival organizer since 1999 and now is a lecturer on film festival management with an annual student film festival UCIFEST - UMN Animation & Film Festival as her students' practice.

Céline Roustan is a film curator, with almost a decade of experience. Senior programmer at the website Short of the Week, she also programs short films at the Palm Springs ShortFest and SXSW where she also programs features. She has previously programmed for the Dublin International Film Festival, SFFILM, and currently contributes to the programs of the Cannes Official Short Film Competition, TIFF ShortCuts, Aspen ShortsFest.

Berry Schneider is an Amsterdam-based film and film festival freelancer, working primarily in production, research and writing. He co-founded and was editor of a now-defunct cultural newsletter, and has worked at IDFA in different capacities since 2019.

Ana Siqueira is a Brazilian film curator, translator and researcher. Head of program at FestCurtasBH - Belo Horizonte International Short Film Festival (2013-14 and since 2017), she was previously a programmer at Cine Humberto Mauro film theater and other Brazilian film festivals, such as forumdoc.bh and Mostra Tiradentes. As a PhD researcher at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG - Brazil), she explores linguistic differences within films, discussing notions such as colonialism, equivocation, opacity and hospitality. She has been a program advisor for IDFA since 2022.

Jelte Zonneveld graduated with a specialization in documentary research and development from the MA in Film Studies at the University of Amsterdam. Since then, he has worked as a (freelance) editor/researcher, programmer, and (impact) producer for various documentary projects. At IDFA he worked as a producer of the Industry program and as an editor for the Doc Talks program; since 2017 he has been a program advisor. He currently works as an independent producer and creative producer at mint film office in Rotterdam.