Five IDFA-supported films in the Berlinale
IDFA is proud to share that five IDFA-supported films are set to premiere at the 74th edition of the Berlinale—running from February 15 to 25, 2024. The selection includes films previously supported by the IDFA Bertha Fund or IDFA Forum, by filmmakers with IDFA histories, including Inadelso Cossa and Lola Arias presenting their latest projects, alongside debut features by filmmakers such as Nelson Makengo.
Panorama Dokumente
Three IDFA Bertha Fund-backed titles screen in the Panorama Dokumente selection, dedicated to unconventional cinema. Director Nelson Makengo, whose short film Up at Night won the IDFA Award for Best Short Film in 2019, presents debut feature Tongo Saa—a subtle and fragmented portrait of a population that, despite its challenges, is sublimated by the beauty of Kinshasa's nights. The film received IDFA Bertha Fund support in 2020 and 2021, IBF Classic and IBF Europe minority co-production support grants respectively.
Following pitching at IDFA Forum 2020 and receiving IDFA Bertha Fund support in 2020, Farahnaz Sharifi presents My Stolen Planet. The film follows Farah, an Iranian woman, who buys other people’s memories in the form of Super 8 films to create an alternative history of Iran.
Filmmakers collective Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham, and Rachel Szor are set to world premiere their debut film No Other Land in Panorama Dokumente. This film made by a Palestinian-Israeli collective shows the destruction of the West Bank’s Masafer Yatta by Israeli authorities and the unlikely alliance which develops between the Palestinian activist Basel and Israeli journalist Yuval. The film received IBF Classic support in 2021 and IBF Europe minority co-production support in 2022.
Forum
Two titles are set to show in the Forum section, IDFA-supported filmmakers include Inadelso Cossa, whose IBF-supported film A Memory in Three Acts premiered at IDFA in 2016. In latest film The Night Still Smells of Gunpowder, Cossa visits his grandparents’ village in Mozambique, where he grew up during the civil war, and shines a careful light into the darkness of the past. The film was supported twice by the IDFA Bertha Fund in 2018 and 2021 for development and production, respectively.
Lola Arias joins the Forum lineup with Reas, after receiving IBF Classic support in 2019. The filmmaker’s previously-supported Theater of War had its Dutch premiere at IDFA in 2018 and shown as part of Focus Program Playing Reality at IDFA 2022. In Arias’s latest project, women re-enact their lives in a Buenos Aires prison, in trance and balance, voguing and singing. A hybrid musical and charming piece of collective empowerment.
Still: No Other Land, dir. Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor
