IDFA announces 55 projects selected for IDFA Forum

IDFA unveils 55 documentary projects selected for IDFA Forum 2024, from among 820 entries. The 32nd edition of the festival’s co-production and co-financing market presents a rigorous selection of films this year, featuring projects with resonant stories, daring artistic visions, and a willingness to push narrative and stylistic boundaries.

This year’s selection is dominated by women filmmakers across all formats, including the Forum Pitch, Producer Connection, Rough Cut Presentations, and IDFA DocLab Forum. Production countries span all continents, with Europe taking the lead, followed by Asia, the Americas, and Africa. IDFA Forum takes place in Amsterdam’s Felix Meritis and Pathé City from November 17 to 20.

“IDFA proudly presents a very strong selection of projects that capture the spirit of the times and reflect on our society in a critical and idiosyncratic way. It is a varied selection in terms of both theme and style, made by talented newcomers and established makers who together represent a colorful palette of voices,” said Adriek van Nieuwenhuijzen, Head of IDFA Industry.

The Forum Pitch and Producers Connection present a total of 33 projects this year. The selection includes notable filmmakers who make their return to IDFA. Aliona van der Horst, whose Gerlach (co-directed with Luuk Bouwman) snagged the IDFA Award for Best Dutch Film in 2023, is now pitching her project The Return, a tender film centering on a charismatic elderly couple in Kyiv, as they navigate questions of belonging and identity, and the significance of language in the war-torn country. Eva Mulvad, whose Love Child was pitched in 2017 and screened at IDFA in 2019, heads back to the festival to pitch her new project House of the Holy Father, co-directed with Andreas Koefoed. In an intriguing cinematic exercise that straddles fiction and documentary, the film seeks to bare intricate workings of domination and manipulation, as ex-members of the notorious Christian sect Faderhuset direct scenes with well-known Danish actors, including Trine Dyrholm and David Dencik.

After showcasing his IDFA Bertha Fund-supported film Motherland (co-directed with Hanna Badziaka) as part of IDFA Special in 2023, Alexander Mihalkovich returns to the festival to pitch Transparency Booth: Echoes of the Future, alongside Anna Kapustina. The project ushers us through ‘Perestroika’ in the ‘Transparency Booth’, an inflatable confessional that allowed for a rare moment of unhindered self-expression in the final years of the USSR—which, from today’s vantage point, offers revealing insight into history’s foresight.

A strong slate of emerging directors bolsters the line-up. Ruoyun Chen will present People’s Republic of Letters, which portrays young Chinese poets suspended between worlds and words—either residing in diaspora or contemplating it. Bircan Birol will debut her project Your Honour, training her unflinching yet compassionate lens on her close friend, Efruz, as the duo embarks on a journey amid growing authoritarianism in Turkey.

Among notable standouts is Cécile Allegra and Antarès Bassis’ The Road, produced by Estelle Robin You of Grande Ourse Films. The incisive film maps the stories of a group of men and women from the Horn of Africa and West Africa as they re-enact their displacement from Sudanese camps, deportations across the Mediterranean, and passages through Aswan’s prisons and Libya’s camps on stage. Another poignant story in the slate comes from Enrico Parenti. His project Nanyang, a production by Susanna Trojano of Elliot Films, in co-production with Signe Byrge Sørensen of Final Cut for Real, recounts the compelling story of the daughter of a prominent figure in the Chinese Communist Party, Nanyang Li, intertwining personal, political, and historical threads of Mao’s China.

The crop of projects features a range of styles, including observational and investigative films, along with small, intimate stories (such as the tender and humorous The Beauty of Errors by Jukka Kärkkäinen) and larger geopolitical narratives (such as The Eighth Continent by Luuk Bouwman and Tomas Kaan). Pressing issues of our time—one being the war in the Middle East—are front and center in several projects (such as Francesca Tosarelli and Kamal Al Azraq’s The West Bank Project). An array of projects also play with form, notably Kristof Bilsen’s The Apologist, Anu Czerwiński’s Home Movie, Yara Costa’s Looking for the Mermaid, and Ibrahim Omar’s Dry Sky, which received IDFA Bertha Fund support.

Seven projects have been selected for Rough Cut Presentations at this year’s IDFA Forum. Highlights include the IDFA Bertha Fund-supported project Do You Love Me by Lana Daher, a much anticipated archive-based film, which offers a glimpse into the inner lives of different generations in Lebanon—from the 1970s to the present—by following fictional and real characters, sourced from a range of mixed media, including Lebanese documentaries, fiction films, TV, and home videos. Drawing from various times and places, another project, The Eternal Soldier by Aleksandar Nikolic, weaves together archival footage of soldiers to conjure up a story of a timeless character who keeps rising from his grave to battle in yet another war.

Another urgent project, set in the West Bank, Issa’s House by Tomer Heymann, will join the line-up, following its pitch presentation at Forum in 2023. Among other standout projects is Between Brothers, a Dutch-Belgian co-production, by Tom Fassaert, whose A Family Affair opened IDFA in 2015. First-time director Carine Wallauer will also unveil her project Copan, a Brazilian-French-Dutch co-production, which zeroes in on the residents of an eponymous building during a condominium election.

Nigerian-New Zealand coproduction Crocodile, a creative collaboration between Pietra Brettkelly (who returns to IDFA) and The Critics artist collective, charts the tragedies and triumphs as nine kids from 21st century Nigeria fight crocodiles emerging from a world they thought would save them. Finally, Dongnan Chen‘s Whispers In May takes us on a poignant journey alongside 14-year-old Qinghua, whose first menstruation sets in motion a quest for self-discovery in the Yi ethnic traditions of Liangshan Mountain in China's southwest.

The market’s new media strand IDFA DocLab Forum presents 15 projects in various stages of development and production. The selection boasts diverse formats, including VR, theatrical live experiences, web-based games, video installations, immersive multiplayer experiences, and 3D motion capture. The line-up showcases a range of experimental and inventive projects that engage with such themes as displacement, mourning and memory, body dysmorphia, AI and deep fakes, and nature, among others. Ambitious highlights include May Abdalla’s Amorphous, which marks the third installment of Anagram’s mental health series, following Impulse (which addresses ADHD) and Goliath (which focuses on schizophrenia).

John Nathan and Damian Hale’s From Memory expands our understanding of Alzheimer’s, capturing the experiences of it from the perspective of those living with it and their loved ones. Delving into a related theme, Kate Voet and Victor Maes’ The Time of a Moment crafts a sensitive portrait of a 72-year-old pianist, Ida, living with dementia following the loss of her husband. A tonally different but no less compelling project comes Juul van der Laan. Her project, I M U, an AI film installation, employs live deepfake technology to manipulate and alter the viewer’s image, offering a meditative exploration of the self.

Running from Sunday, November 17, to Wednesday, November 20, this year’s IDFA Forum will welcome film teams, industry representatives, and observers to attend the presentations for Producers Connection, the Forum Pitch, and DocLab Forum, along with the Rough Cut Presentations.

The Rough Cut Presentations and Producers Connections are set for November 17, while the Forum Pitches and DocLab Forum presentations will take place over two days on November 18 and 19.

Alongside the Forum events, IDFA’s premier market and distribution incubator for creative documentary films, Docs for Sale, runs concurrently from Saturday, November 16, to Wednesday, November 20, at the Felix Meritis venue, in the heart of Jordaan.