IDFA Forum unveils a diverse slate of 47 projects, revises its presentation structure

IDFA has unveiled a slate of 47 outstanding projects, selected for IDFA Forum 2026 (November 15–18) from 859 entries. Following a rigorous assessment involving 42 external experts, the final lineup brings together projects in development, production, and near completion, showcased across the Forum Pitches, Roundtable Presentations, Rough Cut Presentations, and IDFA DocLab Forum (new media).  

As the documentary market becomes increasingly fragmented and harder to navigate, IDFA Forum has revised its presentation formats to help projects communicate more clearly the support they need and to foster their meaningful engagement with funders, broadcasters, producers, and other collaborators, enabling those potential partners to better understand the role they can play in supporting a film. Under the revised structure, selected projects will be showcased either to a larger audience at the Forum Pitches or in the more intimate setting of the Roundtable Presentations, allowing for more in-depth conversations. Both formats offer access to the Forum’s one-on-one meetings with industry professionals. Co-production and producer-to-producer meetings also remain central to Forum, with producers now invited to meet with selected projects in search of co-production partners. 

“Despite the challenges of the market, both in terms of finance and distribution, we strongly believe that IDFA Forum should provide space for filmmakers who approach their craft with courage and curiosity,” says Adriek van Nieuwenhuijzen, Head of IDFA Industry. “We champion works that surprise, reveal, and embrace complexity, and we hope to see all of these projects find audiences, whether on screens, big or small, via headsets, or in immersive installations.” 

Welcoming emerging talent and some of today’s most recognized documentary filmmakers, this year’s lineup features new works by Wang Bing (Jiabiangou), Vitaly Mansky (Odesa.Mama), Rachel Leah Jones (Podium (You Have Three Minutes)), and Liang Zhao (Ship of Fools). The selection presents a mix of up-and-coming producers and production companies, alongside established players such as zero one film (Fur, dir. Joakim Demmer), Pieter van Huystee Film (The Night I Return, dir. Ehsan Fardjadniya), Aamu Film Company (This Body Is My Final Address, dir. August Joensalo), Sidsel Lønvig Siersted (My Rebel Heart, dir. Ida Kat Balslev), and Ina Fichman (This Version of Me, dir. Gabrielle Zilkha).  

Spanning five continents, the selection features projects from Paraguay, Tunisia, Myanmar, Kyrgyzstan, Namibia, and Palestine, among others, reflecting a broad range of geographies, production contexts, and perspectives. Europe maintains a strong presence in the lineup, comprising major documentary markets (France) and smaller producing nations (Greece, Hungary). Gender balance has been achieved across all the formats, with a commitment to wider diversity beyond parity alone.   

29 projects have been selected for the Forum Pitches and Roundtable Presentations. A number of films in the line-up address the urgencies of our time. Mehran Tamadon’s One Step Closer grapples with the consequences of polarization in a French rural community, while Andrew H. Brown’s Wild Goose Days lenses the Indigenous KYUK radio station in Alaska, threatened by government policies. War takes center stage in Roman Bondarchuk and Vadym Ilkov’s mosaic-style Recovery, which reframes Ukraine’s reconstruction as resistance. Political upheaval is also at the centre of Lay Thida’s observational Sisters in War (one of the IDFA Bertha Fund-supported projects in the selection) in the wake of the 2021 coup in Myanmar. Archival filmmaking is present in the selection, with Juanjo Pereira’s (Under the Flag, the Sun, IDFA 2025) Examination, which draws on declassified materials and their reinterpretations to reveal power systems taming a land and jaguars. Meanwhile, Christina D. Bartson’s The Contract of the Century reckons with the legacies of colonialism, zeroing in on the energy megaproject, the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline. 

Six projects have been selected for this year’s Rough Cut Presentations. Featuring 20-minute excerpts, the presentations offer the buyers, festival representatives, and funders attending both IDFA Forum and Docs for Sale an early look at projects nearing completion. Vikram Singh’s Camels of the Sea offers a distinct take on climate change and endangered ways of living as illegal salt pans threaten India’s rare swimming camels. Facts join fantasy in Josefina Buschmann Mardones’ Artificial Clouds, an AI’s absorbing travelogue through Chile, tracing its ecological footprint. Finally, Nikos Pilos and Arsinoi Pilou’s Resisting Residents embeds us in an Athens squatted community, capturing solidarity as a lived practice.

The market’s new media strand, IDFA DocLab Forum, presents twelve projects, boasting diverse formats, from an immersive installation to VR, XR, mixed reality, a participatory performance, and an interactive documentary. The projects engage with such resonant themes as digital labor, bodily memory, virtual violence, and collective participation in democracies. Katja Verheul’s Mine Land looks at the remnants of war still unearthed in a Bosnian forest 31 years on. Hyeunjoo Woo and Jiyun Park’s How to Make a Chiffon Cake proposes an intriguing scenario, turning a woman’s invisible domestic work into AI training data. Mark Mushiva and Daniel Chein’s Time Hunter XR: Colonial Protocols also appropriates tech tools for resistance, conjuring a speculative decolonial mission in 1912 Namibia.

IDFA Forum takes place on November 15–18, opening with the Rough Cut Presentations on November 15 at Pathé City, followed by IDFA DocLab Forum on November 16 at De Balie. The Forum Pitches take place on November 16–17 at the larger DeLaMar Theater, allowing more attendees to participate, while the Roundtable Presentations are held on the same dates at De Balie. 

Docs for Sale runs concurrently on November 14–18. 

The deadline to apply for IDFA Forum accreditation is October 10.

[Film still: Artificial Clouds by Josefina Buschmann Mardones]