IDFA Project Space: from short to feature

Premiering a short film is often seen as a breakthrough. Making a first feature, however, is a very different proposition. It asks filmmakers to navigate a longer, more uncertain creative process—one that demands patience, persistence, and a willingness to let a film evolve in unexpected ways. 

For Pat Heywood and Jamil McGinnis, Silvana Alarcón Sánchez, and Ben Donateo, that journey has brought them back to Amsterdam. After presenting short films at IDFA in previous years, they returned this summer IDFA Project Space, IDFA’s talent program, to develop their first feature documentaries, discovering that the next step is less a continuation than an entirely new creative challenge. 

While their projects differ greatly in subject, style, and geography, they share many of the same questions. How do you sustain a project over years rather than months? How do you stay faithful to your original vision while allowing a film to evolve? And how do you keep going when funding is uncertain and the finish line remains out of sight? 

Over the course of the week-long program, held from June 29 to July 4 at Het Documentaire Paviljoen in Amsterdam, they joined sixteen international filmmaking teams for edit sessions, one-on-one mentorship, screenings, discussions, and Filmmaker Talks with acclaimed editors, directors, and producers. 

For Heywood and McGinnis, whose short 'Gramercy' won the 2021 Labo Competition Grand Prix at the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival, the biggest adjustment has been learning that a feature demands a different relationship to a project’s timeline. Their first feature, 'Waking Up in a Dream' (rough cut), has now been in the works for five years. 

Unlike their earlier work, which was tighter in scope, the feature has required a more expansive approach and a willingness to adapt to its shifting needs. McGinnis describes the process as developing an "endurance muscle": the sustained commitment needed to navigate uncertainty and an ever-growing body of material. For Heywood, whose deeply personal short Tough Love premiered at IDFA in 2024, the feature became "a stable canvas" he kept returning to as his own life changed. At the same time, it continually challenged him to question his relationship to a project that was evolving alongside him.  

Alarcón Sánchez recognizes that sense of endurance. Her short Unwritten Letter, which premiered at IDFA in 2024, explored absence through an unfinished love story. Her debut feature (rough cut) extends such themes into her own family, following three women who share a fragile relationship with sight. Developing the film has meant years of writing, rewriting, filming, and reshaping the material—often alone, while balancing other work and limited resources. The project's deeply personal nature has only added to that challenge.  

Donateo, who premiered his short Burnt. Land of Fire, at IDFA in 2020, faces another reality familiar to many first-time feature directors. His hybrid documentary The Slaughter combines documentary realism with dreamlike elements, but its unconventional form has made financing more difficult. “As a first feature, some people already see it as a risk," he explains. Without an established body of feature work, funders often hesitate. Meanwhile, the long development process creates another kind of pressure. "Sometimes it's hard to even arrive at the production stage," he says, while feeling an increasing urgency to keep filming before the lives of his protagonists inevitably change.  

Although each filmmaker faces different obstacles, all three describe feature filmmaking as an exercise in patience: learning to embrace uncertainty while holding onto the heart of the project. It also explains why a program like IDFA Project Space can make such a difference. 
 
For Heywood and McGinnis, who come from what they describe as the United States' "highly industrialized" film system—where filmmaking is often treated as "a resource-intensive art form"—programs like this create room for a different way of thinking. Rather than encouraging films to fit established formats, they have found a greater openness to experimentation within the European documentary landscape. That freedom has shaped the hybrid form of 'Waking Up in a Dream'. Rather than separating documentary and fiction, the filmmakers have explored, in McGinnis' words, "everything documentary can be," weaving narrative elements that emerged from their documentary practice into "a collection of documentary encounters" across Brooklyn, where memory and imagination continually dissolve into one another. 

After years of living inside their films, all three filmmakers describe the value of fresh eyes. 
 
For Heywood and McGinnis, one of the greatest strengths of IDFA Project Space lies in opening the work up to people who haven't been immersed in it from the beginning. Beyond their intensive sessions with editor Ollie Huddleston, they found themselves constantly exchanging ideas with fellow participants and mentors throughout the week. "As artists, we have such an intimate relationship with our work that only close collaborators might see it at this vulnerable stage," says Heywood. "Here, you're pushed into the sea to share with others what you've been stewing on for years. It's difficult to be that honest and vulnerable, but that's also the space where the best film emerges." 

McGinnis agrees. Hearing what resonates with others—and what doesn't—helped them return to the core of the film. The goal, he says, is "not to turn it into a perfect object but to be with the project in whatever way it needs." The conversations gave the project "a new charge," shifting not only how they see the film themselves, but also how audiences might connect with it.  

For Alarcón Sánchez, that outside perspective was equally important. As the film's director, editor, and one of its protagonists, she knows the material almost too well. "I am the director, editor, and one of the protagonists. I am inside the material [in every possible way], so having an external point of view is important." Working closely with tutor Qutaiba Barhamji helped her identify a clearer structure for the film, allowing her to later focus on what she hopes will ultimately define its cinematic language that can sustain an 80-minute feature while remaining, in her words, "tender."  

Donateo experienced something similar. Conversations with director and tutor Tala Hadid returned repeatedly to the heart of the story. "The time to dig into various aspects of the film," as he describes it, became one of the week's greatest strengths. Just as valuable was finding a mentor whose cinematic sensibility closely aligned with the project's ambitions. That shared understanding led to what he calls a "healthy" mentorship, one that he hopes will continue beyond the program itself.  

Just as important as the formal mentorship was the space the program created around it. 

Throughout the week, conversations continued over shared meals, after screenings, and between edit sessions. For Heywood, that interplay between inspiration and practice came to define the rhythm of the program. "Experiencing the film, sleeping on it, hearing the filmmaker [Tala Hadid] talk about it and her positionality, and then going into our own editing session created a flow I would never have curated myself." 

Rather than separating inspiration, reflection, and practice, IDFA Project Space allows them to feed directly into one another.  

For Alarcón Sánchez, the value of that environment was also deeply personal. "We all want to improve our projects and make the films happen, whether we have money or not, whether the story is big or small. That makes me feel less alone because this job can be very lonely." 

Making documentaries often means working in isolation for years at a time. Spending a week among filmmakers navigating similar uncertainties offered not only practical feedback, but also a sense of solidarity. That feeling of continuity is perhaps what most clearly connects the three filmmakers' journeys. Each first came to IDFA with a short film. Each has now returned to develop a first feature. Rather than representing isolated moments, those experiences form part of an ongoing relationship with the festival. 

Heywood and McGinnis see that continuity as one of the crucial qualities of the program. Being accompanied by an institution throughout a film's life cycle—and, more broadly, throughout the development of a filmmaker's practice—reflects what they describe as "a real ethos for nurturing documentary filmmaking." For filmmakers working outside established production systems or with limited access to resources in their own countries, that kind of long-term support can make all the difference. 

Photography Yohannes Henriksson

Cover image: Jamil McGinnis (left) and Pat Heywood (right) in the editing room.