The International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) has announced more than 100 new titles joining the lineup for its 39th edition, which will take place from November 12 to 22 in the Dutch capital under the artistic direction of Isabel Arrate Fernández. The announcement expands the selection of one of the leading international events for documentary cinema, with new films in the Signed, Paradocs, Best of Fests, and Short Documentary Competition sections, as well as the first projects for the new edition of DocLab.
The Signed section, dedicated to filmmakers with a distinctive artistic signature and projects that push beyond the boundaries of the documentary canon, features films including 14th, by Ava DuVernay; Closure, by Michał Marczak; Once Upon a Time in Harlem, directed by David Greaves and produced by Liani Greaves from material shot by the director’s father, William Greaves; and My Undesirable Friends: Part II — Exile, by Julia Loktev.
The selection also includes Time and Water, by Sara Dosa; Boatbuilders, by Luke Lorentzen; Union Town, by Barbara Kopple; Tutu, by Sam Pollard; and Holy Wood Dust, by Victor Kossakovsky. The shorts lineup additionally features They’re Here, directed by Laura Poitras and Rachel Lauren Mueller, and The Revolution Against Death, by Joshua Oppenheimer.
Best of Fests, which brings together notable films from festivals around the world, features nearly 60 titles. Among them are Rehearsals for a Revolution, by Pegah Ahangarani; The Illusion of an Everlasting Summer, by Alessandra Sanguinetti; and Citizen Osama, by Ahmed Hassouna, alongside other works that have screened at international festivals over the past year.
Paradocs, meanwhile, once again focuses on the intersection of documentary cinema and visual art. The 16 selected titles explore new forms, genre crossings, and perspectives that move away from the traditional structures of nonfiction.
Among the films is Eternity, by Susanne Regina Meures, which adapts a performance by Florentina Holzinger for the screen, combining a getaway to a glacier with the threat of climate change and existential anxiety. The section also includes The Case Against Space, by Graeme Arnfield, which reconstructs the first “strike” in space to reconsider the figure of the astronaut from a perspective informed by capitalism and surveillance.
Forever…Forever, by Johann Lurf, offers a vision of the cosmos built from images of the sun’s path filmed over 22 months, using a time-lapse technique that progressively accelerates its movement. The film will be presented in 70mm at the Eye Filmmuseum.
The 20th anniversary of IDFA DocLab also occupies a central place in the new lineup. The section, dedicated to emerging technologies and new forms of interaction, seeks to expand the possibilities of documentary and transform the relationship between works and their audiences.
Among the first projects announced are The Love Files, by Sanne De Wilde and Samir Veen, which invites audiences to step inside and critically review a “love file” application for a residence permit, and All the Downtime, by Ant Hampton, which immerses audiences in an algorithm-driven distribution center where a power outage disrupts the system and gives way to creative disorder. Both projects will receive €10,000 from the Film Fund DocLab Interactive Grant to complete their development and be presented at the festival.
The 20th-anniversary program also includes new works developed through Shared Realities, among them The Invisible Woman, a virtual reality opera by Tamara Shogaolu that recovers the story of Francisca de Angola, a 17th-century Black woman in Amsterdam, and Microbiome Restaurant, by Polymorf, which offers two sensory experiences centered on the human body as an ecosystem.
Finally, the Short Documentary Competition will bring together 15 films exploring the formal possibilities of short nonfiction. The selection encompasses a range of stylistic approaches, themes, and perspectives, with filmmakers seeking to expand the boundaries of the format through works marked by a strong artistic identity.