The International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) has announced Portuguese filmmaker, curator, and academic Susana de Sousa Dias as Guest of Honor for its 2025 edition, which will take place in November. The organization also unveiled the first titles that will be part of the program of its 38th edition, including the curated section Dead Angle: Institutions and the inaugural projects of its pioneering new media program, IDFA DocLab.

The festival will dedicate an extensive retrospective to de Sousa Dias’s work, recognized for her unique approach to archival images and her exploration of political memory. In addition, the filmmaker will present a personally curated Top 10, featuring titles that delve into collective memory and explore how filmmakers rewrite political narratives. Among the selected works are Monangambééé by Sarah Maldoror and Images of the World and the Inscription of War by Harun Farocki.

From Still Life (2005), a meditation on Portugal’s Estado Novo dictatorship, to 48 (2009), which juxtaposes photographs of political prisoners with their later testimonies, the director has developed a distinctive style that transforms archives into dissident counter-archives. Her work reveals erased histories of violence and resistance to power, going beyond the merely illustrative use of archival material. The world premiere of Fordlândia Panacea (2025), about the industrial town founded by Henry Ford in the middle of the Amazon rainforest in 1928, will be a centerpiece of this retrospective, exploring colonial and neo-colonial legacies within Brazilian archives.

De Sousa Dias will also be the focus of the main Talk of IDFA 2025, where she will share her perspective on memory, politics, and cinema as a tool for questioning history. In addition to the first programming highlights, the festival announced the fall presentation of the 2025–2026 Docs for Sale catalogue, its documentary marketplace, as well as the final call for Young Producers, the initiative that supports emerging talent in film production. With these announcements, IDFA 2025 sets the stage for an edition defined by reflection on historical memory, politics, and the power of images.