23/11/2009

November 22 saw the start of the 22nd edition of IDFA (November 19-29), the world’s leading international documentary film festival, which is flanked by the Co-Production Forum and the Docs for Sale market.

According to festival director Ally Derks, this year’s programme is the richest since the start of the new millennium, and offers a crossroads of filmmakers, projects and platforms. Besides screenings, there are debates and talk shows, three masterclasses and other educational initiatives, including the IDFA Academy with filmmakers and emerging producers.

There are over 300 original, auteur documentaries in the programme, seven juries and an audience award. Out of competition sections are: Reflecting images, with the best of other festivals, films by veteran directors and a wide range of stimulating films; Not Normal, which looks at what is normal and who decides that it is; Open City, visions of urban life; and the experimental films of Paradocs. At the frontier of media languages is DocLab, with interactive screenings and web documentary filmmakers.

The festival pays great attention to current geopolitical events, from environmental problems to globalization and the Middle East, with Q&As with the filmmakers and some of the films’ protagonists. One such special event will take place with Maziar Bahari, the Iranian filmmaker recently released after being arrested during the recent political upheaval in his country.

This year’s notable auteur names include Frederick Wiseman, who will receive the Living Legend Award, and present La Danse: The Paris Opera Ballet to whom a retrospective is dedicated; Eyal Sivan, who brings his latest, Jaffa, the Orange’s Clockwork, alongside a retrospective of his work and a "top ten" of documentaries he chose for their ethical value and work on memory; alongside Dariusz Jablonski (War Games and the Man Who Stopped Them), D.A. Pennabaker and Chris Hegedus (Kings of Pastry) and Julien Temple (Oil City Confidential).