07/10/2022 - Among the award-winning filmmakers set to pitch their upcoming works are Maite Alberdi, Filip Remunda, Anette Ostrø, Zaradasht Ahmed and Martín Benchimol

International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) has announced the 60 projects selected for the 30th edition of the IDFA Forum, the festival’s co-production and co-financing market, this year running from 12-16 November. Labelled by the team as a “watershed edition”, the event will see a strong return to in-person pitching, with all selected project teams slated to physically attend the event in Amsterdam.

Besides the 22 projects selected for the market’s flagship Forum Pitch category and the six selected for the annual Rough Cut Presentations, the upcoming gathering marks the second edition of the Producers Connection, an exclusive producer-to-producer showcase of 12 selected projects ripe for international co-production. Moreover, the market’s new-media section, IDFA DocLab Forum, is this year being expanded into a two-day event with a showcase of 20 interactive and XR projects.

Among the projects being pitched this year by established filmmakers are Maite Alberdi’s The Eternal Memory (Chile, “an intimate meditation on love and memory that observes a couple dealing with Alzheimer’s over a four-year period”), Filip Remunda’s Love Exposed (Czech Republic/France, a tragicomedy about “an ageing photographer and his filmmaker daughter who struggle to form a healthier relationship”), Anette Ostrø’s The Golden Swan (Norway/Denmark/Netherlands, “a brutal yet healing story on the kidnapping of her brother”), Zaradasht Ahmed’s The Lions on the River Tigris [+see also:
film review
film profile] (Norway, “a vérité project on the healing and resilience of Mosul in northern Iraq after years of ISIS rule”) and Martín Benchimol’s The Castle [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Martín Benchimol
film profile] (Argentina/France, “the bittersweet story of a domestic worker who inherits a crumbling mansion from a former employer and hovers on the verge of emancipation with her daughter”).

Finally, this year’s edition sees the participation of a strong contingent of projects exploring themes revolving around the war, a clear sign of the turbulent times we live in. Among these are Alisa Kovalenko’s Frontline (Poland/Denmark/Ukraine, “an experimental video diary of life on the Ukrainian frontline, bringing together the eye of a soldier and a documentary filmmaker”), Ondřej Moravec and Volodymyr Kolbasa’s mixed-reality work Fresh Memories (Czech Republic/Ukraine, which “transforms an ordinary apartment into a soon-to-be-invaded place in Ukraine”), Maryam Ebrahimi’s The Phantom Pain of Rojava (Sweden/Norway, “about the present-day status of the Kurdish resistance against IS and the women’s revolution in Rojava”) and Mariam Al-Dhubhani’s debut, Let’s Play Soldiers (Yemen/Qatar, tackling “the ongoing Yemeni war through the eyes of a former child soldier who tries to protect his brothers from the same fate”).

Here is the full list of selected projects:

IDFA Forum Pitch

Catching Them Young – Pankaj Johar
Producers: Penny Wise Films (India), Ventana Film (Germany)

Songs of Slow Burning Earth [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Olha Zhurba
film profile] – Olha Zhurba
Producers: Darya Bassel (Ukraine), Final Cut for Real (Denmark)

Don’t Call Me Mad – Zora Kuettner
Producers: Delaval Film, Charlie Phillips, Kat Amara-Korba (UK), DocLab (Italy)

Edhi and Alice – Ilrhan Kim
Producers: yPinks, SonaFilms (South Korea)

The Eternal Memory – Maite Alberdi
Producers: Micromundo Producciones, Fabula (Chile)

Frontline (working title) - Alisa Kovalenko
Producers: HAKA Films (Poland), Final Cut for Real (Denmark), Trueman Production (Ukraine)

The Golden Swan – Anette Ostrø
Producers: Fri Film (Norway), Made in Copenhagen (Denmark), HALAL (Netherlands)

Hacking Hate [+see also:
film review
film profile] – Simon Klose
Producer: Nonami AB (Sweden)

Ice Grave – Robin Hunzinger
Producers: Seppia (France), Making Movies Oy (Finland)

Jump Out – Nika Saravanja
Producers: Tico Film Company Srl (Italy), Playtime Films (Belgium), Fade In (Croatia)

Love Exposed – Filip Remunda
Producers: Hypermarket Film, FreeSaM Ltd (Czech Republic), Farges/Kolam Productions (France), HBO MAX

Niñxs [+see also:
film review
film profile] – Kani Lapuerta
Producers: La Sandía Digital Producción Audiovisual (Mexico), JYOTI Films, Dirk Manthey Film (Germany)

The Phantom Pain of Rojava – Maryam Ebrahimi
Producers: Mantaray Film (Sweden), Stray Dogs (Norway)

Robin – Orban Wallace
Producers: Snowstorm Productions, Gallivant Film (UK)

Seeds of a Nation – Catherine Lee
Producers: Pointe Media, Clear & Present Pictures (USA/Kenya)

Theft of Fire – Amer Shomali
Producers: Intuitive Pictures Inc (Canada), made in palestine project (Palestine)

Underage Astronauts – Aleksandra Skowon
Producer: Mediolia (Poland)

Under Her Skin – Simon Hernandez Estrada and Liliana Andrade
Producers: La Popular (Colombia), Cinema 226 (Mexico)

Welded Together – Anastasiya Miroshnichenko
Producer: An|Da Films (Belarus)

Where We Belong – Susanne Opstal
Producer: HALAL (Netherlands)

Women of My Life – Zahraa Ghandour
Producers: Karada Films (Iraq), Dschoint Ventschr Filmproduktion (Switzerland), WG Film AB (Sweden)

Producers Connection

Angels Street – Silvia Rey Canudo
Producer: Limbusfilmak (Spain)

Breaking the Wall – Weichao Xu
Producer: Yiqian Zhang (China)

December – Grzegorz Paprzycki
Producer: Telemark (Poland)

Dom – Svetlana Rodina and Laurent Stoop
Producer: DokLab GmbH (Switzerland)

The Fifth Eye – Ali Hamraz
Producer: Fanoos Films (Iran) 

Hawa – Gul Begum
Producer: YUZU Productions (France)

Let's Play Soldiers – Mariam Al-Dhubhani
Producer: Mohammed Al-Jaberi (Yemen/Qatar) 

The Lions on the River Tigris [+see also:
film review
film profile] – Zaradasht Ahmed
Producer: Screen Story (Norway)

Lust For Life/Carry On – Viktor Nordenskiöld
Producers: Freetownfilms AB, Sisyfos Film Production, Karin Ekberg (Sweden)

The Miraculous Transformation of the Working Class into Foreigners [+see also:
trailer
interview: Samir
film profile] – Samir
Producer: Dschoint Ventschr Filmproduktion (Switzerland)

Rabbit – Chloe Fairweather
Producer: Mark Lacey (UK)

We Had the Moon – Pamella Edouard
Producers: Piano Piano Production (France/Mauritius), Selven Naidu (Mauritius)

IDFA DocLab Forum

The Anticipation of Rain-6DoF – Naima Karim
Producers: Creative Solutions Program, Ithra, Bramble Media, Far Few Giants, Schallgeber Ltd, Wilhelm Perfume GmbH, Fat Red Bird (Saudi Arabia/UK)

The Chaos Simulator – Dov Heichemer
Producer: XR Coven (Germany)

DoX – Nimrod Shanit
Producers: HCXR – Holy City VR (Canada), INVR.SPACE GmbH (Germany)

Fresh Memories – Ondřej Moravec and Volodymyr Kolbasa
Producer: Brainz Immersive (Czech Republic/Ukraine)

Hong Kong Café – Yan Ting Yuen and Doris Yeung
Producer: Docmakers (Netherlands)

House of Stone – Florencia Curci, Joshua Madalitso Chiundiza, Frances Yeung, David Callanan and Anna West
Producer: Anna West (UK)

If These Streets Could Talk – Barna Szász
Producers: Parallel Stories Cultural Organization, Andrea Ausztrics, (Hungary), Institute for Transmedia Design (Slovenia)

Jacob’s Journey – Joanne Popinska
Producer: Infinite Frame Media (Canada)

Masquerade. Chapter One: Pillaro’s Devil’s Dance – Juan Pablo Urgilés
Producers: Imán Transmedia (Ecuador), INVR.SPACE GmbH (Germany), Realidad 360º Argentina (Argentina)

Nexus – Rodolfo Lissia
Producers: ONIRA (Netherlands), Small Studio (France), Nexus Vision (UK)

The Pathogen of War – Yasmin Fedda
Producers: Black Leaf Films, May Abdalla (UK)

Plunge – Ellie Land
Producers: Rebecca Mark-Lawson and Daria Nitsche (UK)

Project Leaves – Chen Chen Chen
Producers: Ren Studios (Hong Kong/UK), OXYZ3 (China)

Tartupaluk – Laakkuluk J Williamson Bathory
Producers: LMDP Co, Ánorâk Film (Canada)

There Exists – Anrick Bregman and Shehani Fernando
Producers: Studio ANRK, Grace Baird, Kylie Boltin (UK/Australia)

Totem – Glen Neath and David Rosenberg
Producer: Darkfield (UK)

Waking Barb – Justin Blinder
Producers: Justin Blinder and Nim Shapira (USA)

We Speak Their Names in Hushed Tones – Osakpolor Omoregie
Producer: Electric South (South Africa)

When Silence Talks – Paulina Donoso
Producer: Gabriel Torres (Ecuador/France/Argentina)

Zonnebloem Renamed District Six – Haroon Gunn-Salie
Producer: Electric South (South Africa)

Rough Cut Presentations

The Castle [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Martín Benchimol
film profile] – Martín Benchimol
Producers: Gema Films (Argentina), Sister Productions (France)

Memory – Vladlena Sandu
Producers: Haut les mains productions (France), BZ SH.P.K. (Kosovo), Revolver (Netherlands), Mimesis (Russia)

Motherland – Kristoffer Juel and Christian Als
Producers: Elk Film (Denmark), Mantaray Film (Sweden), Ogii Burnebataar (Mongolia)

Nightwatchers – Juliette de Marcillac
Producers: Dryades Films, Lyon Capitale TV, Division, 8 Mont-Blanc (France)

Ozogoche – Joe H Silva
Producers: Boton films (Ecuador), Serendipity (Belgium)

The Tuba Thieves – Alison O’Daniel
Producers: Rachel Nederveld and Eliza Moley (USA)