IDFA 2023: The Verdict
IDFA 2023 received a staggering dose of real-life events on its opening night; the quality of its film selection and a few political moves helped it recover.
IDFA 2023
IDFA: The Awards
Shoghakat Vardanyan’s ‘1489’ wins Best Film at IDFA for its humor and humanity in what the jury called “a vivid evocation of 100 years of history in less than 100 minutes of cinema.”
The Burden
Elvis Sabin Ngaibino’s IDFA 2023 documentary, ‘The Burden’, walks a familiar path of African misery, but his compelling subjects lends this sophomore feature documentary a deserved poignancy.
14 Paintings
Just over a dozen artworks are observed in situ in 14 Paintings, a patient but cumulatively fascinating cross-section portrait of contemporary China.
Peter Greenaway at IDFA 2023
A star guest at the Dutch documentary festival, 81-year-old art-house provocateur Peter Greenaway discusses his two new feature projects, his fears for the future of cinema, and his own feelings of mortality.
The Kyiv Files
Dutch director Walter Stokman digs into recently declassified KGB archives in ‘The Kyiv Files’, an uneven but timely documentary about Ukraine, Russia and Cold War paranoia.
As the Tide Comes In
Directors Juan Palacios and Sofie Husum Johannesen find beauty and sadness in ‘As the Tide Comes In’, a visually exquisite documentary about a tiny Danish island community menaced by climate change.
Limitation
A raw and immediate found-footage assemblage, ‘Limitation’ traces Russia’s hand in the coup that overthrew Georgia’s first post-Soviet president Zviad Gamsakhurdia.
Biljana Tutorov and Melissa Thackway Talk IDFA 2023 and the Power of Archives
Melissa Thackway and Biljana Tutorov, jury members for the Beeld en Geluid IDFA ReFrame Award at IDFA 2023, join TFV’s Oris Aigbokhaevbolo, the jury’s third member, in a discussion about the evolution of archives and the festival’s controversial opening night.
Alreadymade
Director Barbara Visser explores the controversial links between pioneering Dadaist artists Marcel Duchamp and Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven in her lively, adventurous, unconventional documentary ‘Alreadymade’.
Between Delicate and Violent
Sirin Bahar Demirel’s stimulating bricolage short, Between Delicate and Violent, combines archival imagery with animation to examine how pictures tell stories and whether they can be mined for truth.
In Wolf Country
Fear-stoking myths around wolves, back in Germany after a century, are dismantled in Ralf Bücheler’s doc ‘In Wolf Country’, appealing to nature management via science.
Magic Mountain
A haunting, poetic doc with political undercurrents, ‘Magic Mountain’ examines a once-grand sanitorium in the Georgian mountains lost to the vultures of capitalism.
This Blessed Plot
Director Marc Isaacs takes a bumpy but engaging journey into post-Brexit England in his eccentric docu-fiction pageant ‘This Blessed Plot’.
I Would Like to Rage
Chloe Galibert-Laine’s latest video essay, I Would Like to Rage, reflects on the place of rage online and through this lens explores the blurred lines between authenticity and performativity
A Picture to Remember
Olga Chernykh’s poetic, vividly sensorial essay-doc debut ‘A Picture to Remember’ reconstitutes Donetsk as a cinematic site of memories for three family generations of women.
IDFA’s Orwa Nyrabia on Making Space for the Unclassifiable
IDFA’s artistic director Orwa Nyrabia talks with TFV critic Carmen Gray about the festival’s role in times of tension, and where documentary might be heading.
While the Green Grass Grows
Peter Mettler’s multi-layered, monumental cine-diary is a meditation on our obsession with the other side that is as playful and surprising as it is frequently sublime.