THE FILM VERDICT: As head of IDFA, you occupy an interesting position in European film festival culture. Given the political changes in the period of your stewardship, has your job gotten harder or easier over the years?
ORWA NYRABIA: I am not one for easier. I believe a festival with IDFA’s size and importance needs to keep on reinventing itself non-stop. So, the job must get harder and harder. The entire documentary landscape is going through a transformation phase: asking difficult questions and trying to understand and manage its growing audience, the new politics, and the new economy that such growth entails. For a festival to remain relevant, useful, influential, there’s no time for resting on laurels. We are in Europe, but we’re not about Europe. We — like the Europe we believe in — are global and we prioritize the artistic proposals of those who are less seen, less privileged. Eurocentrism is boring, in addition to being inherently unjust.
TFV: What role does the unstoppable rise of streaming platforms around the world play in IDFA programming?
ON: We welcome everybody. But keep in mind that documentary filmmakers are much less privileged than others. They’ve been making great documentary films for a century, no matter where they end up financed and screened. In this edition of IDFA, I’m happy that we’re celebrating the world premiere of a Netflix film (The Last Dolphin King, by Luis Herves and Ernest Riera) in our Frontlight section. Also, we’re celebrating the European premiere of an Amazon Studios film (Wildcat, by Melissa Lesh and Trevor Beck Frost) in our Best of Fests section. The streamers’ effect on the documentary world is still a work in progress. I hope that the streaming space will be much more diverse over time, within each streamer’s catalogue, but also in a global landscape with various streamers, small and large, regional or global, niche or not. Currently, there’s a visible commercialization effect. Major streamers are proposing an American dream pathway to filmmakers, where a few will break through and receive millions of dollars for a documentary film. This could turn the rather committed, risky and personal quest of filmmaking into a poker game. They do that also by focusing on populist productions that are ethically questionable, such as the haphazard avalanche of serial killer stories being offered. Still, everybody, streamers included, is looking for some kind of balance. From where I sit here, the main issue is how they will (or won’t) make space for smaller films, for an open taste palette that is not limited to the conventional, and with less populist proposals. In any case, streamers are big and influential, but cinema distribution is not dead, and neither is TV. The landscape is richer with them around, and it is not a unilateral affaire.
TFV: Over the past few years, we’ve had a bit of news on the concept of masculinity, especially as promoted by certain personalities online. This year, IDFA has an entire section named Around Masculinity. What is the festival hoping attendees who see films in that section will leave with?
ON: I believe a little delay in examining what’s fashionable is always good. This program was developed organically from our discussions as a programming team, and it was made as a collective curation effort. To me personally, it became clear we should do this when I listened to Vladimir Putin, in the middle of a speech defending his invasion of Ukraine, announcing his support for JK Rowling regarding her infamous comments on trans people. What is itthat allows such a powerful person to suggest a link between invading a country and accepting LGBTQ people? Can we identify a link here between heteronormativity, as a social convention, as a construct, and a sense of entitlement to invade the other? I sincerely do not have clear and final conclusions here! But I am very curious! This is how a program like this develops. Film, to me, does exactly that. It allows us to think. To own our opinions. I do not want the audience leaving thinking that men are good or bad! Such judgement is irrelevant. The memory of film has an unparalleled value in this respect. Watching an old film today, one sees what one did not see before. Films do not stay the same, they change over time, just like we and our ideas change.
TFV: IDFA has a couple of Russian films in the programme this year. Can you comment on your criteria for selecting these, given the very charged atmosphere around the question of a boycott, as the Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine is ongoing?
ON: I believe in the necessity of dedicating the largest possible space for Ukrainian voices now. It is overdue. Since February, we have been working to support our Ukrainian colleagues. We dedicated a special funding cycle from IDFA Bertha Fund to Ukrainian film projects. We’re welcoming some of them to the IDFA Forum to be promoted and hopefully financed. We’re inviting the highest number of Ukrainian filmmakers and film programmers ever to attend an edition of IDFA. I believe 35 persons. We selected nine of the year’s best films from and about Ukraine. We will pay tribute to Lithuanian director Mantas Kvedaravicius who was murdered in Ukraine. We also worked via the International Coalition for Filmmakers at Risk (ICFR) on providing Ukrainian film workers with micro emergency grants. So, our priority is clear. As for Russian films, we are including 5 films that we believe in, ethically and aesthetically, and only after we studied each of them thoroughly. Films with Russian state support, or with any links to oligarchy, are currently not welcome at IDFA. The Russian films included in our various programs are very clear in their funding sources and in their political positions, as their makers are.
TFV: Displacement and immigration are at the heart of opening documentary All You See. Do you feel an added urgency in these times to highlight such themes?
ON: The choice of opening film is not only a political statement. It is also a statement when it comes to the politics of the film industry, so who gets a platform to present what vision, and a statement of artistic language, this is a truly elegant film! As for displacement and immigration, if the filmmakers believe it is an urgent topic today, then I do, too. I believe we can clearly see how aggressive racism is all around us in the West. Not only in the West, but the West prides itself on its democracy, and still does not see that this is first and foremost a shortcoming of such democracy. How xenophobia and violence against those who look different is growing. What’s very interesting about All You See is the fact that it does not even address such extremes, it only invites the most progressive of us to realize that they have blind spots they need to identify. That the problem cannot be reduced to and blamed only on a few extravagant populist politicians. So, again, this is what cinema can do! I find myself defensively blaming all that is bad on others, but when I am alone the next day after watching a good film, it slowly seeps in, and I will reflect on myself, too.
TFV: Can you comment on the choice of Laura Poitras for a retrospective, a highly political filmmaker with a track record for addressing corporate and state power abuses?
ON: The guest of honor at IDFA is a prestigious, long-standing part of the festival. It has welcomed many of film history’s greatest names — Varda, Kieslowski, Taviani, Wiseman, Rosi, Guzman, Treštikova — to name a few. Now, it is about time to acknowledge and celebrate Laura Poitras’s body of work, which is made up of great films but also of an unparalleled contribution to our contemporary world. We speak a lot about the impact of film on society and on politics. I believe Poitras’s impact has been way more influential than any other filmmaker in recent history. Last year we invited renowned artist and filmmaker Hito Steyerl as our guest of honor. Steyerl sent us back here, by selecting Citizenfour by Laura Poitras as part of her Top 10. It is a pendulum that I very much enjoy. From Art to Politics, then back again. Laura Poitras’s new film, All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, was a brilliant surprise after we’d already invited her to be our guest of honor. It simply proves the point. A film that is deeply political and artistic, in a manner that nobody can separate the two.
TFV: Last year, IDFA undertook new protocols in dealing with the pandemic. What will be different this year?
ON: The team of IDFA worked so hard over the past few months to be prepared for multiple scenarios. Today, we see no reason for many extra protocols to be put in place. We should all follow basic instructions, and stay home and inform the festival team should we experience any symptoms. The Netherlands has one of the highest vaccination ratios in the world. After all, our guests, our audience, and our team are all responsible people who care about each other. We will probably see a few infections. We must choose whether we can live with the virus, vigilantly and responsibly, or allow it to keep us suspended any longer.
TFV: The pandemic placed particular pressure on documentary production, given the limitations of filming on enclosed sets and so on. Are you still seeing much of an impact on the selection, and if so, in what ways?
ON: I can’t say there’s a clear effect. Again, we have all kinds of films. A few filmmakers were intrigued by the pandemic as a theme and worked on that, like the new film of Petra and Peter Lataster, Journey Through Our World (NL, 2022, International Competition). Also, Arnaud des Pallières’ American Journal (FR, 2022, Masters) reflects a contemplative artistic endeavor that the renowned filmmaker completed during lockdown, editing his video diaries from a road trip around the USA into a very special film. But other than a few examples, I think filmmakers all around the world found ways of making the films they dreamed of, within and despite of the limitations.
