Program
Film still: Children of the Mist, dir. Diem Ha Le.
With the launch of a new program structure and a much-needed return to the cinemas, the 2021 festival program saw an influx of visionary, courageous, and highly creative documentary filmmaking. And, as always, a few special surprises.
The new program structure introduced in 2021 is the result of four years of examination and design, and its positive reception, both from the film community and the general audience, came to prove that IDFA is redefining itself as a multi-facetted and pluralistic festival. Dutch films were not ghettoized into a dedicated section of the festival anymore, but integrated into all the international sections, highlighting the international quality and relevance of Dutch productions, and cherishing the valuable IDFA Award for Best Dutch Documentary Film, despite this change. The main competition was split into two main competitions, allowing for IDFA to encompass a wider spectrum of what’s happening in documentary filmmaking today. In the International Competition, the audience and the global documentary film industry were introduced to some of the year’s top documentary films that were masterfully made within the known and matured tools and techniques of documentary filmmaking. While the new Envision Competition offered a selection of well-rounded, courageously made documentary films that did not rely upon the classical grammar of the art. Envision succeeded, from its first year, in presenting a new generation of documentary films.
In the 2021 edition, the former First Appearance competition was abolished, and first-time filmmakers were integrated into the program sections side-by-side with the seasoned filmmakers. The new IDFA structure does not see age, experience, or nationality. It sees and arranges films based only on their own merits, their own language, artistic coherence, and socio-political relevance.
Through this new structure, IDFA is reaffirming its position as the world’s leading documentary film festival. To affirm such a prominence, IDFA is emphasizing its wide vision, its global representation, and its smart and responsible curatorial processes: current, inclusive, open-minded, and democratic.
Moreover, throughout the redesign process, we made sure that this renovation results in a better experience for the audience and for the filmmakers alike. Part of this was to make sure that the awards granted to excellence at IDFA remained many, and that the juries granting them were made up of the most celebrated and trusted film professionals today. At IDFA, we believe that only such juries would help us protect the globally recognized value of an IDFA Award. The juries of IDFA 2021 made the filmmaker look forward to the festival experience even more, and shared their exceptional credibility and renown with IDFA itself, for the benefit of the filmmaker.
Film Still: O, Collecting Eggs Despite the Times, dir. Pim Zwier.
Q&A with Lindiwe Matshikiza, Director of One Take Grace
South African artist and filmmaker Lindiwe Matshikiza won the Award for Outstanding Artistic Contribution in the Envision Competition at IDFA 2021 for One Take Grace. She managed to come to Amsterdam with her protagonist, Mothiba Grace Bapela, and get back just before all flights to her country were shut down due to the Omicron variant. How was your experience at IDFA? Going on an international journey after so long, and for such an auspicious reason, was wonderful and surreal. I imagine anyone traveling a great distance from one part of the planet to another would be doing as we did to some degree: comparing the COVID-19 realities, the social and cultural differences and similarities, and experimenting with being temporary residents somewhere else.
For us, it was refreshing to have that change of environment, even for a short time, to have different daily concerns. It felt like a very rare gift and so we made the most that we could out of it. Everything beyond finishing the film feels like a bonus, so winning an award while we were there was a next level experience. Flying back the next day was tense.
What does success mean to you? I think something feels successful when, in the process of making, you manage to manifest an image that has hung in the mind, as if it was some premonition or a dream vision that asked you to keep working and playing until it became real. I think it’s also the non-verbal feeling of celebration that passes through everyone in the room when something magical is happening inside the process. Completion—seeing a project through to a satisfying ‘end’—can also be success, or at least it certainly was with One Take Grace, after a decade or so of not knowing what an end point might look like. To hear that someone has been moved by something you’ve had a part in making also feels like success—that they have had feelings about it, or that it has made them reflect on other things, on themselves or people they know. To feel that there is extension and expansion feels successful. On a more material level, I experience moments of success as an artist when I'm able to truly design my time the way I want, to choose when and if to work, to not worry about money, to feel content with a working space, and to feel that I am in a good relationship with the source, creatively speaking—not holding anything back.
Envision Competition Jurors Andrea Arnold, Joe Bini, Charlotte Serrand, and Akram Zaatari:
“The wonderful thing about being on the jury for the Envision category was that, going into each screening, we truly had no idea what to expect. Each film was like entering a unique universe, and each film brought a particular perspective on the world and on new forms of documentary filmmaking. You know when a film doesn’t work, but how do you describe what does work when the films are so diverse and all reaching for different things?”
Where did the selected films come from?
One Take Grace director Lindiwe Matshikiza (left) and protagonist Mothiba Grace Bapela (right) at the IDFA 2021 Awards Ceremony. Photo by Coen Dijkstra.
IDFA's audience program is made possible by the VriendenLoterij, VPRO, Fonds 21, de Volkskrant, WePresent by WeTransfer, NPO 2Doc, Oxfam Novib, Saeco, The Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision, De Groene Amsterdammer, Mama Cash, The New Originals, VICE, OneWorld, NTR, Creative Europe Media, VSBfonds, City of Amsterdam & Amsterdam's New West district, European Cultural Foundation, Vevam, and the Friends, Special Friends, and Special Friends+ of IDFA.
IDFA’s competition program is supported by Ammodo.