At the world’s largest documentary film festival, IDFA Artistic Director Urua Nyirabia promises “instant classics… Some really great films”

37^y The Amsterdam International Documentary Film Festival is in full swing, having opened with the world premiere of a film that can be described as part reality, part fiction, part real and part artificial.

About the hero starring Werner Herzog, or an AI replica of him, uses a famous quote of his as a starting point: “A computer won’t be able to make a movie as good as mine in 4,500 years,” the German director once said. To test this, director Piotr Winiewicz worked with machine learning engineers to task the AI with writing a script based on Herzog’s body of work (Herzog authorized the project).

The result is a story about the possible suicide or murder of a man in a German industrial city who was working for a company developing a mysterious “Infinity Machine”. The supporting character has a romantic relationship with a toaster (not sure what that says about Werner Herzog or the AI “mind”).

About the hero is one of dozens of films in IDFA’s international competition, almost all of which are making their world premieres. In total, the festival will present 254 documentaries and 27 new media projects.

“I think we have a great program,” says IDFA head coach Urua Nyirabia. “We have very strong competition. I dare say there will be instant classics here. There are some really great films.”

This is Nirabia 7^y His final year leading the festival. Earlier this month, he announced that he would step down in July 2025.

Nyirabia says to the deadline: “Don’t feel sad.” “If you trust me, trust me on this too, that this is the right time, this is the right moment to do this for everyone’s sake, for IDFA’s sake and for mine.”

Nirabia, a Syrian national, succeeded IDFA co-founder and longtime festival leader Ally Dirks in 2018. During his tenure, he had to negotiate the pandemic, and last year he faced one of his biggest challenges as protests erupted at the festival over the Israeli invasion. Gaza after October 7^y Hamas’ blitzkrieg on Israel. IDFA could have played it safe this year by staying away from content from that part of the world, but in fact the 2024 program is full of films from Israel, Palestine, and Lebanon. Among them Eyes of Gaza“Infernal Portrait” follows “three Palestinian journalists in northern Gaza where they are forced to put their lives at risk while trying to do their job,” writes IDFA.

“This is a movie, I think it’s the first movie to come out of Al Jazeera’s new OTT platform called Al Jazeera 360,” notes Nirabia. “This movie is particularly interesting because in a way it’s a reportage that sticks to these three journalists who are on the ground in Gaza. In a way, by staying with them – when they sleep, when they wake up, when they see their children, when they go to work – it makes this kind of reporting more relevant to a festival like IDFA.

Screening in international competition is the world premiere of Stone verdictdirected by Israeli-Canadian director Danai Elon. “Stone verdict “It’s an extraordinary film that looks at the history of Jerusalem as a city and architecture as an outlet for colonial power,” notes Nirabia.

He also cites Manuscripts 1957“, directed by Israeli filmmaker Ayelet Heller, noting that it is a movie “based on recently uncovered documents from the Israeli archives about a 1957 massacre in which the residents of a Palestinian village inside Israel’s borders were massacred in one day and all perpetrators were killed. He was later exonerated.”

IDFA is also screening the 2003 film Route 181, Fragments of a Journey in Palestine-IsraelA documentary directed by Palestinian filmmaker Michel Khalifi and Israeli filmmaker Eyal Sivan, which Nirabia sees as “a commentary on simplistic identity politics where we imagine a conflict only between inherited identities. So people who belong to this heritage are fighting others who belong to a different heritage. And I think there’s another way, a third way, that creates a new identity, which is the identity of filmmakers who come together around an ethical stance, who come together around filmmaking with a real belief in solidarity with those who are oppressed.

In the “Best of Festivals” section – which is limited to the best documentaries from around the world that have premiered at previous festivals – IDFA will showcase an Oscar nominee No Other Landwhich won the main prize for documentary at the Berlin Film Festival in February. The film, set in a rocky and remote area of the West Bank where Palestinian villagers are under an expulsion order from the Israel Defense Forces, was directed by a group of Palestinian and Israeli filmmakers. No Other Land Supported by a grant from IDFA’s Bertha Fund.

“If people see the great documentary work that different filmmakers from different backgrounds have done on the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict or Palestine-Israel, I think, to say the least, what has happened in the last year [on October 7^th] “This wasn’t a surprise, if it wasn’t avoided in the first place,” Nirabia said. “There’s a lot that makes one cynical about what we can do. But I also think that after such a terrible year [of violence] Watching new movies, and even watching old movies, has a different meaning. It becomes a different experience. I hope it helps.”

Along with No Other LandFilms in the Best Festivals section include Sugarcane and blink (both from National Geographic) War game, Union, State of silence, Saturday QueenMTV Documentaries Black Box Diaries, Agent of Happiness From Bhutan and Asif Kapadia 2073.

This year’s IDFA Guest of Honor is Belgian director Johan Grimonprez, director of the Oscar-nominated film The soundtrack of the coup. The documentary explores an important moment in history in the late 1950s and early 1960s when many African countries gained independence after long periods of colonial domination. But in the case of Congo, Belgium and the United States were reluctant to cede the country’s mineral wealth after Patrice Lumumba was elected as Congo’s first democratically elected leader. Belgium, the US and even the UN Secretary-General conspired to overthrow the charismatic African politician.

Nyirabia describes Grimonprez as “a distinct and exceptional artistic filmmaker who combines artistic sensibilities and language that is truly unique with very serious political and historical research.” And he does this in a very special way. And this is, to a large extent, what I would like to see more of in the documentary space.

IDFA runs from November 14-24 in the Dutch capital. In the wake of the U.S. presidential election, in which border security has become a major issue, the festival presents a timely section called “Dead Corner: Borders,” a showcase of 17 films that address the issue in one way or another. The list includes On the borderThe desert city of Agadez is located in Niger and has been “the center of trade routes since time immemorial,” the program notes. “But Agadez is also a place where migrants pass through on their way to Europe.”

GuestThe movie, directed by Zwika Gregory Portnoy and Zuzanna Sulakiewicz, is set on the border between Poland and Belarus, where Poland has erected a long wall to prevent the entry of refugees, most of whom are Arabs. In the movie, a Polish family receives an exhausted “Syrian refugee,” 27-year-old Alhaider… Without any hint of sensationalism, the camera reads the emotions on the faces of the silent Polish family members and their grateful guest. The situation is grave and the solution is still far away.”

“I’m very happy that we’re doing the spin-off program we call Dead Angle. This is a multi-year program. Nirabia explains: “Each year, we’ll look at one ‘dead angle’ through the movie. “We decided, well, let’s think about borders this year. These lines that nations draw between themselves and die for; there’s a kind of absurdity to the idea of borders. I think borders are clearly one of the central questions of history at this moment, like how do we look at relationships between different groups of people, between different countries and their borders?

Nyirabia continues: “[Dead Angle: Borders] It really became a very moving program, moving from the idea of a ‘fortress Europe’ that closes its borders to the other, to the history of Palestine and Israel and those moving borders that were created in 1947 but keep moving all the time. Time and continues to be contested or remains at the center of the issue.

Nirabia adds that sometimes the thematic elements don’t come together until after the festival program has been chosen. “Many of the ideas that when [on the program]These are separate ideas, but when they come together you realize that you have been working in a kind of synergy, even if it’s not all planned schematically, but it comes together.