Doc Weekly’s Tips for IDFA 2019
The International Documentary film Festival Amsterdam, the world’s largest gathering of documentary professionals, kicks off next week on the 20th of November and ill run until December 1st.
This year, Doc Weekly will be in attendance catching world-premieres of the most exciting upcoming documentaries, interviewing some of our favourite directors and keeping you all involved on social media along the way.
But first, what are 2019’s hottest tickets and if you’ll be attending too, what premieres should you be looking out for ?
This year’s selection offers a diverse wealth of films, from the portrait of a lonely ageing Baron aboard a cruise ship to a VR experience that replicates the shamanic journey of an ayahuasca trip.
Premiering films
These are our picks of the films that will either be world premiering or being shown internationally for the first time at IDFA.
Mehrdad Oskouei’s “Sunless Shadows” is set to be the darling of this year’s edition, opening the festival with its world premiere and nominated for IDFA’s feature-length competition. The film follows five young Iranian women being held in a detention centre for the complicit murders of their abusive husbands, fathers or brothers in law, and promises to be as sinister as it will be eye-opening.
Also nominated for the feature-length competition is Pushpendra Singh’s “Pearl of the Desert”, which will be having its international premiere. By all accounts a cinematographic triumph, Singh charts the unlikely rise to international fame of 12-year old Moti, a member of the Manganiar caste growing up in India’s desert-like countryside, for whom singing is an integral part of his life. A hybrid film with some scenes acted out by Moti himself, we’re excited to be swept up by this larger than life story.
Another nominee in the particularly competitive feature-length competition is the world premiering “The Sea Between Us” by Canadian Marlene Edoyan. Set in Beirut, Lebanon, Marlene follows two locals who grew up in different camps of the bloody civil war that tore through the city in 1975. What seems like a well-established peace will gradually appear more precarious as we eavesdrop on ever more personal conversations surrounding the main characters.
For the making of Marcus Vetter’s “The Forum”, making its international premiere at IDFA, a filmmaker was granted behind-the-scenes access at the annual World Economic Forum (WEF) for the first time ever at Davos this year. While they claim to be tackling the planet’s biggest challenges, is this monumental summit anything more than just a PR stunt for the world’s most powerful? And how will they react to the shock inclusion of a fearless Greta Thunberg among the delegates.
We’re also excited to see “King of the cruise”, of a tongue-in-cheek observational doc about Scottish Baron Ronald Busch Reisinger set to his preferred backdrop, a luxury cruise ship. Director Sophie Dros nonetheless uncovers a more lonely side to the Baron’s effervescent lifestyle and is nominated for best Dutch documentary.
Other films we’ll be checking out include “Transition”, a photo montage of a Japanese mother’s final days spent alongside her newborn’s very first, “Shadow Flowers”, the unlikely story of a woman desperate to return to her home in North Korea, and “Becoming Black”, about a woman’s search for her African heritage after a childhood of it being denied to her by her white German foster parents.
Unique experiences not to be missed
New technologies and mediums are changing filmmakers’ work and transforming their output. As part of its Doclabs stream, IDFA has invested in new spaces to host these emerging artforms, including a mysterious “real-life living room at a secret address”.
Star of the show will no doubt be French director Jan Kounen’s virtual reality film, “Ayahuasca – A Kosmik Journey”, which seeks to replicate the psychedelic experience of Ayahuasca, a brew used in rituals by the Shipibo tribe of the Amazon. IDFA have teamed up with Eye to expand the film into a full-blown exhibition that explores how Ayahuasca trips are able to change people’s perceptions of reality. Sign us up!!
Another virtual reality film we won’t be missing is “-22.7C”. French music producer Molécule pioneered “nomadic electronic music” with his debut album “60°43’ Nord” which he produced using only the sounds he recorded aboard an Atlantic fishing trawler. To make his latest album, Molécule went on a journey across Greenland, all captured in 360° video for us to enjoy to the soundtrack of his toe-tapping arctic beats.
We can’t wait to be in Amsterdam to discover these films for ourselves. Email us or DM us on social media if you’d like to share your film, be interviewed or just meet up for a chat.
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