IDFA film program

The glaciers in Iceland are melting at an alarming rate. Director Sara Dosa (Fire of Love) combines in Time and Water a family history with Icelandic myths and legends, and a poetic view on memory. 

The thirteen-year-old Nada lives with her aunt Gara in a small village in Montenegro. To the dismay of the residents, their grazing sheep must make way for a NATO training area.

The 14-year-old Qihuo has a secret, she tells her friends: she recently got her period. This means that she will receive a ceremonial skirt from her family, symbolizing the end of her childhood. 

Through archival footage, animations, and painfully candid conversations, Louis HotHotHot explores how modern Chinese history and misogyny continue to shape the lives of these women.

Hundreds of residents of a neighborhood in Glasgow rise up when two of their neighbors are picked up by immigration police. Infectious film featuring video footage, partly made by protesters. 

Over the course of four vibrant seasons, director Luke Lorentzen immerses you in life in and around the harbor of the small town of Brooklin.

The bad news, incurable cancer, they have already received. Now Rob, Rein, Tilly, Ben, and Marian are trying to face their situation in the oncologist's office.

Geopolitical experts often describe the Russian-Ukrainian War as an abstract game of chess. It is easy to forget that real soldiers on the front lines are enduring horrific experiences.

Armed with a press jacket, phone, and camera, journalist and new father Osama captures the everyday devastation of Gaza. Citizen Osama is an empathetic and tumultuous portrait of the urge to remain human when everything around you is falling apart.

In the clear, alpine water of a river in southern Switzerland, three young Afghan refugees seek relief from the heat.

In five poignant portraits of family members and loved ones, Iranian filmmaker and actress Pegah Ahangarani intertwines her life story with that of Iran.

In the early twentieth century, a Javanese girl is lured to a Dutch colonial rubber plantation on the neighboring island of Sumatra with false promises of a better life.

“It is getting very quiet in Belarus, it is drowning under the ice.” Under the regime of dictator Aleksandr Lukashenko, Belarus has been marked by daily repression for thirty years.

Who doesn't know better, thinks it's a holiday camp for young people. But this is not a vacation, it is a training camp of the People’s Defence Force in Myanmar.

Cousins Belinda and Guillermina live next to each other in the vast Argentine plains. Their neighbor Alessandra Sanguinetti is a filmmaker who has followed their childhood games, dreams, and budding desires for twenty-five years. 

William Greaves (1926-2014) was born during the Harlem Renaissance, the revival of African American art, culture, and politics. In 1972, he began a documentary about the still-living representatives.

For ten years, the film Gabin follows him as he grows up in the rural northern France between the cattle farm of his loving mother and the butcher shop of his stubborn father. 

When 16-year-old Chris goes missing, father Daniel becomes entrenched in a meticulous search along the Vistula River. Chris was last seen on a bridge in Warsaw. Did he jump or run away?

Energetic portrait of Michael Greenberg, who disrupts events with the activist group Climate Defiance in the run-up to the 2024 U.S. presidential elections. No matter how grim the politics appear, these idealists remain stubbornly hopeful. 

In diary-like form, jumping back and forth in space and time, the bi-cultural director Viv Li searches for a home between traditional Beijing and queer Berlin, between east and west, between family and friends. A lively self-portrait full of humor and tears. 

After films about water (Aquarela) and concrete (Architecton), filmmaker Victor Kossakovsky turns his attention to trees. He observes Mancuso, who conducted groundbreaking research into the sensory experience of trees.

In any war, daily life continues, despite everything. But is it really "normal"?

Three cameras document this documentary-in-a-documentary-in-a-documentary. There is no plot or script, and the film is harder to grasp than the title is to pronounce.

Is this paradise? The 3.5 million tourists who visit the Italian Cinque Terre every year think so. The 4000 residents themselves are not so sure anymore; every summer they are overwhelmed by tourists. 

Israeli filmmaker Anet Even lost her home and friends in the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023, on the kibbutz Nir Oz. She now returns, also to document what is happening on the other side of the fence.

Tristan da Cunha is the most remote inhabited island in the world. The Parisian Loran Bonnardot has been visiting the island for thirty years and wants to settle there permanently. 

Following the conclusion of his comedic documentary series How To with John Wilson, Wilson needed to find a new platform for his humorous observations on everyday life.

In karaoke bars, the men share great stories about jobs that went awry, but they also show their vulnerable side.

Filmmakers Rachel Lauren Mueller and Laura Poitras, Oscar winner for Citizenfour, filmed and gathered footage of witnesses and victims during the raids by the U.S. Immigration Enforcement ICE.

Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier faced each other in 1971 in a fight in which Ali hoped to regain the world title. William Greaves transformed it into an unforgettable documentary of the times.

Following the Dnieper River downstream through Russia and Belarus, Down the River observes the lives of young people growing up along its banks.

Inspired by personal experiences, the Franco-Senegalese director Alain Gomes blends fiction and documentary. Gloria tells her deceased father that his granddaughter Nour is getting married.

In the last 34 days before she begins an eleven-year prison sentence, Elizabeth Holmes, the fraud-convicted founder of the infamous medical tech company Theranos, opens her doors to filmmakers Nathan Fielder.

On the plains of Morocco, young boys are initiated into Tbourida, an ancient equestrian art form in which teams, following established patterns and rituals, gallop forward as a unified front and fire gunpowder into the air.

Can't choose? Let the audience decide for you!