IDFA Announces First Competition Lineups; Taps ‘No Other Land,’ ‘Sugarcane’ And More For Prestigious “Best Of Fests” Section
deadline.comThe world’s biggest documentary film festival is starting to roll out its competition lineup for the 2024 event. International Documentary Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), set to run from November 14-24, unveiled the full slate for the Short Documentary section today, featuring 12 world premieres among the 16 titles in competition.
Among them is Iron, a new 40-minute film from Ukrainian-born, Latvia-based director Vitaly Mansky (Eastern Front, Putin’s Witnesses). [Scroll for the complete list of competition films and other titles announced today].
According to Mansky’s website, Iron “consists of several novels about humans and military equipment in cities where military equipment resembles monuments on pedestals, where it is exhibited in fairs and special events, where it adorns festive parades and rusts in scrap yards.” Other highlights from the Short Documentary competition include “personal stories on grief, such as the mixed media exploration into losing someone close to you, Tough Love by Pat Heywood, and stop-motion animation Mama Micra by Rebecca Blöcher that examines how far people are willing to go to quench their thirst for personal freedom,” IDFA notes.
In another of the Short Documentary titles, The Flowers Stand Silently, Witnessing, director Theo Panagopoulos “revisits archival footage of Palestine’s floral splendor from the 1930s, showing the complex relationship between the land and its inhabitants.” IDFA also revealed the lineups for its Youth Documentary competition, a curated list of films separated into two sections – films of special relevance to the age group 9-12, and films of special relevance to the age group 13+.
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