IDFA Artistic Director Orwa Nyrabia on the Intersection of Politics and Cinema: ‘No Festival Can Escape the Fact That It Is Also a Political Activity’
variety.comRafa Sales Ross Guest Contributor For the second year in a row, the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) launches against the backdrop of a major war.
Last year, the festival took place at the height of Russia’s attacks on Ukraine, this year it runs as the Israel-Hamas War rages.
Asked about the significance of IDFA being an openly political festival, artistic director Orwa Nyrabia says it is “very important to our filmmaking community, to our audiences and to our festival team and staff.” Speaking to Variety just before the opening of the festival’s 36th edition, which runs Nov.
8-16, Nyrabia highlights how people are currently trying “not to take sides in a cheap way, to understand more and to discuss better.” The artistic director opened the festival’s press conference by acknowledging the fighting in Israel and Gaza, and emphasizing how he believed “this would have been much better” if we “all listened” to filmmakers who shared their vision of the escalating conflicts in the region. “I was very serious when I mentioned in the press conference that, to me, this is what documentary filmmakers have been doing,” he says. “It’s a responsibility toward them to acknowledge that they saw this coming.
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