In a modern world where work creeps further and further into one’s personal life, eating away at time and energy alike, it is a familiar feeling to realize you don’t have as much time as you would like for a partner. Chinese director Chouwa Liang currently feels that pressure, although her partner’s notion of time […]

Dutch documentarians Peter Lataster and Petra Lataster-Czisch are veterans on their home turf of the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam — where they won Best Dutch Film in 2014 and 2022 — but this year brought a career highlight for the renowned duo: introducing their latest doc “All Is Well” at the beautiful Tuschinski cinema […]

At the heart of maximalist rock outfit The Mars Volta are two friends: guitarist Omar Rodríguez-López and vocalist Cedric Bixler-Zavala. The pair met as El Paso high-schoolers obsessed with punk music, and soon began a creative partnership that lasted through multiple bands, scores of albums and hundreds of explosive live shows. The centerpiece of their […]

“Dry Sky,” produced by Ibrahim Omar, won the Forum Award for Best Pitch Wednesday at IDFA documentary festival in Amsterdam. “Do You Love Me,” produced by Lana Y. Daher, took home the Forum Award for Best Rough Cut, and “Looking for the Mermaid” by Yara Costa won the Producers Connection Award. The DocLab Forum Award […]

Ignorance is bliss, according to Nicolas Philibert, director of BAFTA nominee “To Be and to Have” and Berlin best film winner “On the Adamant,” discussing his approach to documentary filmmaking at IDFA in Amsterdam. The French filmmaker, whose recent films “The Typewriter and Other Headaches” and “Averroès & Rosa Parks” both screen at IDFA this […]

Documentary filmmakers and industry leaders gathered at this year’s International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam to discuss “independence and resistance in times of repressive populism” at the festival’s yearly Europe Conference in partnership with French public broadcaster Arte. IDFA’s artistic director Orwa Nyrabia introduced the conference by highlighting the “rising success” of populist movements in Europe […]

More than 500 years after his death, the works of Leonardo da Vinci have never been more ubiquitous. “Mona Lisa” just got her own Lego set, and recently played a central role in Rian Johnson’s “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery.” A controversial allusion to his famed “The Last Supper” during this summer’s Paris Olympics […]

Gravitas Ventures has acquired worldwide distribution rights to BuzzFeed Studios’ documentary “Brother Orange.” The doc follows the story of Matt Stopera, a BuzzFeed founding editor, whose life takes an unexpected turn when his stolen phone becomes the catalyst for a 2015 BuzzFeed article that went viral. The film chronicles how Stopera tracks down ‘Brother Orange,’ […]

It’s been 10 months since “Sugarcane” first premiered at Sundance, where it picked up the Directing Award: U.S. for documentary. Since then, directors Emily Kassie and Julian Brave NoiseCat have landed a worldwide distribution deal with National Geographic Documentary Films and have traveled across the world with their film, now stopping at the International Documentary […]

Belgian filmmaker Johan Grimonprez, whose “Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat” won an award for cinematic innovation at Sundance, mused on the significance of the “symbolic act” during a talk at documentary festival IDFA on Sunday. Speaking in the art-deco splendor of Amsterdam’s Tuschinski movie theater, Grimonprez started with an extract from his film “Shadow World,” […]

After premiering “Terrestrial Verses” at the Cannes Film Festival in 2023, Iranian director Ali Asgari returned home to Tehran to find out he was banned from traveling for eight months, as well as having his personal belongings confiscated by the government authorities for weeks. The result of that period of uncertainty and introspection is the […]

Environmental activist Erin Brockovich has signed on to executive produce “Unearth,” a new documentary that will make its world premiere at DOC NYC on Nov. 16. Directed, produced and shot by Hunter Nolan, “Unearth” tells the story of two sets of siblings — the Salmon sisters and the Strickland brothers — who live in Alaska’s […]

Taskovski Films Sales has acquired Miguel Calderón’s “Loss Adjustment,” ahead of its international premiere in the Envision Competition at International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam. The film follows Pedro, a loss adjuster, who travels across Mexico investigating the causes of major catastrophes while dealing with corrupt “scavengers” who profit from human tragedy. To escape the depravity […]

Romanian director Radu Jude thinks it’s time for filmmakers to start taking TikTok seriously. During an in-conversation event at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, Jude pulled out his smartphone and showed a series of TikToks to the audience, saying, “To me, TikTok is like the beginning of cinema. It’s like Lumiére. Filmmakers are in […]

Taskovski Films Sales has picked up “Home Game,” directed by Lidija Zelovic, which will have its world premiere on Friday in the International Competition section of the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam. Zelovic has been filming her family in the Netherlands since 1993, when they fled their war-torn home in Sarajevo. Her film exposes the […]

Last year’s industry program at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) placed great emphasis on the livelihood of documentarians as the industry sees budgets shrink and European funding bodies like public broadcasters invest less. Have things changed in the past year as the festival prepares for another edition? Unfortunately not, says Adriek van Nieuwenhuyzen, […]

Syndicado Film Sales has boarded documentary “Bright Future,” which has its world premiere at IDFA. Variety debuts the trailer here. The film is the directorial debut of Romanian archive researcher Andra MacMasters. “Bright Future” goes back to the summer of 1989 when thousands of young people from various nations gathered in North Korea for the […]

Cinema Eye Honors, an organization that celebrates the artistic achievements of nonfiction and documentary filmmakers, has unveiled the feature film nominees for its 18th annual award ceremony, which takes place Jan. 9 at the New York Academy of Medicine in East Harlem, N.Y. “Sugarcane,” from co-directors Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie, led the pack […]

At Wednesday’s annual DOC NYC Visionaries Tribute Luncheon, over 500 of the documentary community’s best and brightest attempted to remain positive about the future of not only docus, but also America under Donald Trump’s leadership. The Gotham Hall gala, which marked the opening day of the 15th annual DOC NYC film festival, attracted filmmakers with […]