{"id":183859,"date":"2025-11-16T15:57:10","date_gmt":"2025-11-16T15:57:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/183859\/"},"modified":"2025-11-16T15:57:10","modified_gmt":"2025-11-16T15:57:10","slug":"idfa-chief-on-decision-to-ban-israeli-state-backed-orgs-from-festival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/183859\/","title":{"rendered":"IDFA Chief On Decision To Ban Israeli State-Backed Orgs From Festival"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tIn her welcoming letter to IDFA<\/a> guests, the festival\u2019s new artistic director Isabel Arrate Fernandez<\/a> writes, \u201cIn these uncertain times we need the voices of filmmakers and artists more than ever.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAs if responding to that call, some of the greatest documentary filmmakers of our time are bringing new work to the 38th edition of International Documentary Festival Amsterdam<\/a>: Laura Poitras, Vitaly Mansky, Victor Kossakovsky, Mstyslav Chernov, Tamara Kotevska, Susana de Sousa Dias<\/a>, Raoul Peck, Gianfranco Rosi, Werner Herzog, Chai Vasarhelyi, Jimmy Chin, Jay Rosenblatt, Claire Simon, Tia Lessin, Carl Deal and many, many more.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe meet at a time when we are confronted daily by images of war, injustice, violence, and the genocide in Gaza,\u201d Arrate Fernandez writes, \u201cimages that demand our empathy, confront us with the limits of what we can comprehend, even stretching our belief in humanity itself.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"'Gaza's<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\u2018Gaza\u2019s Twins, Come Back to Me\u2019<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tIDFA<\/p>\n

\n\tMultiple films in the lineup address the war in Gaza that has claimed tens of thousands of lives, including Gaza\u2019s Twins, Come Back to Me, directed by Mohammed Sawwaf, and The Clown of Gaza, directed by Abdulrahman Sabbah.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThey\u2019re really made by people that live there, that come from this place and have been on the ground experiencing all these atrocities,\u201d Arrate Fernandez tells Deadline. \u201cIn their storytelling and what the films end up being, they really go further than what we\u2019ve seen in the news in the last two years\u2026 bringing the stories of people living there, of a mother, of a man trying to provide for his family through his job. And in that way, I think [they] also manage to create human bridges [by] focusing on exactly these human stories.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tCoexistence, My Ass!, directed by Amber Fares, \u201clooks at what has been happening in the last two years [in Israel and Gaza] from a different perspective and bringing in the comedy elements,\u201d Arrate Fernandez notes. The short documentary Return to al-Ma\u2019in, from Forensic Architecture, examines what has become of a Palestinian village seized by Israeli militia in 1948.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"'Silent<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\u2018Silent Flood\u2019<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tIDFA<\/p>\n

\n\tNeither is IDFA ignoring the ongoing war in Ukraine, which is examined in Oscar winner Mstyslav Chernov\u2019s 2000 Meters to Andriivka, Vitaly Mansky\u2019s Time to the Target, and several other films in the program: Militantropos, directed by Alina Gorlova, Simon Mozgovyi, and Yelizaveta Smit, and Silent Flood, directed by Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cMilitantropos and Silent Flood really bring in this case a different angle, a more in-depth view of and reflection of this war that has been going on now since 2022 or even before, because it started in 2014,\u201d Arrate Fernandez says, \u201cand take it a little bit beyond the immediate war casualties and war stories.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"IDFA<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMatthew Carey<\/p>\n

\n\tIDFA, under the leadership of previous artistic director Orwa Nyrabia, spoke out forcefully against Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine and has made concerted efforts to support the Ukrainian documentary filmmaking community through the IDFA Bertha Fund. That\u2019s in line with its stated mission to be \u201ca committed institution with a socially critical perspective.\u201d But controversy has attended a decision by IDFA this year to bar Israeli state-backed organizations<\/a> from attending the festival, citing what it considers the Israeli government\u2019s human rights abuses. IDFA rejected accreditation requests from Israel\u2019s DocAviv Festival, CoPro \u2013 The Israeli Content Marketing Foundation, and public broadcaster Kan, and has similarly banned state-back organizations from Russia and Iran.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cMany people think we are refusing filmmakers, film professionals, that we categorically boycott Israeli films or for that matter, other films. And that is not the case,\u201d Arrate Fernandez insists. \u201cWe made a decision to not accredit these organizations, but we are open to [individual] filmmakers and film professionals from all over. We watched all the films that we received, the ones from Israel, but also the ones from Russia, also the ones from Iran or from what other country that at this moment is not really upholding human rights values. And we based our decision on watching these films and then looking into, if we were interested in selecting them, who\u2019s funding these films.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tShe added, \u201cLooking back, [the decision] created some confusion. I am not sure this is something that we could have avoided.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOn its website, IDFA writes, \u201cThis week, several media outlets have falsely claimed that IDFA does not accept filmmakers or films from Israel. This is incorrect. IDFA does not exclude individual, independent filmmakers and film professionals\u2014including those from Israel.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe festival website also notes, \u201cRecently, IDFA joined 713 organizations and 2,163 artists in signing the\u202fDutch and Belgian cultural boycott\u202fagainst Israel.<\/a> This boycott is in line with our existing guidelines:<\/a> to exclude institutions financed by the Israeli government. This does not<\/strong> apply to all films, filmmakers, or other film professionals from Israel.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"IDFA<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tIDFA Artistic Director Isabel Arrate Fernandez<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tIDFA\/ Jurre Rompa<\/p>\n

\n\tThis is Arrate Fernandez\u2019s inaugural year as artistic director, but she has long been connected to the institution, serving for more than two decades as executive director of the IDFA Bertha Fund and leading IDFA\u2019s filmmaker support department.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI\u2019ve been part of this organization for a long time in a different role,\u201d she says, recalling memorable experiences from previous IDFAs. \u201cI will never forget when [director] Victor Kossakovsky came running with the tape under his arm to screen Tishe! for the first time to an audience and I had to pick him up at the station to get him on time in the cinema because people were already sitting there\u2026 Having Victor coming back to premiere Trillion at the festival is very exciting as he\u2019s been a regular of the festivals for so many years.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"'Trillion'\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\u2018Trillion\u2019<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tIDFA<\/p>\n

\n\tTrillion premieres in the Envision competition alongside Sky Hopinka\u2019s Powwow People; I Want Her Dead, directed by Gianluca Matarrese; Confessions of a Mole<\/a>, directed by Mo Tan, Am\u00edlcar, directed by Miguel Eek, and other films.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s such a varied selection,\u201d Arrate Fernandez observes. \u201c[With] Envision, I think one of the things the team truly enjoys is exactly exploring how filmmakers are working with documentary language in bringing across their stories but also playing with it and challenging us as viewers with what they make.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"'Fordl\u00e2ndia<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\u2018Fordl\u00e2ndia Panacea\u2019<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSusana de Sousa Dias\/IDFA<\/p>\n

\n\tFordl\u00e2ndia Panacea also premieres in Envision, a documentary by Portuguese artist and filmmaker Susana de Sousa Dias, who is IDFA\u2019s Guest of Honor<\/a> this year. The film explores a strange colonial scheme in the 20th century when automaker Henry Ford attempted to create a rubber plantation in the Amazon rainforest of Brazil.<\/p>\n

\n\tDe Sousa Dias \u201chas really changed the way also other documentary filmmakers work with archive where she\u2019s really dissecting and exploring, examining this archive more than using it as an image to tell a story, to illustrate a story,\u201d Arrate Fernandez comments. \u201cShe\u2019s really looking, examining the archive in a way also to expose what is not there or what has not been told or what is not being told by the people making this archive.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tMany films with Oscar aspirations are represented in the IDFA program, including The Six Billion Dollar Man<\/a>, Eugene Jarecki\u2019s film about Wikileaks founder Julian Assange; Raoul Peck\u2019s Orwell: 2+2=5<\/a>; Cover-Up<\/a>, directed by Laura Poitras and Mark Obenhaus; Julia Loktev with My Undesirable Friends: Part I \u2013 Last Air in Moscow; Cutting Through Rocks, directed by Sara Khaki and Mohammadreza Eyni; Seeds, directed by Brittany Shyne; The Tale of Silyan<\/a>, directed by Tamara Kotevska, Love+War<\/a>, directed by Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, as well as the aforementioned 2000 Meters to Andriivka<\/a>; Coexistence, My Ass!<\/a>, and other Academy Award contenders.<\/p>\n

\n\tIDFA is well timed to aid filmmakers in the Oscar hunt, coming just a few weeks before the start of voting on the Oscar shortlists for documentary and short doc.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWith this role that IDFA has gotten in this race, it brings together different worlds in the gathering because with the internationalization of the documentary branch of the Academy, a big part of these members are not based in the U.S. and many of them do come to IDFA,\u201d Arrate Fernandez says. \u201cSo here we have this crossing points where the U.S. side and the non-U.S. side can meet and engage. I think that\u2019s very, very valuable also for the whole industry.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tScreening more than 250 films, including work in VR, IDFA brings together thousands of film professionals from around the world. While the program is set, there\u2019s no telling what will develop on the ground \u2013 in meetings, at panel discussions, or as Arrate Fernandez puts it, \u201con the side\u2026 backstage.\u201d There, interesting possibilities emerge \u201cin terms of production contacts, who\u2019s talking to who. New things and new collaborations can come out of that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In her welcoming letter to IDFA guests, the festival\u2019s new artistic director Isabel Arrate Fernandez writes, \u201cIn these…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":183860,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[263],"tags":[18,117,100402,19,103608,17,103609,327,103610],"class_list":{"0":"post-183859","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-eire","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-idfa","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-international-documentary-festival-amsterdam","13":"tag-ireland","14":"tag-isabel-arrate-fernandez","15":"tag-movies","16":"tag-susana-de-sousa-dias"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183859","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=183859"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183859\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/183860"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}