IDFA unveils the first selections of IDFA 2018

This year IDFA presents the focus programs Me and Space, focusing respectively on the autobiographical documentary film, and the use of space in documentary-directing. Our main guest this year, Czech director Helena Třeštíková, announces the films she has selected in her Top 10. We also present the films from Třeštíková’s oeuvre that will screen in the Retrospective program. Every Tuesday in October, we announce new titles.

View the press release here.

Czech filmmaker Helena Třeštíková (Prague, 1949- ) became widely known for her time-lapse method of filmmaking, in which she sometimes follows her characters for decades. The intimacy of the daily lives of her protagonists subtly reflects the larger, turbulent history of her country and Europe. As she herself says, she always tries to include 'great' history into her small histories. We selected a retrospective of seven films by Třeštíková for this edition of IDFA.

At the invitation of IDFA, Třeštíková chose ten films that inspired her most, including two previously unseen films by Vera Chytilova and works by famous makers such as Joris Ivens, Milos Forman, and Krzysztof Kieslowski. In this way, Třeštíková makes a sort of tribute in a tribute. See which films our main guest chose for her Top 10, which you can watch during the festival.

IDFA is presenting a large-scale focus program entitled Me, which concentrates on personal, autobiographical documentary films. This selection comprises a number of forms of presentation through which the filmmakers investigate their own lives, telling at times deeply rooted personal stories. The program consists of more than 20 documentary films, both classics and premières, from different regions and by both new filmmakers and established names. Many of these filmmakers, including Naomi Kawase, Mahamat Saleh Haroun and Sara Fattahi, will be present at the festival and will discuss their documentary films following the screenings. More titles will be added when the competition programs are announced.

As part of its long-running series in which IDFA devotes attention to the art of documentary filmmaking, this year the topic for examination is the use of space in documentary film, physically, metaphorically, as a limitation or as imagined. The Space selection includes ten new titles in which space plays a crucial role, in different ways and on different levels. After the screenings, the festival’s regular moderators Nicolas Rapold (Film Comment) and Eric Hynes (Museum of the Moving Image) will talk in depth to directors such as Sergei Loznitsa (Victory Day), Karim Aïnouz (Central Airport THF) and Gabrielle Brady (Island of the Hungry Ghosts). More titles will be added when the competition programs are announced.

IDFA will take place from Wednesday, November 14th to Sunday, November 25th 2018 in various theaters in Amsterdam. The general ticket sales for IDFA 2018 will start on November 1st. IDFA Friends and relations can already buy advance tickets from October 29th. Tickets for some IDFA Specials will be available for purchase from October 18th.

The IDFA audience program is sponsored by Fonds 21, VSBfonds, and Creative Europe Media.