The winners of IDFA 2020

IDFA announced the winners of the IDFA 2020 competition programs on November 26, 2020. All award videos can be watched here.

Radiograph of a Family (Norway, Iran, Switzerland) by Firouzeh Khosrovani is the winner of the IDFA Award for Best Feature-Length Documentary (€ 20,000).

“Radiography of a Family is literally an X-ray of a family. As discontent grows with politics, many people experience their families divided on ideological lines. Through masterful storytelling, Firouzeh shows how history and revolution brought about the political and personal divorce of her parents, a secular father and increasingly conservative mother. The family space changes over time due to forces of the outside world. It’s the great accomplishment of the filmmaker that she so subtly and poetically shows how divided politics can divide a room and change it forever. The fractured body of family life is told through images, photos, and enactments in such a way that the viewer, too, feels the loss.” the jury reported.

The IDFA Award for Best Directing (€ 5,000) went to Vitaly Mansky for Gorbachev. Heaven (Latvia, Czech Republic).

The IDFA Award for Best Editing (€ 2,500) went to Hong Kong Documentary Filmmakers for Inside the Red Brick Wall (Hong Kong), and the IDFA Award for Best Cinematography (€ 2,500) went to Nemesis (Switzerland), filmed and directed by Thomas Imbach.

The jury members for the IDFA Competition for Feature-Length Documentary were Marie-Pierre Macia, Ed Lachman, Alice Diop, Abdelkader Benali, and Finn Halligan.

Radiograph of a Family was supported by the IDFA Bertha Fund.

Alina Gorlova won the IDFA Award for Best First Appearance (€ 10,000) for This Rain Will Never Stop (Ukraine, Latvia, Germany, Qatar).

“A striking, beautifully shot and edited film that embarks on the disaster of war through a personal journey and rocks the spectator between furtive moments of joy and pain. This moving film encompasses traditions, modernity, death, and the power of moving forward. This Rain Will Never Stop is a powerful story that does not allow us to escape from the destruction and heart-wrenching losses of wars,” the jury reported.

The jury chose to give a special mention in the First Appearance competition to Diane Sara Bouzgarrou and Thomas Jenkoe for The Last Hillbilly (France, Qatar).

The jury members for the IDFA Competition for First Appearance were Diana Elbaum, Hubert Sauper, Intishal Al Timimi, Els Vandevorst, and Christoph Terhechte.

This Rain Will Never Stop was supported by the IDFA Bertha Fund.

The FIPRESCI Award (€ 5,000) was given to Ahmed Abd for The Fifth Story (Qatar, Iraq).

The FIPRESCI jury members were Ruggero Calich, Ziva Emersic, and Steven Yates.

The IDFA Award for Best Mid-Length Documentary (€ 7,500) was awarded to Nomin Lkhagvasuren for The Wheel (Mongolia).

The film The Blue House (Belgium, Senegal, Cameroon) by Hamedine Kane received a special mention in the Competition for Mid-Length Documentary.

The jury members for the IDFA Competition for Mid-Length Documentary were Audrius Stonys, Lara Khaldi, and Neil Young.

The IDFA Award for Best Dutch Documentary (€ 7,500) went to Paul Sin Nam Rigter for Dealing with Death (Netherlands).

A special mention was awarded to Pieter-Rim de Kroon for Silence of the Tides (Netherlands).

The jury members for the IDFA Competition for Dutch Documentary were Estephan Wagner, Heleen Gerritsen, and Nelson Makengo.

Unforgivable (El Salvador) by Marlén Viñayo won the IDFA Award for Best Short Documentary (€ 5.000).

The jury members for the IDFA Competition for Short Documentary were Margarida Cardoso, Samir Ljuma, and Tereza Simikova.

Boyi-biyo (Central African Republic, France) by Anne Bertille Vopiande Ndeysseit won the IDFA Award for Best Student Documentary (€ 2,500).

The jury awarded a special mention to I Don’t Feel at Home Anywhere Anymore (Belgium, China) by Viv Li.

The jury members for the IDFA Competition for Student Documentary were Ana David, Claudio Hughes, and Ena Sendijarević.

The IDFA Award for Best Children’s Documentary (€ 5,000) went to Ako Salemi for Shadegan (Iran).

A special mention in the IDFA Competition for Kids & Docs went to An Intermission (United Kingdom), directed by Edwin Mingard.

The jury members for the IDFA Competition for Kids & Docs were Bregt Van Wijnendaele, Franziska Ferdinand, and Martijn Blekendaal.

In its second year, the Beeld en Geluid IDFA ReFrame Award for best creative use of archive (€ 5,000) was awarded to Firouzeh Khosrovani for Radiograph of a Family (Norway, Iran, Switzerland).

The jury also decided to award a special mention to Dormant (Argentina) by Natalia Labaké.

The jury members for the IDFA Competition for Creative Use of Archive were Daniela Currò, Manuel Abramovich, and Gladys Joujou.

The IDFA Competition for Creative Use of Archive is supported by Beeld en Geluid, the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision.

Last year’s stipend recipient Marina Meijer presented the Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds Documentary Stipend (€ 50,000) to filmmaker Aboozar Amini.

With this stipend, the Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds awards a documentary talent with a grant of €50,000 that allows the recipient to make a documentary about a subject of their choice. The award is intended for a documentary filmmaker with a proven track record who has already earned modest recognition in the documentary field.

This year, due to new travel and exhibition restrictions, it was not possible to present all DocLab competition works equally to an international jury. Therefore, the festival opted to forgo the DocLab juries and awards this year. During the Awards Ceremony, the team introduced an alternative scheme to celebrate and support projects by taking the collective prize money, raising it to €15,000, and inviting the artists in competitions to apply for the Creative COVID Response Support scheme with the aim of presenting their work to new audiences after the festival - online, physically and/or in virtual reality. The prize money will be made available in three rounds, and the festival will work with an international jury to select the best proposals. With this support plan, IDFA DocLab also extends its research in collaboration with MIT Open DocLab into new forms of exhibition.

By the awards announcement date, IDFA 2020 still has 10 days to go. With more than 3,000 guests online, the festival received almost as many professionals as last year. These professionals visited the online Industry Program more than 28,000 times. The on-site part of the festival, in cinemas and venues, was almost sold out with more than 15,000 visits. To date, IDFA has received over 62,000 online film views. The International Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) continues until Sunday, December 6.

IDFA’s competition program is supported by Ammodo.

IDFA DocLab is supported by the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy of the Netherlands, CLICKNL,Gieskes-Strijbis Fonds, Netherlands Film Fund, Flanders Audiovisual Fund, VIVE, VIVEPORT, and Special Friends+.

DocLab research collaboration partners are  MIT Open Documentary Lab, Beeld en Geluid, ARTIS-Planetarium, CreativeXR, Diversion cinema, Het Nieuwe Instituut, POPKRAFT, The Immersive Storytelling Studio (National Theatre), and Tolhuistuin.

IDFA is supported by premium partner BankGiro Loterij and main partners VPRO, Fonds 21, de Volkskrant, WeTransfer, Ammodo,InsingerGilissen, VSBfonds en  Oxfam Novib.