IDFA Is On Its Way

As always, the program of the annual IDFA documentary festival in Amsterdam is huge and overwhelming. Luckily, they have put selections of films together, called IDFA Pathways, curated to complement and enhance each other in terms of themes, perspectives, and current topics. De Facto is looking forward to their selection of films about borders, decolonisation and history, but we have selected some more films that we are curious about from a De Facto point of view.

Tartupaluk - Laakkuluk Williamson

Hans Island has featured a couple of times on our Off the Map evenings, being exactly on the border of Canada and Greenland (Kalaallit Nunaat), and de facto also the European Union. And now an imaginary republic is proclaimed on the uninhabited polar island! Very De Facto indeed. This VR immersion program by Greenlandic-Canadian Inuk artist Laakkuluk invites you to be a part of an Inuit utopia on a tiny circumpolar island republic of lovers, just south of the North Pole. Tartupaluk is the Inuit name of Hans Island.

No Man's Air - Gerco de Ruijter, Peter Delpeut

In the summer of 1974, Cyprus split into two Cypruses, a Turkish (non-recognized) part and a Greek part. In this film, full of found footage, a pilot of Cyprus Airlines looks back on the last flight from Nicosia, nowadays the only European capital divided by a wall.

The God That Destroys - Jyoti Mistry

The Sami are the Indigenous inhabitants of northern Scandinavia and an officially recognized minority group in three Scandinavian countries. This film combines sounds of a Swedish children’s choir, old black-and-white photographs with well-dressed Swedish men posing alongside Sámi people and classes of Sámi children learning to read and do arithmetic “thanks to” the Swedes. “This isn’t a story, it’s a warning,” says the voice-over. Interestingly enough, director Jyoti Mistry herself grew up under apartheid in South Africa. Her approach to Sámi history hails from a perspective of solidarity, placing it within a global context of colonial oppression and cultural assimilation.

Our Village From the Moon (Köyümüz küçük görünür) - Perihan Incegöz

After the devastating earthquakes of February 2023 along the Turkey-Syria border, Perihan Incegöz follows the residents of a Kurdish village affected by the disaster. Amid collapsed houses, cracks in the walls, and the nighttime chirping of crickets, the adults seek stability in familiar rituals and in being together.

An Incomplete Calendar - Sanaz Sohrabi

As lots of geopolitics is about resources and money, we are looking forward to this film by filmmaker, artist and researcher Sanaz Sohrabi. It’s the final instalment of her trilogy about resource extraction in non-Western countries. This time, she takes the album Rhymes and Songs for OPEC as her point of departure. And shows that oil is not simply an economic commodity, but also an important tool of political leverage.

Here Where the Fire Burns (Aquí donde arde el fuego) - Juan Manuel Sepúlveda

A film about a microcosmos of migrants, stuck in Mexico City. A film about being in transit, not in your motherland anymore but also not yet at your wished destination.