Federico Urdaneta’s Green Bank Pastoral
The International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), the world’s largest non-fiction film festival, is scheduled to kick off in person and online on Wednesday, November 18, running through Sunday, December 6. With forty films representing fifteen Latin American and Caribbean countries, including Paraguay, Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Costa Rica, Colombia, El Salvador, Mexico, Ecuador, Uruguay, Cuba, Peru, Venezuela, Curaçao, and Haiti, IDFA 2020 presents a robust survey of contemporary non-fiction works from the region. Several selections by U.S. Latinx filmmakers also pay homage to works coming from the United States and its territories.
In competition this year are two Latin American feature length documentaries hailing from Paraguay and Argentina, respectively: Arami Ullón’s Nothing But the Sun / Apenas el sol and Maria Alvarez’s Le Temps Perdu / El tiempo perdido. Competing in its World Premiere, Nothing But the Sun follows the Ayoreo indigenous community in the Paraguayan Chaco, a vast and semi-arid region in the west of the country, as they grapple with questions of identity and preservation in the face of massive deforestation and the steady loss of ancestral lands.
Maria Alvarez’s Le Temps Perdu introduces viewers to a group of aging Marcel Proust fans who have been meeting in the same Buenos Aires cafe to discuss Proust’s seven-volume magnum opus In Search of Lost Time for the past twenty years. Shot in intimate black and white, the viewer becomes witness to these reading sessions that appear suspended in an oasis of calm, a warm embrace amidst the coldness of the modern technological world.
In the Competition for First Appearance are Francina Carbonell and Bruno Gularte Barreto with their first features The Sky is Red / El cielo está rojo and 5 Houses / 5 Casas. Also in competition are Carolina Arias Ortiz’s Rebel Objects / Objetos rebeldes and Federico Urdaneta’s Green Bank Pastoral in the section for mid-length documentary.
Fernanda Pessoa and Adriana Barbosa’s Same/Different/Both/Neither and Marlén Viñayo’s Unforgivable / Imperdonable are both competing in the category for short non-fiction. Carolina Admirable García’s At Eleven / A los once is representing Latin America in the Competition for Kids & Docs.
In addition to these traditional categories is the IDFA DocLab Competition for Digital Storytelling, a section designed to celebrate the multiple ways in which digital art is exploring the liminal space between the tangible and the tactile. This year, the selected titles include two Latin America projects: Anne Huffschmid and Pablo Martinez-Zarate’s Forensic Landscapes / Paisajes Forenses, an interactive web documentary on the search for victims lost to state and gang violence in South America, and João Inada’s Under the Skin / Na Pele, a 360-degree tour of Complexo do Alemão, one of Rio de Janeiro’s most dangerous favelas, through the eyes of three residents.
This year’s festival will also present an extensive program of non-competitive sections, including several favorites from competitions around the globe. In the ‘Frontlight’ section are Brazil Is Thee Haiti Is (T)here / O que Há em Ti by Carlos Adriano; Landfall by Cecilia Aldarondo; In My Skin / Dentro da Minha Pele by Toni Venturi; and The Rebellion of Memory / La rebelión de la memoria y Daniel Yépez Brito.
In ‘Luminous’ are 499 by Rodrigo Reyes; Between Fire and Water / Entre Fuego y Agua by Viviana Gómez Echeverry; Bosco by Alicia Cano Menoni; Dormant / La vida dormida by Natalia Labaké; The Hidden Shadow by Francisco Álvarez; The Night Flowers / Las flores de la noche by Omar Robles and Eduardo Esquivel; Option Zero by Marcel Beltrán; Soldier’s Woman / Mujer de soldado by Patricia Wiesse Risso; and Atardi — The Life of Curaçao’s Musical Genius Rudy Plaate by Selwyn de Wind.
In ‘Paradocs’ are Corporate Accountability / Responsibilidad empresarial by Jonathan Perel and Ouvertures by Louis Henderson and Olivier Marboeuf. In ‘Master’s’ are Epicentro by Hubert Sauper; Nardjes A., Karim Aïnouz; and Vivos by Ai Weiwei.
Representing the best from this year’s international festival circuit are El Father Plays Himself / El father como sí mismo by Mo Scarpelli; The Mole Agent / El agente topo by Maite Alberdi; Mundo by Ana Edwards; Narcissus Off Duty / Narciso em farias by Renato Terra and Ricardo Calil; Son of Sodom / Hijo de Sodoma by Theo Montoya; Non Western by Laura Plancarte; Once Upon a Time in Venezuela / Érase una vez en Venezuela by Anabel Rodríguez Rios; Songs of Repression / Cantos de represión by Estephan Wagner and Marianne Hougen-Moraga; and Things We Dare Not Do / Cosas que no hacemos by Bruno Santamaría.
And finally, IDFA will be screening a special program in honor of Italian-American director Gianfranco Rosi, including his Mexico-focused drama El Sicario, Room 164. Luis Buñuel’s Los Olvidados also makes an appearance on Rosi’s Top 10 list, to be screened in conjunction with the Guest of Honor program.
The International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam is running from Wednesday, November 18 through Sunday, December 6. For full information on this year’s lineup, visit the festival page here.
