Light Memories by Misha Vallejo
The 2024 edition of the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), the world's largest documentary film festival held annually since 1988 in Amsterdam, will run from November 14 to 24. Committed to addressing urgent social issues by presenting documentaries from around the world that reflect on the most pressing questions of our time, this year's selection features multiple Latin American films from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, and Mexico in various categories.
IDFA’s International competition features the world premiere of two Latin American films: Green Is the New Red by Italian-Paraguayan director Anna Recalde Miranda, and Light Memories / Eco de luz by Ecuadorean director Misha Vallejo.
In Green Is the New Red, during Operation Condor, opponents of various U.S.-backed dictatorships in Latin America were kidnapped, tortured and murdered. It paved the way for today’s “soybean republic” and its violent repression of Indigenous people and landless farmers. Light Memories explores absent father figures and fractured memories, shedding light on the emotional legacy passed down through generations. No one in director Vallejo’s family ever talks about his grandfather. A collection of photographs and slides is the starting point for a visually poignant exploration that digs into the effects of absent father figures throughout a family tree.
The festival’s Envision Competition features a selection of international or world premieres and shows unparalleled, stylistically arresting films, where visionary filmmakers forge new cinematic languages. Within this wide selection, four Latin American films stand out: Chronicles of the Absurd / Crónicas del absurdo by Miguel Coyula, Cuba, Huaquero by Juan Carlos Donoso Gómez, Ecuador; Loss Adjustments / Ajuste de pérdidas by Miguel Calderón, Mexico; and Paradise by Ana Rieper, Brazil.
In Chronicles of the Absurd, artist couple Lynn Cruz and Miguel Coyula deploy a string of secret audio recordings to expose the various forms of control and intimidation that independent artists in Cuba have to suffer. In true Kafkaesque fashion, oppression looms everywhere. Set on the northern coast of Ecuador, on Tolita Island, Huaquero follows Washo, a fifty-year-old unemployed fisherman who, tempted by necessity, accepts the invitation to raid a tomb, which could lead to the location of a new Moche treasure.
In Mexican filmmaker Miguel Calderón's Loss Adjustments, Pedro attempts to escape the catastrophic and corrupt scenarios he confronts daily by acting in a play. This ends up taking a higher toll on him than his work, forcing him to embark on a journey of self-discovery as he reflects on the parallels between real tragedy and staged drama.
Paradise is a dynamic video collage that captures the soul of Brazil and its inhabitants in words and visuals. Described by its director Ana Rieper as a "popular symphony, the film complexifies how the history of this South American country is marked by oppression and defiance, by resilience and solidarity. Music is the motor propelling this rhythmic, often ironic, and sometimes horrifying impressionistic blend of archive and new footage, interviews, voice-overs, commercials, scenes from television series, and surveillance camera images.
The Luminous section of the festival—presenting a wide range of styles and formalist approaches, from observational to personal to experimental, that delve into our deep emotional worlds and share truths from within—will screen the Argentine feature A While at the Border by Ile Dell Unti, the Brazilian featureThe Water Eyed Boy by Lirio Ferreira and Carolina Sá, and the Cuban short film Whoever Deserves It, Will Be Immortal / Será inmortal quien merezca serlo by Nay Mendl.
In A While at the Border, Argentine sisters Julia and Claudia Meirama were promising architecture students at the University of La Plata until in 1977, under the dictatorship, Claudia was kidnapped and tortured, and forced to flee to Sweden. Julia stayed behind in the north of Argentina. For years, they corresponded in an attempt to bridge the distance.
The Water Eyed Boy is the translation of the universe of the famous Brazilian composer Hermeto Pascoal into a visual sound poem. Sounds of nature, instruments made from trash, teacups, horses’ hooves, the hubbub of the market: everything is music.
Whoever Deserves It, Will Be Immortal tells the story of Sergio, Ubaldo, Yolexquis and Winston, who belong to different generations of the Cuban gay community. In this student film they reflect on their own experiences with discrimination, the good sides of being queer and the first years of the Cuban Revolution, when homosexuals were sent by train to concentration camps.
The “Best of the Fests” section features prize-winners, public favorites, and the year’s most eye-catching titles from the international festival circuit. This year's selection features Colombia's Soul of The Desert / Alma del desierto, Chile's The Fabulous Gold Harvesting Machine, and Mexico's State of Silence / Estado de silencio.
The Colombian film Soul of the Desert, Mónica Taboada-Tapia’s debut feature, is a poetic, character-driven road movie following Georgina, a resilient transgender woman in her early seventies from the indigenous Wayúu tribe. After decades of solitary exile from her community and forever awaiting the identification she needs to collect food aid, Georgina embarks on a journey across the desert to reconnect with the family that once rejected her, confronting both personal and tribal challenges amidst Colombia's corruption.
Set in the harsh climate of the Chilean Tierra del Fuego, Chile’s The Fabulous Gold Harvesting Machine, by director Alfredo Pourailly De La Plaza, follows Toto, who has labored for 40 years in the gold mines. The work is arduous, and after suffering a stroke at age 60, he fears his working days are numbered. With his father’s health and financial future at risk, his cowboy son, Jorge, devises an ingenious machine to free his father from his labors.
State of Silence, directed by Santiago Maza, is a compelling look at the dangerous, continuing risks committed journalists face in Mexico, where reporting on their country’s corruption and “narco politics” has led to the silencing and killing of some of their peers. The film's screening will be followed by a conversation with Mexican journalists Marcos Vizcarra and Maria de Jesus Peters, director Santiago Maza, and executive producers Diego Luna and Gael García Bernal
The Brazilian co-production Missing Rio Doce / Saudades do Rio Doce by French documentary filmmaker Claudia Neubern and the Ecuador-Brazil co-production Toroboro: The Name of The Plants by Manolo Sarmiento will screen on “Frontlight,” a premiere-only section that takes an artistic approach to critically examining the truth and exploring the urgent issues of our time.
Nine years after an environmental disaster in Brazil, Claudia Neubern travels to the affected area to meet locals. She finds people who are persistent and resilient, but powerless against a mining company that shirks its responsibilities. Missing Rio Doce gives voice to anglers confronted with a dead river and farmers whose land has become unusable and explores how greed has destroyed a once-prosperous community.
In Toroboro: The Name of The Plants, a botanical expedition in Ecuador’s Amazon becomes a medium for an indigenous Huaorani community to remember the genocidal colonization it suffered in the 1960s. Meanwhile, a group of ecologists from the capital tries to stop oil exploitation in the last remaining forests where the isolated Huaoranis still live, who to this day refuse to come into contact with civilization.
Three Latin American films will screen in “Signed,” a section of the festival highlighting the latest cinematic adventures of some of the most original filmmakers of our time and celebrating those with a unique artistic signature, beyond the canon: Apocalypse in the Tropics by Oscar-nominated filmmaker Petra Costa, Reas by Argentine director Lola Arias, and At this Moment, in the Nation’s Sky by Sandra Kogut.
In Apocalypse in the Tropics, Oscar-nominated filmmaker Petra Costa examines Brazil’s political landscape, focusing on the evangelical movement that paved the way for Jair Bolsonaro’s presidency. Through interviews with figures like televangelist Silas Malafaia and President Lulu da Silva, Costa delivers an urgent look at the fragility of democracy.
Reas is a breathtaking nonfiction musical that explores the dynamics between long-term and newly admitted inmates in a women’s prison in Buenos Aires. Through imaginative re-creations of daily prison life—including budding romances, voguing workshops, and a rock band formation—the formerly incarcerated ensemble delivers compelling performances that challenge and affirm their experiences.
At this Moment, in the Nation’s Sky follows the Brazilian presidential election of 2022, which ended with a victory for former president Lula da Silva beating the incumbent president Jair Bolsonaro by a tiny margin. Kogut’s documentary shows a country torn apart by recording the experience of supporters of both candidates.
In this edition of the festival, “Dead Angle,” a multi-year curated program that uses documentary cinema as a torch to illuminate the dark corners of our awareness will delve into the complex symbolism of borders, screening films such as El mar la mar by Joshua Bonnetta and J.P. Sniadecki.
Shot over several years in the Sonoran Desert near the US/Mexico border, El mar la mar weaves together oral histories of desert border stories with hand-processed, grainy 16mm images of the flora, fauna, and those who trespass the mysterious terrain, riddled with items its travelers have left behind. A sonically rich soundtrack adds another, sometimes eerie, dimension; the call of birds and other nocturnal noises invisibly populate the austere landscape. Over a black screen, people speak of their intense, mythic experiences in the desert: a man tells of a fifteen-foot-tall monster said to haunt the region, while a border patrolman spins a similarly bizarre tale of man versus beast.
Lastly, this year IDFA sets a spotlight on Cuba, through a special section that revisits the complex political history of Cuba. With a retrospective of the pioneering Afro-Cuban filmmaker Sara Gómez, next to a special curation of films made by students of the EICTV, the program will explore the paradoxes of our perception of Cuba as both revolutionary utopia and dystopia.
