Comprehensive coverage of the 35th Edition of IDFA including a conversation with Orwa Nyrabia, the artistic director of the festival where we discuss this year’s festival experience, a pre-festival curated watch list with Wouter Jansen of Square Eyes, and three additional podcast episodes featuring in-depth interviews with filmmakers whose films are featured in the BEST OF FESTS Section. Among them, FORAGERS with Jumana Manna (Visions du Réel 2022), ALL THAT BREATHES with Shaunak Sen (Sundance 2022), and GEOGRAPHIES OF SOLITUDE with Jacquelyn Mills (Berlinale Forum 2022). We hope you enjoy these episodes!

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IDFA 2022: A Conversation with Orwa Nyrabia

Born in Syria, Orwa Nyrabia started his career as an actor and journalist before moving into film production. In 2002, together with his partner and fellow filmmaker, Diana El Jeiroudi, they established an independent production company. In 2008, he moved into festival organizing where he and his partner launched DOX BOX which grew to be the most important documentary film gathering in the Arab world. Just before the 5th edition, the organizers made a public statement announcing the suspension of the festival in protest against the violation of human rights in Syria. Instead they advocated for Syrian films to be shown in festivals around the world as an act of solidarity in light of the violence that by then had taken hold in Syria. Orwa was subsequently arrested in Damascus and the international film community came together and successfully called on the Syrian Government for his release. Now exiled in Europe, Orwa continues advocating for the power of documentary film and the rights of filmmakers.

[November 29, 2022] Last week brought the close of the 35th edition of IDFA and this year’s edition felt monumental. Not only for the sheer number of films on display (277) but also for the necessary and thought provoking panel discussions that were platformed - including an examination of the growing prosecution and incarceration of filmmakers around the world, the emergence of co-creation as a practice grounded in equity and justice, and a bold, critical examination of the power dynamics inherent in film festivals that are designed around exclusivity and competition.  All said, it was an impressive offering that gave air to many meaningful exchanges. Midway through the festival, I had the great chance to catch up with Orwa Nyrabia, the Artistic Director of IDFA, to discuss the organizing of this year’s festival experience and unpack some of the ideas and notions that were pushed to the foreground. 

IDFA 2022 Curated Watch List with Wouter Jansen of Square Eyes

[November 8, 2022] With such an overwhelming number of films on offer at IDFA, we invited Wouter Jansen to help curate a watch list of films that will be on display. In this episode, we go through each section of the program at IDFA and take turns selecting titles of interest to help navigate our festival experience. Wouter is the founder of Square Eyes, a sales and distribution company based in Vienna specializing in bold, author driven features and shorts. This year, he will be at IDFA with two titles, ANHEIL 69 by Theo Montoya and EUROPE by Philip Scheffner. Moderated by Christina Zachariades, Docs in Orbit

For the full IDFA 2022 curated watch list, including films from sections we did not have a chance to review on the podcast, please click here. EPISODE TIME CODE: 00:00 - Intro & About Square Eyes | 10:30 - Best of Fests | 16:30 - Paradocs | 23:25 - International Shorts Competition | 32:10 - Competition DocLab Immersive Non-Fiction | 35:35 - IDFA on Stage | 40:28 - Envision Competition | 45:35 - International Competition | 52:30 - Laura Poitras Top 10

Wouter Jansen is the founder of Square Eyes. He was the head of programming at the Go Short - International Film Festival. In 2019 launched Square Eyes where he specializes in helping outstanding non-mainstream films find the audience and recognition they deserve. His highly focused catalogue of films have premiered at prestigious festivals and won multiple awards at Cannes, TIFF, Berlin, Locarno and Clermont-Ferrand. 

Wouter is a Berlinale Talents alumni. Healso lectures at Le Fresnoy, HEAD Geneva and Netherlands Film Academy and is an expert for Locarno Open Doors and First Cut Lab.

FORAGERS with Jumana Manna

A conversation with visual artist Jumana Manna about her striking film FORAGERS, which recounts the dramas around the practice of foraging for wild edible plants in Palestine/Israel. In this conversation, Jumana shares insight into her artistic practice exploring the paradoxical politics of preservation and working within a hybrid format. Moderated by Teyama Alkamli, Docs in Orbit

Jumana Manna is a visual artist and filmmaker. Through sculpture, filmmaking, and occasional writing, Manna deals with the paradoxes of preservation practices, particularly within the fields of archaeology, agriculture and law. Her practice considers the tension between the modernist traditions of categorisation and conservation and the unruly potential of ruination as an integral part of life and its regeneration. Jumana was raised in Jerusalem and lives in Berlin.

She has participated in multiple film festivals including Berlinale, Viennale, BAFICI, IFFR, Visions du Reel, among others. She has also exhibited in museums around the world and her sculptures and films are also currently on view at MoMA PS.1 in New York.

GEOGRAPHIES OF SOLITUDE with Jacquelyn Mills

An in-depth conversation where we explore Jacquelyn's intuitive and collaborative approach to filmmaking including the different eco-friendly processing techniques she experimented with while crafting GEOGRAPHIES OF SOLITUDE. Moderated by Sean Vanwert, Docs in Orbit

Jacquelyn Mills is an award-winning filmmaker from Cape Breton Island, based in Montréal. Her works are immersive and sensorial, often exploring an intimate and lyrical connection to the natural world. Her film IN THE WAVES premiered at Visions du Réel and was theatrically released at TIFF's Cinemathèque. Her most recent work GEOGRAPHIES OF SOLITUDE had its world premiere at the Berlinale Forum. It was supported by Sundance Documentary Fund and Cannes: Docs in Progress.

Jacquelyn has worked as editor, sound designer and cinematographer for the National Film Board of Canada as well as other internationally acclaimed films

ALL THAT BREATHES with Shaunak Sen

A conversation with Shaunak Sen where he shares with us his creative process in making this film and the ecological philosophies underpinning ALL THAT BREATHES. Moderated by Christina Zachariades, Docs in Orbit

Shaunak Sen is a filmmaker and film scholar based in New Delhi, India. Cities of Sleep (2016), his first feature-length documentary, was shown at various major international film festivals (including DOK Leipzig, DMZ Docs and the Taiwan International Documentary Festival, among others) and won 6 international awards. Shaunak received the IDFA Bertha Fund (2019), the Sundance Documentary Grant (2019), the Catapult Film Fund (2020), the Charles Wallace Grant, the Sarai CSDS Digital Media fellowship (2014), and the Films Division of India fellowship (2013).

He was also a visiting scholar at Cambridge University (2018) and has published academic articles in Bioscope, Widescreen and other journals.