gshc2020.com

The Dutch doc fest has also added to its Best of Fests, Signed and Paradocs programs, while unveiling first projects for its new media program DocLab.

The IDFA Competition for Short Documentary “celebrates the versatility of the form, with 15 films that use creativity and imagination to push the boundaries of short documentary,” organizers said on Tuesday. “Together, they form a mosaic of styles, themes, and perspectives, driven by ambitious directors with singular cinematic voices and strong artistic visions.”

Among the titles are a tragicomic portrait of humanity and its fallibility, The Bus of Broken Hearts by Björn Carlberg and Johan Palmgren, which follows the world’s biggest cross-country ski race, where thousands of disheartened participants fail to make it to the finish line. Several titles turn their attention to the act of looking itself, including Perihan Incegöz’s Our Village From the Moon, set in the aftermath of an earthquake in southern Turkey, and PICNIC – In Light Invisible to the Human Eye by Jan Ijäs, which “follows Israeli tourists who travel to the border of Gaza to make a spectacle of the devastation of the Palestinian people.”

IDFA DocLab, in its 20th anniversary edition, will feature two films that the Netherlands Film Fund and IDFA DocLab have selected for the 2026 Film Fund DocLab Interactive Grant: The Love Files by Sanne De Wilde and Samir Veen, which invites audiences to step inside and critically review a “love file” application for a residence permit, and All the Downtime by Ant Hampton, immersing audiences in an algorithm-led distribution center, just as a power outage disrupts the order and gives way for creative disorder.

Also set for the IDFA DocLab and Tamara Shogaolu’s The Invisible Woman, a VR opera that recovers the story of Francisca de Angola, a 17th-century Black woman in Amsterdam, and Polymorf’s Microbiome Restaurant, with two sensory experiences exploring the human body as an ecosystem. Other projects include Orgasmagoria and Archive Arcade.

Signed “showcases the latest cinematic adventures of some of the most original filmmakers of our time,” and its selection of films “celebrates those with a unique artistic signature, beyond the canon,” IDFA highlighted. “The selection reflects on lives lost, those left behind, and what remains after upheaval.”

Among this year’s Signed films are Michal Marczak’s Closure, following a father in search of his missing son along the Vistula River near Warsaw, Ava DuVernay’s 14th, tracing the legacy of the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment, Guillaume Massart’s Detention, about a French prison officers’ training school, and They’re Here by Laura Poitras and Rachel Lauren Mueller, an account of the show of force by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Minneapolis.

And in Wild Asparagus, Avi Mograbi returns to his archives of a visit to Palestinian village Saffuriya with his friend Ali Al-Azhari, giving new meaning to decades-old footage.

Meanwhile, IDFA’s Best of Fests section will present 59 titles spanning diverse styles and genres and engaging with some of the world’s most pressing topics. Among them are Pegah Ahangarani’s Rehearsals for a Revolution, Ahmed Hassouna’s Citizen Osama, Lukas Marxt’s >1.5°C: Pyropolitics and the New World, The Illusion of an Everlasting Summer by Alessandra Sanguinetti, and Concrete Land by Asmahan Bkerat.

Paradocs, in which visual artists and filmmakers
present their explorations in non-fiction filmmaking, will this year feature 16 titles exploring the world “through bold formal experimentation,
genre-bending, and unexpected perspectives,” Amsterdam organizers said. “A hedonistic escape to a melting glacier is interrupted by apocalyptic climate change and existential anxiety in Susanne Regina Meures’s Eternity – adapting Florentina Holzinger’s performance art to the screen. In The Case Against Space, Graeme Arnfield offers a reconstruction of the first ‘strike’ in space, reframing the astronaut hero through a critical lens on capitalism and surveillance.”

Also, Johann Lurf’s Forever…Forever presents a vision of the cosmos in motion, with an ever-accelerating timelapse of the sun’s path filmed over 22 months. Plus, Ãsheghetam by Filmsaaz blends computer animation, fiction, and documentary in a kaleidoscopic portrait of queer love in Tehran, while in Together, ecofeminist art collective Neozoon uses archival and social media footage to explore the tension between communal life and the desire for private property.

Check out all the titles selected for the IDFA Competition for Short Documentary and Signed below.

IDFA Competition for Short Documentary

all that appears solid is built on blood, dir. Izdihar Afyouni, Gelare Khoshgozaran, (Palestine/United Kingdom/United States), 11’ – International Premiere

All the Hands I’ve Let Go, Laura Chará (Colombia/France), 23’ – International Premiere

Another Sky, Evi Cats (Belgium), 15’ – World Premiere

The Bus of Broken Hearts, Björn Carlberg, Johan Palmgren (Sweden/Finland), 34’ – International Premiere

Canina, Néstor López (Spain), 17’ – World Premiere

Certainties, Calum Walter (United States), 14’ – International Premiere

Eye Sun, Maricé Castañeda (Peru), 19’ – World Premiere

From a Vertebral Collapse Mountains Arose, Giovanni Benini (Italy/Belgium), 11’ – World Premiere

Man of Seed, María Abenia (Spain), 33’ – World Premiere

One Early Morning, the Alligator Swallowed Me, Nicolás Palacio (Colombia), 16’ – World Premiere

Our Village From the Moon, Perihan Incegöz (Switzerland/Turkey), 14’ – World Premiere

PICNIC – In Light Invisible to the Human Eye, Jan Ijäs (Finland), 26’ – International Premiere

Six Weeks, 3 Days, and All the Years Before, Ankita Gusain (India), 15’ – World Premiere

Spectators, Stanislavs Tokalovs, Betija Zvejniece (Latvia), 18’ – World Premiere

The Unabsorbed Past, yietnu (Yi Zhang, Nu Ha) (France/China), 26’ – World Premiere

Signed

14th, Ava DuVernay (United States) – Dutch Premiere

Alea, Jacarandas Hassen Ferhani (Algeria, France) – Dutch Premiere

Bára – Diary of a Rockstar, Helena Třeštíková (Czech Republic) – Dutch Premiere

Becoming Bird, Jan van IJken (Netherlands) – Dutch Premiere

Boatbuilders, Luke Lorentzen (United States) – Dutch Premiere

Closure, Michal Marczak (Poland) – Dutch Premiere

Dao, Alain Gomis (France, Senegal, Guinea-Bissau) – Dutch Premiere

Detention, Guillaume Massart (France) – Dutch Premiere

Elegy for the Forgotten, on an Endless War, Bani Khoshnoudi (Iran, France) – Dutch Premiere

Father’s House, Adam Nielsen, Eva Mulvad, Andreas Koefoed (Denmark) – Dutch Premiere

Flamenco Sketches, Isaki Lacuesta (Spain) – International Premiere

For the Moon, Éric Baudelaire (France) – Dutch Premiere

Ghazal-e Sorkh, Maryam Tafakory (Iran, United Kingdom) – Dutch Premiere

Going Home, Kamal Aljafari (Germany, Palestine) – Dutch Premiere

Hanabi, Ana Vaz (France, Brazil) – Dutch Premiere

Holy Wood Dust, Victor Kossakovsky (Italy, Spain, Germany) – Dutch Premiere

Letters From the Silenced Country, Andrei Kutsila (Poland, Lithuania, Germany) – Dutch Premiere

Lo que en nosotros calla, Carmen Castillo (France, Chile, Switzerland) – Dutch Premiere

Masao Adachi Takes a Passport Photo, Kamal Aljafari (Germany, France, Japan) – Dutch Premiere

My Undesirable Friends: Part II — Exile, Julia Loktev (United States) – Dutch Premiere

Once Upon a Time in Harlem, William Greaves, David Greaves (United States) – Dutch Premiere

The Price of the Sun, Jérôme le Maire (Belgium, France) – Dutch Premiere

The Revolution Against Death, Joshua Oppenheimer (Denmark, Sweden) – Dutch Premiere

Revolutionaries Never Die, Mohanad Yaqubi (Palestine, Belgium, Qatar) – Dutch Premiere

A Stolen Movie, Camilo Restrepo (Colombia) – Dutch Premiere

They’re Here, Laura Poitras, Rachel Lauren Mueller (United States) – Dutch Premiere

Time and Water, Sara Dosa (Iceland, United States) – Dutch Premiere

Tutu, Sam Pollard (United Kingdom) – Dutch Premiere

Union Town, Barbara Kopple (United States) – Dutch Premiere

Wild Asparagus, Avi Mograbi (Portugal, France) – Dutch Premiere