IDFA 2009 Overview
IDFA, the International Documentaries Film Festival Amsterdam, is the largest and arguably most important documentaries film festival in the world. Held annually in November, it draws filmmakers, distributors, commissioning editors, critics, volunteers and audiences from around the world for ten days of film viewing, discussions and networking. IDFA's screening program presents more than 200 films, many of which are current releases of particularly interesting documentaries and masterworks from years past. There are also several categories of competition, which come with significant cash prizes ranging from 1,500 to 12,500 Euros.
IDFA 2009 Award Winners and Nominees
Best Feature Length Film - Winner - 12,000 Euros
- Title: The Last Train Home
- Country: China/Canada
- Director: Fan Lixin
- Synopsis: The film addresses the issue of Chinese migrant workers who move from rural village to the country's newly developed industrial zones to toil in factories so they can support families who remain at home. The film follows one family for two years, and culminates with their heartwrenching and harrowing efforts to get home to celebrate the new year. The couple waits for a ticket for days, plans confounded by the over demand for seats and a snowstorm that disrupts rail service. They persist, but face incalculable pressures in trying to keep their family together and ensure an education for their children.
Best Feature Length Film - Nominees
- Title: Enemies of the People
- Country: UK/Cambodia
- Directors: Thet Sambath, Rob Lemkin
- Synopsis: Thet Sambath, whose parents were among two million people who perished under the Khmer Rouge during the late 1970s, tracks down and confronts the murders, getting them to confess their deeds on camera. One of them even demonstrates how he cut people's throats. The horrific stories are in stark contrast to archival footage of propaganda newscasts showing happy singing farmers. Sambath's work eventually reveals the deeds of "Brother Number 2" Nuon Chea, Pol Pot's right-hand man, arrested and tried by a Cambodian court in 2007. With this film, Sambath has ended his 'project' so he can concentrate on his own future.
- Title: The Player
- Country: The Netherlands
- Director: John Appel
- Synopsis: Tracing his own attraction to gambling to his father's addiction to playing the horses, the director pursues an intensely personal and often amusing investigation of the compulsions that have influenced his and other addicts' lives.
Special Jury Award to A Film Not in Competition
- Title: The Most Dangerous Man In America
- Country: USA
- Directors: Judith Erlich, Rick Goldsmith
- Synopsis: The story of Daniel Ellsberg, the US Department of Defense analyst who, during the 1960s, blew the whistle on the American government's lies to the American people concerning their country's actions in Vietnam. Ellsberg released his confidential 7,000-page Pentagon Papers to The New York Times in 1971, bringing about a change in US policy.
Feature Length and Special Jury Award Jury Members
- Willeke van Ammelrooy, The Netherlands, Actress
- Geoffrey Gilmore, USA, Chief Creative Officer, Tribeca Enterprises
- Anders Ostergaard, Denmark, Filmmaker (Burma VJ}
- Jean-Marie Teno, Cameroon, Filmmaker (Sacred Places)
- Jenny Westergard, Finland, Commissioning Editor Finnish Broadcasting Company
Best Mid-Length Film (30 to 60 minutes) - Winner - 10,000 Euros
- Title: Iron Crows
- Country: South Korea
- Director: Bong-Nam Park Synopsis:Workers in Bangladesh's dangerous Chittagong ship demolition yards risk their lives and work under horrific conditions to earn meager wages which they send home to support families they've left behind in impoverished rural villages. We see Bilal, a 21 year old worker, narrowly escape being crushed by a collapsing metal framework and later, returning home for a visit, weeping about his new baby's blindness, a product of his wife's malnutrition during pregnancy. Back at the shipyard, boys no more than 12 years old slog through knee-deep mud to pull ships ashore for dismantling and are rewarded with oil-tainted rice for dinner. Yet everyone celebrates the arrival of a new ship for demolition because they desperately need the wages.
Best Mid-Length Film - Nominees
- Title: The Accidental Terrorist
- Country: Denmark/Bosnia-Herzegovina
- Directors: Miki Mistrati, Nagieb Khaja
- Synopsis: The film follows Cem Aslan, a Danish Muslim of Turkish descent, as he goes on a journey to find out why another young man with a background remarkably similar to his, wound up in a Bosnia prison, charged with terrorism.
- Title: Girls On The Air
- Country: Italy
- Director: Valentina Monti
- Synopsis: In Afghanistan, a 25-year-old woman has successfully established Radio Sahar and heads up a team of female reporters who broadcast news and music and exchange views with listeners, successfully withstanding the repressive milieu in her country.
Best Short Film (Under 30 Minutes)- Winner - 5,000 Euros
- Title: Six Weeks
- Country: Poland
- Director: Marcin Janos Krawczyk
- Synopsis: The film covers the first six weeks of a baby's life in a Polish orphanage, showing that the mother cannot keep the child because of her economic situation and that adoptive parents can quickly step in to assume their loving responsibilities. But the focus is on the baby, who seems helpless, lonely and terrified during the time between abandonment and adoption. 18 minutes.
Best Short Film - Nominees
- Title: Albert's Winter
- Country: Denmark
- Director: Andreas Koefoed
- Synopsis: Eight year old Albert experiences the joys and mysteries of the Danish winter while his mother, suffering from cancer, endures chemotherapy. 29 minutes.
- Title: Mum
- Country: The Netherlands
- Director: Adelheid Roosen
- Synopsis: In staged vignettes, this well known Dutch actress presents her own relationship and that of other family members to her elderly mother, who is suffering from dementia. 20 minutes.
Mid-Length and Short Documentaries Jury Members
- Lorenzo Hendel, Italy, Commissioning Editor, RAI
- Ibtisam Mara'ana, Israel/Palestine, Filmmaker
- Zola Maseko, South Africa, Filmmaker
- Jennifer Merin, USA, film critic, About.com (yes, that's me)
- Mercedes Stalenhoef, The Netherlands, Filmmaker
