– What I am going to see at IDFA –

Every year I try to see as many films as possible during IDFA, the documentary festival in Amsterdam. I find it fascinating to be presented with a completely different and unknown world, and that's exactly what you get at IDFA. In previous years, there were also some lighter works to see, but this year it is quite intense and dark. No cheerful fashion films, inspiring portraits of photographers, or hysterical dramas about filthy rich Americans. The tickets are now on sale, and for the films below, I managed to secure a spot. Shall I see you there?

Poverty, Inc.

If so much money is raised for and spent on poverty every year, why is it still not solved? Because the system is flawed; there are people who profit from others' poverty, and that ensures it will never change. I find it a fascinating topic.

Under the Sun

One of the countries that captivates me the most is North Korea. What happens behind those borders you will never fully know as an ordinary Westerner, but what you do know is that it is a pit of dry misery. In this documentary, a North Korean girl and her family are followed for a year. What is intended as a sincere portrait of a North Korean family is so influenced by government interference that that aspect, the propaganda, comes to the forefront.

Clear Years

Filmmaker Frédéric Guillaume films himself during the ups and downs of his life. His love Claire becomes pregnant, he worries about fatherhood, and over 9 years we see his relationship with Claire fail and his family fall apart. He uses the camera as if it were a diary, and if I may believe the IDFA website, these are “sharp and candid observations” that are “often poetic, but also laced with humor and self-deprecation.”

Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine

Ah Steve Jobs, the man who will be responsible for a thousand other documentaries in the coming time. This one zooms in on the relationship between his public image and his true character, the question of why so many people who didn't know him still had to cry over his death, and a critical analysis of the influence of his products on the relationship between man and machine.

Syrian Love Story

Yes, I was almost in tears during the trailer. For five years, filmmaker Sean McAllister followed a Syrian family. The mother is a revolutionary and, after a long prison sentence, cannot help but rejoin the revolution that is then breaking out. This puts the family under great pressure, as “love for the family and for the country compete for priority.” The film shows and makes you feel what it means to be on the run, and I think it is a good and educational idea for many people in the Netherlands to try to empathize with the other instead of protesting hard for their own interests.

Varicella

The combination of ballet and Russia has always had a huge appeal to me. That cold soulless country and then those small fragile girls who train and practice themselves to exhaustion at a barbaric ballet academy. Fascinating. In Varicella, we look at two Russian sisters, Nastja, 13, and Polina, 7, who study at the Eifman Dance Academy in St. Petersburg. An assessment is coming that will determine whether they can move on to the next year, and everything must be done to achieve that.