The 37^e edition of the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam is in full swing, after opening with the world premiere of a film that could be called part non-fiction, part fiction, part real and part artificial.

About a hero Werner Herzog plays the lead role, or an AI facsimile thereof, and uses a famous quote of his as a starting point: the German filmmaker once noted: “A computer will not make a film as good as mine in 4,500 years.” To put that to the test, director Piotr Winiewicz worked with machine learning engineers to task AI with writing a script based on Herzog’s cinematic work (Herzog allowed the undertaking).

The result is a story about a possible suicide or murder of a man in a German industrial town who worked at a company developing a mysterious ‘infinity machine’. A supporting character has a passionate affair with a toaster (I’m not sure what that says about Werner Herzog or the “ghost” of AI).

About a hero is one of dozens of films by a baker participating in the International Competition at IDFA, almost all of them in world premiere. In total, the festival presents 254 documentaries and 27 new media projects.

“I think we have a brilliant program,” says IDFA artistic director Orwa Nyrabia. “We have very strong competitions. I dare say there will be instant classics here. There are really brilliant films.”

This is Nyrabia’s 7^e and last year running the festival. Earlier this month he announced that he would step down in July 2025.

“Don’t feel sad,” Nyrabia told Deadline. “If you trust me, trust me on this point: this is the right moment, this is the right moment to do this in the interest of everyone, of IDFA and of me.”

Nyrabia, born in Syria, succeeded co-founder of IDFA and former festival leader Ally Derks in 2018. During his tenure he had to negotiate the pandemic and last year he faced one of his biggest challenges when protests broke out at the festival over Israel’s invasion. of Gaza after October 7^e Hamas covert attack on Israel. IDFA could have played it safe this year by avoiding content from that part of the world, but in fact the 2024 program is full of films from Israel, Palestine and Lebanon. Among them is Eyes of Gazaa “hellish portrait” that follows “three Palestinian journalists in northern Gaza as they are forced to endanger their lives trying to do their jobs,” as the IDFA program writes.

“This is a film, I think, the first to come out from the newly launched OTT platform of the Al Jazeera network called Al Jazeera 360,” notes Nyrabia. “This film is particularly interesting because in a sense it is a report that sticks with these three journalists on the ground in Gaza. By staying with them – when they sleep and when they wake up, when they see their children and when they go to work – it in a way makes this kind of reporting just that little bit more relevant for a festival like IDFA.”

Screening in International Competition is the world premiere of Rule of stonedirected by Israeli-Canadian filmmaker Danae Elon. “Rule of stone is an exceptional film that looks at the history of Jerusalem as a city and its architecture as an enforcer of colonial power,” notes Nyrabia.

He also quotes The 1957 transcriptsdirected by Israeli filmmaker Ayelet Heller, noting that it is a film “built on recently revealed documents from Israeli archives about a massacre that took place in 1957, in which the inhabitants of a Palestinian village within Israel’s borders were slaughtered in a single day and all perpetrators were murdered. later acquitted.”

IDFA also shows the 2003 film Route 181, Fragments of a journey in Palestine-Israela documentary directed by Palestinian filmmaker Michel Khleifi and Israeli filmmaker Eyal Sivan, who sees Nyrabia “as a commentary on a simplified identity politics in which we only imagine a conflict between inherited identities. So people who belong to this heritage fight against the others who belong to another heritage. And I think there is another, third way that creates a new identity, which is the identity of filmmakers who meet around an ethical position, who meet around making films with a real belief in solidarity with those who are oppressed .”

In the Best of Fests section – limited to top documentaries from around the world that premiered at previous festivals – IDFA presents Oscar candidate No other countrywinner of the top prize for documentary at the Berlin Film Festival in February. Set in a rocky and remote area of ​​the West Bank, where Palestinian villagers are subject to an eviction order by the Israeli army, the film is directed by a collective of Palestinian and Israeli filmmakers. No other country was supported by a grant from IDFA’s Bertha Fund.

“When people watched the great documentaries made by different filmmakers with different backgrounds about the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict or of Palestine-Israel, I think to say the least what happened last year (on October 7) .^e) would not have been a surprise if it had not been avoided right away,” Nyrabia notes. “There is so much that you can become cynical about what we can do. But I also think that after all this terrible year (of violence), watching new movies, even watching the old ones, takes on a different meaning. It will be a different experience. And I hope it helps.”

Together with No other countryfilms in the Best of Fests section Sugar cane And Blink (both from National Geographic), War game, Union, State of silence, Sabbath QueenMTV documentary films’ Black Box Diary, Agent of happiness from Bhutan and that of Asif Kapadia 2073.

IDFA’s guest of honor this year is Belgian filmmaker Johan Grimonprez, director of the Oscar-winning film Soundtrack of a coup. The documentary explores a key moment in history in the late 1950s and early 1960s, when many African countries gained their independence after long periods of colonial rule. But in the case of Congo, Belgium and the US were reluctant to relinquish the country’s mineral wealth following the election of Patrice Lumumba as Congo’s first democratically elected leader. Belgium, the US and even the UN Secretary General conspired to depose the charismatic pan-African politician.

Nyrabia describes Grimonprez as an “outstanding, exceptional arthouse filmmaker who brings together artistic sensibilities and language that is truly unique with very serious political, historical research. He does this in a very special way. To some extent, this is what I would like to see more of in the documentary world.”

IDFA runs from November 14 to 24 in the Dutch capital. Shortly after the US presidential election, in which border security became a leading issue, the festival offers a timely feature called Dead Angle: Borders, a showcase of 17 films that deal with the subject in one way or another. The slate includes On the borderset in the desert city of Agadez in Niger, which has been a “hub of trade routes” since time immemorial, as the program notes. “But Agadez is also a place where migrants pass on their way to Europe.”

The guestdirected by Zvika Gregory Portnoy and Zuzanna Solakiewicz, it revolves around the border of Poland and Belarus, where Poland has built a long wall to keep out mainly Arab refugees. In the film, a Polish family “takes in an exhausted Syrian refugee, 27-year-old Alhyder… Without a hint of sensationalism, the camera reads the emotions on the faces of the silent Polish relatives and their grateful guest. The situation is dire and a solution remains out of reach.”

“I’m really happy that we’re doing this sideshow called Dead Angle. This is a multi-year program. Every year we look at one ‘blind spot’ through film,” Nyrabia explains. “We decided, okay, let’s think about the borders this year… these lines that put countries between them and die for them; There is a certain absurdity in the concept of borders. I think borders are clearly one of the most important questions of history right now, like how do we look at relationships between different groups of people, between different countries and their borders?”

Nyrabia continues: “(Dead Angle: Borders) really became a very meaningful program that goes all the way from the idea of ​​a ‘Fortress Europe’ that closes its borders to the other, to the history of Palestine-Israel and that moving border that was created in ’47, but remains in constant flux and is always contested or remains at the center of the problem.’

Sometimes thematic elements only come together after the festival program has been selected, Nyrabia adds. “A lot of ideas, when you’re working on the program, these are separate ideas, but when they come together you realize that you’ve been working in a kind of synergy, even though it wasn’t all planned schematically, but it’s coming together.”