IDFAcademy 2026 kicks off with an inspirational talk by accomplished filmmaker Mehran Tamadon, together with IDFA’s Artistic Director Isabel Arrate Fernandez.

Practice presenting yourself and your project and connecting with the other participants. 

The first day is a wrap! Join us for a welcome drink, open to all IDFAcademy participants.

With concrete as his guiding theme, John Wilson, through a stream of endless humorous observations, paints a portrait of New Yorkers trying to hold things together in a city that, like old concrete, is threatening to crumble apart.

Fourteen-year-old Qihuo lives in a remote mountain village in southern China. After getting her first period, she sets off on a long journey on foot with two friends to buy a ceremonial skirt: a symbolic step toward adulthood.

How do you write a eulogy for a melted glacier? An Icelandic writer explores his family’s love of glaciers and the memory of his grandparents and the natural phenomena that connected them.

In diary-like form, jumping back and forth through space and time, bicultural filmmaker Viv Li searches for a home between traditional Beijing and queer Berlin, East and West, family and friends. A vivid self-portrait that moves between humor and tears.

For ten years, this coming-of-age documentary follows Gabin, a sensitive teenager growing up in the French countryside. Between the expectations of his hardworking parents and his own dreams, he gradually finds his own path.