IDFAcademy 2025 kicks off with an inspirational talk by accomplished filmmaker Firouzeh Khosrovani, together with IDFA’s new 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.

Journalist and filmmaker Mstyslav Chernov (20 Days in Mariupol) follows a Ukrainian platoon as it attempts to liberate a strategically located village. This gripping report confronts us with the futility and dislocation of war.

Festive opening night of the 38th edition of IDFA.

Produced entirely from archival footage, this film paints a picture of the propaganda machine surrounding dictator Alfredo Stroessner, who ruled Paraguay with an iron fist from 1954 to 1989.

Fly-on-the-wall documentary following the charismatic Dr Bini at work in his consultation room. As head of the fertility and gender department at a Milanese hospital, he takes an unconventional and deeply empathetic approach.

The war impacts young people in Ukraine as well as adults. Filmmaker Kateryna Gonorstai travels east through the country, filming schools in bomb shelters and lessons about mines. How do children cope with all this and how do they see the future?

A filmmaker returns from Taiwan to his native Myanmar, a nation with a violent history. His atmospheric, tranquil shots—including views from the ferry—capture a country adrift.

Bent over but self-assured, 90-year-old Agatha is still hard at work in the large garden of her old family farm in Manitoba, Canada. Captured on 16mm film, this is a sumptuous portrait of her world of traditional skills, far removed from modernity.