This year's focus program critically explores 'institutions'

Dead Angle is IDFA’s multi-year focus program that looks at the systemic structures that shape our lives—using documentary cinema to reveal what remains outside our direct field of vision. 

This year’s program focuses on institutions, inviting a close examination of how they operate, where they falter, and their role moving forward. Documentary film offers a lens to trace their histories and contradictions—and to reflect on their role in shaping society and the civic structures we collectively sustain today. 

Among confirmed titles are the close studies of democracy and the democratic process. Frederick Wiseman’s State Legislature (2006) offers an observational portrait of the Idaho Legislature, capturing the slow, deliberate unfolding of lawmaking by citizen legislators. Several titles extend our perspective beyond the Western scope, examining the afterlives of colonial institutions and the ways they are being contested and reclaimed. In How to Build a Library (2025) by Maia Lekow and Christopher King, we follow the renovation of a former colonial library in Nairobi as it is transformed into a center for African literature. In Checks and Balances (2015) by Malek Bensmaïl, we witness the journalists with Algeria’s El Watan newspaper continued fight for press freedom.