Johan Grimonprez named Guest of Honor for IDFA 2024

IDFA will be highlighting Johan Grimonprez’s uncompromising approach to challenging narratives and reinterpreting historical events through a critical, contemporary lens.

Grimonprez first gained international acclaim with his 1997 film dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y, which examined the history of airplane hijackings and the media's role in shaping public perception. His most recent award-winning film, Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat, unravels the decolonization of Congo, using jazz as a smokescreen and means of protest in the examination of the international context behind the 1961 murder of Congo’s prime minister, Patrice Lumumba.

Other films screening will be Double Take (2009), Shadow World (2016), Blue Orchids (2017) and more. With this retrospective, IDFA invites audiences to discover and reflect on Grimonprez’s singular exploration into the development of present-day media, from how world crises are represented to our own relationships to these platforms and technologies. 

 An extended conversation with IDFA’s Guest of Honor Johan Grimonprez will be the centerpiece Talk of this edition.

This edition, IDFA introduces the multi-year curated program Dead Angle. The program presents an ongoing exploration into our dead angles, both past and present—using documentary cinema as a torch to illuminate the dark corners of our awareness. This year’s program delves into the complex symbolism of borders, exploring them not just as physical barriers, but as profound metaphors for identity, community, and the human condition.

Among confirmed titles is The Great Wall by Tadhg O'Sullivan, an essay film that maps the borders around Europe in light of the migration crisis, based on a short story by Franz Kafka. In Route 181, Fragments of a Journey in Palestine-Israel by Michel Khleifi and Eyal Sivan, the Palestinian and Israeli filmmakers travel along the 1967 partition lines that divided Palestine, exploring how people evoke the frontiers that separate them from their neighbors.

By reflecting on how documentary filmmakers approach these simple yet complex territorial perimeters, the program will invite the audiences and artists to engage in meaningful discussion and nurture critical awareness. The first nine titles in the program have been announced; the complete list of selected titles will be confirmed on October 15.

In a dedicated program of nineteen films, Spotlight on Cuba will invite audiences and industry to revisit the complex political history of Cuba. With a retrospective of the pioneering Afro-Cuban filmmaker Sara Gómez, next to a special curation of films made by students of the EICTV (The International Film and TV School of San Antonio de los Baños, Cuba), the program will explore the paradoxes of our perception of Cuba as both revolutionary utopia and dystopia. The program also offers a glimpse into the ways these students exercise artistic freedom in one of the world’s most distinguished film schools.

With its most collaborative edition to date, the IDFA on Stage selection presents its boundary-breaking and interdisciplinary program of live cinema events. Bridging film, new media, and the performing arts, highlights include two projects presented together with IDFA DocLab—the innovative performance Thanks for Being Here by Belgian theater group Ontroerend Goed, presented together with De Brakke Grond, and live performance Drinking Brecht: an Automated Laboratory Performance by New York and Istanbul-based artist Sister Sylvester that puts microbiology into the mix. The full program IDFA on Stage program will be announced in October.

The 18th edition of IDFA’s pioneering new media program, IDFA DocLab, confirms the first titles set to premiere at an immersive documentary art exhibition, this year presented at De Brakke Grond, ARTIS-Planetarium, and the newly added location, Droog. These first announced titles are the works of the four winners of the Film Fund DocLab Interactive Grant, ranging from augmented reality apps to immersive installations. The full IDFA DocLab program selection will be announced in October.

The complete program will be revealed on October 15 at the press conference. Keep an eye on our channels!

Portrait by Koen Bauters