Signed: filmmakers with a signature beyond the canon

The selection reflects on lives lost, those left behind, and what remains after upheaval. Michal Marczak’s Closure closely follows a father in search of his missing son along the Vistula River near Warsaw, in a meditation on grief suspended between hope and fear. In Lo que en nosotros calla, Carmen Castillo breaks a 50-year silence around the death of a child, tracing how the wounds of Chile’s dictatorship and exile continue to reverberate through those left behind. 

Turning to the systems that shape everyday lives, Ava DuVernay’s 14th traces the legacy of the US Constitution’s 14th Amendment from Reconstruction to the present. Guillaume Massart’s Detention enters a French prison officers’ training school, following recruits as they grapple with the gap between classroom ethics and the unpredictable realities of life behind bars. 

Several established filmmakers return to IDFA with short films born from the urgency of the present, responding directly to the times we live in. In They’re Here, IDFA’s 2022 Guest of Honor Laura Poitras and Rachel Lauren Mueller offer a chilling account of the show of force by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Minneapolis. In Wild Asparagus, Avi Mograbi returns to his archives of a visit to Palestinian village Saffuriya with his friend Ali Al-Azhari, giving new meaning to decades-old footage.