Dead Angle: Borders | IDFA Festival

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Dead Angle: Borders

Dead Angle: Borders

Dead Angle is a multi-year curated program that uses documentary cinema as a torch to illuminate the dark corners of our awareness. Starting with the theme Borders, the 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.

B

The Battle for Laikipia

The Battle for Laikipia

Daphne Matziaraki, Peter Murimi

Persistent drought is causing escalating conflict between herders and landowners in the Laikipia region of Kenya. This story about climate change and colonial legacy focuses on two families living in separate worlds.

Black Harvest

Black Harvest

Bob Connolly, Robin Anderson

A coffee plantation owner of multi-ethnic origin expands his enterprise together with members of his tribe. Is he a neo-colonialist taking advantage of his Ganiga family, or a new-style tribal leader who can bring economic prosperity?

Bloodline

Bloodline

Wojciech Węglarz

The arbitrariness of national borders, the effects humans have on nature, and the unseen victims: in this short film we see all this through the eyes of a lost bison. A new perspective on the cold reality of Fort Europe.

D

The Diary of a Sky

The Diary of a Sky

Lawrence Abu Hamdan

“Private ear” Lawrence Abu Hamdan collected data and audio recordings from Israeli fighter jets over Lebanon. This “symphony of violence” is the soundtrack to shots of Lebanese airspace in an audiovisual essay.

G

The Great Wall

The Great Wall

Tadhg O'Sullivan

This essayistic documentary maps the borders around Europe in light of the migration crisis, through images that verge on the poetic. Based on a short story by Franz Kafka.

The Guest

The Guest

Zvika Gregory Portnoy, Zuzanna Solakiewicz

A Polish family takes in a Syrian refugee who is trapped in the grim border area between Polish and Belarusian pushbacks. Time is running out and there are few options. Despite the language problems, they develop a bond.

I

In the Open

In the Open

Guillaume Massart

Over the course of the year that filmmaker Guillaume Massart spends in a Corsican prison without walls and barbed wire, what begins as an observational documentary develops into a breathtaking quest for humanity.

Infiltrators

Infiltrators

The Palestinians’ search for openings in the wall at the Qalandia checkpoint is nerve-racking. Unsentimentally, Khaled Jarrar shows both the humiliation and the resistance against the absurdity and repression that define daily life.

J

Jakub

Jakub

Jana Ševčíková

The life story of Jakub serves as a symbol for the history of the marginalized Ruthenian community in Northern Romania and Western Bohemia. From interviews with other residents of his village, an oral history of a displaced people emerges.

L

The Landscape and the Fury

The Landscape and the Fury

A hypnotic essay film about a small border town in Bosnia where asylum seekers are attempting to cross into the EU. At the same time, the local community is still suffering from the after-effects of the battle that took place there three decades ago.

M

El mar la mar

El mar la mar

Joshua Bonnetta, JP Sniadecki

Since the 1990s, thousands of migrants have died in the Sonoran Desert, on the border of Mexico and the United States. A poetic exploration of this inhospitable terrain.

Mutts

Mutts

Halima Ouardiri

Atmospheric shots accompanied by spot-on sound design capture the daily life of hundreds of stray dogs in a Moroccan shelter. With resignation they unknowingly wait to be adopted.

O

On the Border

On the Border

Gerald Igor Hauzenberger, Gabriela Schild

Three residents of Agadez explain how the international migration crisis has changed their lives. Strict EU policies brought poverty, unemployment, and a drug epidemic to this historic desert city in Niger.

R

Respite

Respite

An essay documentary using intertitles to comment on the infamous Westerborkfilm, an unreleased propaganda film about life in Westerbork, the Dutch World War II transit camp. What information can be gleaned from the images, and what remains hidden?

Route 181, Fragments of a Journey in Palestine-Israel

Route 181, Fragments of a Journey in Palestine-Israel

Michel Khleifi, Eyal Sivan

A Palestinian and an Israeli filmmaker travel together along the partition lines that divided Palestine according to the UN resolution of 1947. The people they meet each have their own way of evoking the frontiers that separate them from their neighbors.

T

There Are So Many Things Still to Say

There Are So Many Things Still to Say

Shortly before his death, the celebrated Syrian playwright Saadallah Wannous reflects on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A poetic farewell to a generation of intellectuals whose political identity is based on conflict and disillusionment.

W

Would You Have Sex with an Arab?

Would You Have Sex with an Arab?

Yolande Zauberman

A documentary filmmaker dives into the nightlife of the Israeli coastal city of Tel Aviv with a simple, yet thorny, political and deeply loaded question: would you have sex with an Arab?