Focus: Fabrications | IDFA Festival

Institute Festival Professionals

Focus: Fabrications

Focus: Fabrications

Fabrications investigates the image of truth often associated with documentaries. With a selection of films, we probe the difference between reality and realism and look at how films attempt to address this through a deliberate mix of fiction and documentary technique.

Focus: Fabrications is supported by Vfonds.

B

A Band of Dreamers and a Judge

A Band of Dreamers and a Judge

In Iran, a group of friends struggle with financial distress. They become obsessed with treasure hunting—which is strictly prohibited—and dream of finding a pot of gold. With the judge on their heels, will they succeed in accomplishing their dreams?

Bushman

Bushman

David Schickele

In this rediscovered film rich in subtle irony, a Nigerian drama student in San Francisco encounters racism at every turn. A fictional drama about his adventures unexpectedly turns into a documentary when he is wrongfully arrested.

C

The Clinic

The Clinic

A matter-of-fact yet mesmerizing portrait of a couple who are both artists and doctors. They try to alleviate the collective trauma of their damaged country in their own unique way in a shabby clinic in Yangon, Myanmar.

The Connection

The Connection

Eight junkies are playing jazz music together in a seedy New York apartment, while a filmmaker tries to shoot a documentary about them. In this provocative and influential classic by Shirley Clarke, the director pokes fun at cinema verité.

G

Gasoline Rainbow

Gasoline Rainbow

William Ross, Turner Ross

In a vibrant ode to the road trip, we follow five teens from small-town Oregon on their journey to the ocean. Shifting between fiction and reality, their adventure is filled with extraordinary encounters, sadness and lots of fun.

I

The Island

The Island

On a summer evening, future dance student Rosa says goodbye to her friends. This wistful coming-of-age movie is both a fiction and a making-of film, with scenes alternating between the beach party and the rehearsal room.

L

Letter from My Village

Letter from My Village

A docufiction film about the shy romance between Ngor and Coumba. The story is set against the backdrop of a harsh life in rural Senegal, and loosely framed as the filmmaker’s audiovisual letter about the village where she was born.

M

Mambar Pierrette

Mambar Pierrette

Mambar Pierrette is busy, but the dressmaker always has a listening ear for complaining local residents. She also has her own problems: never enough money, an absent husband, a sick mother. And this is even before disaster strikes.

N

Not a Pretty Picture

Not a Pretty Picture

Martha Coolidge

In this meta-documentary, Martha Coolidge makes a film of the rape she experienced as a 16-year-old. Through the production process, she examines how such an event can be viewed from different perspectives.

T

Tehran Has No More Pomegranates!

Tehran Has No More Pomegranates!

Massoud Bakhshi

Massoud Bakhshi’s intelligently edited, hilarious, hurtling musical compilation of archive footage and newly-shot images offers a critical and unadorned portrait of Iranian capital Tehran.