IDFA (17 – 28 November) has just unveiled the two focus programs of its upcoming edition: «The Future Tense» and «unConscious Bias». Alongside the announcement, details on the fifteenth edition of IDFA DocLab, and the corresponding theme program «Liminal Reality», which acts as a celebration of ambiguity in life, tech, and art, have also been released. All in all, nineteen titles have been announced as part of the early wave of programming decisions.
«The Future Tense» is a programme presenting a mosaic of cinematic reflections and contemplations of the future, exploring what might lie beyond the vanishing point. What does that mean, you ask? The Future Tense looks to filmmaking as a precious yet powerful tool to comprehend the abstraction of what is yet to happen, and the potential of the documentary art form to peer over the horizon of time. Zhao Liang’s I’m So Sorry, Yael Bartana’s Two Minutes to Midnight, Nikolaus Geyrhalter’s Homo Sapiens, Kidlat Tahimik’s Perfumed Nightmare, and Peter Brosens and Dorjkhandyn Turmunkh’s State of Dogs make up the first films in the programme.
«unConscious Bias» will be made of several titles and explore the meaning of the colonial past, and the many ways that it leaves its mark on the present. Drawing inspiration from Johan van der Keuken’s Amsterdam Global Village, the programme will also include Alice Diop’s We, Hito Steyerl’s The Empty Center, Jean-Gabriel Périot’s Returning to Reims (Fragments), Shin-ichi Ise’s Now is the Past, and Erika Etangsalé In The Billowing Night make up the programmes first titles.
