Guardians of documentary filmmaking have been playing it safe lately, says Orwa Nyrabia, artistic director of the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam, the world’s largest documentary film festival.
Talk to Deadline before the start of the 36the During the festival edition, Nyrabia surveyed the non-fiction film landscape and found streaming platforms and other distributors too risk-averse.
“I think especially post-pandemic, it seems like everyone in the sales world is really looking to make up for lost money,” he told Deadline. “And that means that we really only bet on very, very clear winning horses. So everyone is looking for movies with an existing IP address. I mean, they don’t say that. But when I look at what it is, it really works [for them]It’s about celebrities pre-defining their audience, and when that’s not possible, they resort to ready-made formats like serial killers and crime. In a way, it’s about trusting the safest bets.”
He remarked: “For me, this is a new phase of populism, even though these films were politically against populism, but they are as populist as films.”
Nyrabia said his goal for the festival is to present a program that is “different in the sense that it’s extremely fresh and not what the market is supposedly looking for.” This is what the market is looking for in our opinion. should search.” [We spoke a few days before Wednesday night’s opening ceremony which was interrupted by pro-Palestinian demonstrators. You can read about the controversy that ensued here].
“Our job as a festival, as I understand it, is to intrigue and play this game of intrigue with the market and say, ‘Maybe you’re wrong.'” Watch this film, look me in the eye and tell me he’s not great. And shouldn’t we take a risk with this film?,” he said. “In recent years – and I think it’s a pandemic and a post-pandemic – an enormous level of cowardice can affect my dear sales friends. I think it’s a mistake because they can’t all be Taylor Swift and stuff live. I mean, it takes some courage.”
This “safety first” mentality is not limited to American platforms and merchants, Nyrabia said.
“I think the US market has this problem, but the European market is no better today,” he noted. “The European market used to be more adventurous and there was more local interest in certain films, themes and so on. And I notice it less and less after the pandemic. That’s why I think that in the post-pandemic period everyone is trying to be as populist as possible.”
He added that such a strategy “will not work.” Not only does it deny the true ethos behind the profession, it will not work pragmatically.”
The festival, which runs until November 19, presents a showcase of 250 films from almost every corner of the world.
“This is our most international yet,” explained Nyrabia.
He gave it as an example 1489, a film premiered in the International Competition by director Shoghakat Vardanyan, “a new filmmaker from Armenia who made this brilliant film.” It is a very powerful film that is very personal at the same time. This is the story of how she and her family wait for news of her brother, who is missing on the front lines in Nagorno-Karabakh.”
Even in competition The clinic by director Midi Z, a native of Myanmar who now lives in Taiwan and is best known for his narrative work including Ice poison.
“Midi Z is a filmmaker whose fictional works have often been screened at Cannes,” said Nyrabia. “And now he’s made this brilliant documentary that somehow isn’t [quite] Hybrid, because the hybrid element is that a film is actually made within a film. And next door you will find the Indian master Anand Patwardhan, who is no newcomer to this scene [his film playing in International Competition at IDFA is titled The World Is Family]. So for me, that’s the adventure: to have a film by an up-and-coming filmmaker [Shoghakat Vardanyan] alongside a film by a major, well-known filmmaker.”
IDFA opened on Wednesday night with the world premiere of An image you will never forget, a film set in Ukraine and directed by Olga Chernykh. Nyrabia called the documentary “artistically very brave, but also as a film that is in some ways a personal film about the filmmaker and her family.” This is a film that goes there, but is in no way propagandistic. This is not a film that tells you the old views. It takes you into the human experience within this oppressive reality [of war].”
Gaza-based Palestinian filmmaker Mohamed Jabaly presents his new film Life is beautiful, documenting his experiences with a film project in Norway in 2014. While he was abroad, the border with Gaza was closed indefinitely, leaving him stranded in the Scandinavian country. But as the IDFA program says: “[T]The Norwegian government did not accept his Palestinian passport, meaning that Jabaly was now stateless.”
“It’s a brilliant film…It’s not a propaganda piece. It is a real exchange of experiences with the public and it is very valuable,” says Nyrabia. He noted the context in which Jabaly would participate in the IDFA, following the devastating Hamas attack on Israeli civilians on October 7 and the Israeli retaliatory bombings and invasion of the Gaza Strip that claimed thousands of lives. “My job here is to make sure he’s safe,” Nyrabia said of Jabaly. “Making sure that someone is at such a difficult time in their life with their family under fire and showing a film that’s close to their heart to an audience they don’t know, with professionals nearby and buyers and potential exhibitors – I have to do it. Make sure he’s protected and that he still feels it’s a safe place for him.”
Nyrabia described the choice of a film set in Gaza for the 2023 IDFA program as “kismet, serendipity … whatever you want to call it … We finished our programming work much earlier.” [the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel]. So we are not interested in a direct response. We are not first responders.”
In a way, though, nonfiction filmmakers with their sharp antennae almost act as “pre-responders,” hitting the ground running today in places that might explode in the future. For example, IDFA programmed the film by Simon Lereng Wilmont in 2017 The distant barking of dogs, a film that showed the impact of the Russian-backed separatist movement in eastern Ukraine, years before Russia’s full-scale invasion. Last year “Guy Davidi” was shown at the festival innocence, a film that examines the militarization of Israeli society. The documentary left viewers with little reason to hope for peace between Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories.
“I’ve said it and I’ll say it again and again: If you’ve seen documentaries, you’d have known from the beginning that this was going to happen soon, because a lot of filmmakers come from Palestine and Israel and other places in their films. Very.” The filmmakers helped us all a long time ago. They made it clear that this would happen. That’s if it’s the reality 1699873812 then it’s tomorrow. If it’s today, then it’s tomorrow,” Nyrabia said. “And that’s it. We didn’t listen.”
Nyrabia noted that his comment should not be interpreted as political. He made the point that documentary filmmakers around the world are being trained to have a keen eye for the human condition.
“I really give space [at IDFA] to this collective voice of filmmakers,” he noted. “They care about the world, and that’s why they chose this career.”
Nyrabia was born in Syria and studied acting in Damascus. In 2007 he made his first documentary film, Dolls: a woman of Damascus, directed by his wife Diana El Jeiroudi. When protests against the Assad regime broke out in Syria in 2011, in the early days of the Arab Spring, Nyrabia was among a leading group of international filmmakers who published a letter calling for democracy in Syria. A year later, the Assad government arrested and imprisoned him.
IDFA’s artistic director seems to think the same way as the late critic Roger Ebert, who described the film as an “empathy machine”, an opportunity to “step into someone else’s shoes or experience a perspective that the real world would never allow.” he said on Ebert’s website. posted it.
“I grew up in Syria, we grew up with Israel as an absolute enemy. I grew up in Israel [justified as] The reason we have a dictatorship – “Because it is necessary, we are constantly threatened by war.” Even the smuggling of VHS tapes [into Syria] The brilliant Israeli films opened people’s minds and made them realize that this is not some kind of homogenous enemy that you have to hate. It is so much richer than that. And there are brilliant people [in Israel] and there are critical people and there are many different kinds of wonderful people to be friends with, and not just by profession. There is the occupation, but then there is also all this wealth which is normal for any human society.”
He added: “That’s what the film did to me. It saved me from chauvinism and anti-chauvinism.”
Source: Deadline
Bernice Bonaparte is an author and entertainment journalist who writes for The Fashion Vibes. With a passion for pop culture and a talent for staying up-to-date on the latest entertainment news, Bernice has become a trusted source for information on the entertainment industry.
