AMSTERDAM — Delivering on new artistic director Orwa Nyrabia’s commitment to giving space to documentaries from the global south, this year’s IDFA festival handed its main prize to Anand Patwardhan’s “Reason”, described by the festival as “a broad-ranging examination of Indian society, in which secular rationalists are hunted down as they attempt to stem the rising tide of religious and nationalist fundamentalism.”
At a ceremony held at the International Theater Amsterdam, jury members Daniela Elstner, Jean-Michel Frodon, Tala Hadid, Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, and Alina Marazzi voted “unanimously” for Patwardhan’s 261-minute film, praising its “epic storytelling of the rise of the far right in one of the most populated countries of this planet … in a way that acknowledges the complexity of the situation but puts it in a very understandable shape.”
In second place, the Special Jury Award went to the crowd-pleasing dogs-in-a-skatepark doc “Los Reyes” by Bettina Perut and Iván Osnivikoff. The jury admired the film “for the creative and beautiful way it displaces the viewer’s gaze by associating a sensible look at non-human, wonderful characters, and the soundtrack that connects daily lives of animal and human stray dogs”.
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IDFA runs until Sunday Nov. 25.
Among the other awards:
IDFA Competition for Feature-Length Documentary
IDFA Award for best feature-length documentary:
“Reason” (Anand Patwardhan, India)
IDFA Special Jury Award for feature-length documentary
“Los Reyes” (Bettina Perut and Iván Osnovikoff, Chile/Germany)
IDFA Competition for First Appearance
IDFA Award for best first appearance
“Giacinto Scelsi. The First Motion of the Immovable” (Sebastiano d’Ayala Valva, France/Italy).
Special Jury Award for first appearance
“Kabul, City in the Wind” (Aboozar Amini, Netherlands/Afghanistan/Japan/Germany).
IDFA Competition for Mid-Length Documentary
The IDFA Award for best mid-length documentary “Summa” (Andrei Kutsila, Poland/Belarus).
The IDFA Special Jury Award for mid-length documentary
“In Touch” (Pawel Ziemilski, PolandIceland)
IDFA DocLab Competition for Digital Storytelling
The IDFA DocLab Award for digital storytelling
“1 the Road” (Ross Goodwin, U.S.)
IDFA DocLab Competition for Immersive Non-Fiction
The IDFA DocLab Award for immersive non-fiction
“Eat | Tech | Kitchen” (Klasien van de Zandschulp & Emilie Baltz Netherlands, U.S.)
IDFA Competition for Short Documentary
The IDFA Award
“I Signed the Petition” (Mahdi Fleifel, United Kingdom, Germany, Switzerland)
Special Jury Prize
“And What Is the Summer Saying” (Payal Kapadia, India)
IDFA Competition for Kids & Docs
The IDFA Award for best children’s documentary
“Dancing for You” (Katarzyna Lesisz, Poland)
The IDFA Special Jury Award for children’s documentary:
“The Man Who Looked Beyond the Horizon (Martijn Blekendaal, the Netherlands).