How IDFA Became a Pivotal Pit Stop on the Oscar Campaign Circuit
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For several years, Oscar-winning director Roger Ross Williams (“Life, Animated”) hosted an intimate IDFA paella party at his apartment in Amsterdam for attending directors, producers and editors. But in 2018, Williams and his co-host, documentary producer, and the founder of Motto Pictures, Julie Goldman (“The Velvet Underground”), realized that the annual event had transformed into an award season stop.
“At one point, we looked around, and the whole party was filled with the international AMPAS (Academy of Motion Arts and Sciences) members,” says Goldman. “Then, the last year we had the party, someone rang the buzzer an hour before it was supposed to start. We buzzed him up, and it was this guy named Alex, and he said, ‘I was told that I have to come to this party.’”
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It turned out that Alex was Alex Honnold, the subject of “Free Solo” – a film that would later win the Oscar for best feature documentary.
In 2019, William’s paella party became a soiree hosted by the Academy and held at Amsterdam’s Hotel Sofitel. On Monday, after a two-year hiatus due to COVID, the Academy will host another party to “celebrate the Academy’s global documentary community.” Williams can be credited for the party’s pivot from a small get-together to a pivotal stop in the Oscar campaign season.
After becoming a member of the AMPAS’ Board of Governors in 2016, Williams spearheaded the expansion of the documentary branch to represent 52 countries, which led it to becoming the most geo-diverse of the Academy’s 17 branches. In his six years on the Board of Governors, Williams worked with IDFA and other groups to increase the nonfiction branch from some 300 filmmakers to more than 630, including 168 based outside the U.S. Many of those international doc branch members travel to IDFA to screen docs vying for Oscar recognition for the first time.
“You can see how much power that block of international voters who are now in the doc branch have just by looking at everything from, say, (Oscar-nominated films) ‘Winter on Fire’ to most recently ‘Writing With Fire,’” says Vinnie Malhotra, Showtime’s executive VP of nonfiction programming. “At IDFA, you see some of those international films and how they are resonating and how international voters are talking about the docs and the awards race. Often those conversations are very different than the conversations you’re having with people at a U.S.-based festival. So, I would say that there has been a natural turn in the awards race in the documentary feature category.”
Showtime has three films at IDFA this year: Kathryn Ferguson’s “Nothing Compares,” Jason Kohn’s “Nothing Lasts Forever,” and Martin Scorsese and David Tedeschi’s “Personality Crisis: One Night Only.”
Outside the official selection, Showtime will also screen Dror Moreh’s “Corridors of Power,” an examination of how American leaders have responded to reports of genocide and mass killing of civilians since the fall of the Soviet Union. The film is one of 26 docus paying to be part of the fest’s Market Screenings section, which launched last year.
Along with “Corridors of Power,” Alex Pritz’s “The Territory” (Nat Geo), Daniel Roher’s “Navalny” (CNN/HBO Max), Tia Lessin and Emma Pildes’ “The Janes” (HBO Max), Ondi Timoner’s “Last Flight Home” (MTV Documentary Films), Sara Dosa’s “Fire of Love” (Nat Geo), Sacha Jenkins’ “Louis Armstrong’s Black & Blues” (Apple TV+), and Ryan White’s “Good Night Oppy” (Prime Video) are also screening at IDFA’s Market Screening.
“The distributors want to utilize IDFA as one of the big opportune stages for European doc branch and international voters,” says Cinetic Media’s Jason Ishikawa. “So having in-person screenings and opportunities to bring their talent over to Amsterdam is a really important moment in the awards circuit.”
Ryan Harrington, curator at Jacob Burns Center and Emmy-winning producer (“The Cave,” “Becoming Cousteau”), adds, “Even if companies aren’t getting their films into IDFA, they are still going and bringing their filmmakers because it is part of the rollout of a film that is vying for Oscar consideration. It’s part of the see-and-be-seen events that you need to be at to promote your film.”
Directors currently at IDFA pushing their respective films striving for an Oscar nod include Lessin and Pildes (“The Janes”), Roher (“Navalny”), “Wildcat” helmers Melissa Lesh and Trevor Frost, “Sr.” helmer Chris Smith, and “Nothing Last Forever” director Jason Kohn.
“We are very excited to get our films out and in front of the IDFA audience,” says Malhotra. “The industry that comes to IDFA has grown, and it’s not just its size, but its influence and its power within the awards process.”
IDFA’s artistic director Orwa Nyrabia considers the fest’s recent turn into a mecca for awards-seeking documentaries as a natural turn of events.
“There are many other important things in the world; it’s not only the Oscars,” he says. “But when we look at the truly massive and escalating size of the Oscars in the mindset of American professionals, I think it’s just normal. Our festival takes place in November. This is the campaigning time. Our festival is a platform that brings a majority of non-American Oscar voters from the documentary branch.”
While Williams can’t attend this year’s fest, he is proud that IDFA has become a key stop in the awards process.
“The race is on, and IDFA is part of it,” Williams says.
Goldman, on the other hand, isn’t so sure the shift from a small, European doc fest into an event that is a campaign pit stop is such a good thing.
“It has been disheartening to see what keeps happening with the overwrought expansion of campaigning for awards in the documentary world, and that has now reached IDFA with endless emails to the Academy documentary branch about Market Screenings and the parties that the streamers have launched as part of their awards push.”
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