IDFA: Female-Focused Fest to Open With Mehrdad Oskouei’s Iranian Prison Doc ‘Sunless Shadows’

Damon Wise

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Shoring up artistic director Orwa Nyrabia’s commitment to showcasing more women’s stories and platforming more women’s voices, IDFA has announced that this year’s festival features the highest percentage of female filmmakers in the event’s 31-year history: 64% of competition titles and 47% of the total program.

“Reaching a fairer representation was much easier than it seemed to be,” noted Nyrabia. “We only had to keep our goal in mind. The outstanding films that found their way to us this year was a humble reminder that we are in the presence of exceptional female filmmakers.”

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The festival opens with the world premiere of Mehrdad Oskouei’s “Sunless Shadows,” which depicts five young Iranian women complicit in the murders of abusive husbands, fathers, or brothers-in-law. Oskouei’s film competes in the Feature-Length Documentary Competition alongside Jørgen Leth’s “I Walk”; Heidi Hassan and Patricia Pérez Fernández’s “In a Whisper”; Marianne Khoury’s “Let’s Talk”; Kivu Ruhorahoza’s “Europa, ‘Based on a True Story’”; Laura Herrero Garvín’s “La Mami”; and Pushpendra Singh’s “Pearl of the Desert.” Rounding out the selection of 12 world or international premieres are Valentina Pedicini’s “Faith”; Hilal Baydarov’s “Mother and Son”; Maasja Ooms’s “Punks”; Marlene Edoyan’s “The Sea Between Us”; and Seung-Jun Yi’s “Shadow Flowers.”

There’s an equally global flavor to the debut titles competing for the First Appearance Prize, many with themes of family, place and belonging. The list comprises Alyx Ayn Arumpac’s “Aswang”; Alejandro Salgado’s “Barzakh”; Ilia Povolotskiy’s “Froth”; Eva Marie Rødbro’s “I Love You I Miss You I Hope I See You Before I Die”; Carol Benjamin’s “I Owe You a Letter About Brazil”; Małgorzata Goliszewska and Katarzyna Mateja’s “Lessons of Love.” Completing the lineup are Tali Yankelevich’s “My Darling Supermarket”; Meng Han’s “Smog Town”; Lucy Parker’s “Solidarity”; Marija Stojnić’s “Speak So I Can See You”; Simón Uribe Martínez’s “Suspension”; and Nino Orjonikidze and Vano Arsenishvili’s “A Tunnel.”

The same universality is true of the Mid-Length Documentary Competition, which this year features five world premieres. The selection is made up of Madeleine Leroyer’s “#387”; Jalal Vafaee’s “Anticlockwise”; Ira A. Goryainova’s “Bile”; Marina Meijer’s “Carousel”; Elina Talvensaari’s “Lady Time”; Remi Itani’s “A Long Breath”; Antón Terni’s “Mirador”; Andrea Testa’s “Mother-Child; Leslie Lagier’s “North”; Galina Leontieva’s “The Season When Velvet Antlers Get Ripe”; Pawel Chorzepa’s “Sonny”; Maciej Cuska’s “The Whale from Lorono”; and “You Think the Earth Is a Dead Thing” by Florence Lazar.

Over in the experimental DocLab section, projects competing for the Digital Storytelling prize are Metahaven’s “Elektra”; Francesca Panetta and Halsey Burgund’s “In the Event of a Moon Disaster”; Bruce Alcock and Jeremy Mendes’s Far Away from Far Away”; Agnieska Polska’s “The Happiest Thought”; Diego Kompel’s “The Inhabited House”; Jumoke Sanwo’s “Lagos at Large”; Tabita Rezaire’s “Mamelles Ancestrales”; Kylie Boltin and Matt Smith’s “Missing”; Roel Wouters and Luna Maurer’s “My Inner Wolf”; and Victoria Mapplebeck’s VR entry “The Waiting Room”.

The festival runs from Nov. 20 to Dec. 1.

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