Forum Catalogue | IDFA 2025

Forum Catalogue

IDFA Forum wishes to thank its funders and sponsors

Producers Connection is supported by

Producers Breakfasts are hosted by

Forum Lunches are hosted by

PRODUCERS CONNECTION PROJECTS

22 The Black Wedding - 7 Years of Eternal Mourning

24 Eleven Ears

26 Flying like a Bird

28 Four Comrades, One Echo

30 Into the Mist

32 My Sister Gaza

34 The Pylon and the Lake

36 Resisting Residents

38 Serraria

40 Tongues of Fire

42 Trail on the Water

44 The Video Guy

ROUGH CUT PROJECTS

46 Architecture as Invention

48 Bugboy

50 The Cord

52 Dreams of the Wild Oaks

54 Getting the Message

56 Sweet Belonging

PITCH PROJECTS

58 All Fixed Up

60 Codename: Guster

62 The Documenters

64 ExCoded

66 The Face of Power

68 A Film For One

70 I’ve Always Said We

72 Inframince

74 Karsai vs Hungary

76 Lonesome Land

78 My Name is Khalil

80 Never Arrive

82 Nighthawk

84 The Path That Walks

86 Small Expectations

88 Sundays

90 Talia after Talia

92 Todo Lo Sólido

94 Untitled Petra Costa Project

96 Untitled Watermelon Pictures Documentary

98 The White Doctor

DOCLAB FORUM PRESENTATIONS

104 Amasonic

106 Anatomy of Revolution

108 Body Count

110 Cripping Up

112 The Eyes of Mila Kaos

114 Fear City Paradise

116 Ghost Towns

118 I’m in Love with my Testo

120 Inside A Stripper’s Mind

122 Like Every Cloud (Zayy Kulli Ghaima)

124 Metramorphosis

126 Reframing Queer Exile

Welcome to IDFA Forum

Welcome to the 33rd edition of the Forum. We are opening our doors to the international documentary community to celebrate films as well as immersive and interdisciplinary works—to connect, to inspire, and to explore new collaborations.

In a rapidly changing documentary landscape, where financing is fragile, all possible finance models need to be explored. Adapting the presentation format of the Forum Pitch and giving more visibility to the Producers Connection projects reflect these market shifts and hopefully better accommodate the needs of the documentary community.

In a time of major geopolitical conflicts, a climate crisis, increased polarization and democracies around the world under threat, the importance of in-depth documentary films that provide context seems indisputable. The considerable number of projects entered shows that filmmakers and artists also feel this urgency.

Out of many project proposals, a selection committee—whom I thank for their wisdom and expertise—has selected 51 projects in various stages of development, production, and postproduction, including 12 immersive projects. This selection covers a wide geographical and cultural spread, and its themes, topics, and cinematic approaches do justice to the versatility of the documentary genre.

IDFA Forum stands for bold and artistic works. This year’s selection stands out for its distinctive subjects, unexpected angles, and unique cinematic and immersive experiences.

The relationship between humans and the natural environment is addressed in several films and new media projects. Investigative projects and human-interest stories reveal combativeness and resilience in the wake of injustice. Various projects examine the past and the cyclical nature of human history. Wars and their crimes are captured to ensure that we truly see—and that we do not forget.

But there is also room for beauty, comfort, and hope in documentary films, including several that explore art and artists.

Filmmakers and artists are working on these projects and films at a time when our unshakeable faith in democracy is being tested by populists who dismiss facts as opinions, cast suspicion on science, and spread falsehoods. Debunking and refuting their lies is difficult; we often watch helplessly as populist leaders gain support and mislead their followers with false information and promises. That is precisely why it is important that documentaries are made and shown to a large and diverse audience.

Public broadcasters, often viewed with suspicion by populists, are of great importance in a pluralistic media landscape—one that offers space for thorough journalism and diversity of opinion. Documentaries provide nuance and depth in contrast to the superficiality of social media and commercial platforms. Documentary film art, whether in the public domain or not, is oxygen for society: art connects people and fosters mutual understanding.

Making and financing documentaries has never been easy, but collaboration and imagination continue to drive the creation of compelling and innovative works. I hope that this year’s IDFA Forum contributes to successful and groundbreaking films and to the growth of our filmmaking community.

I wish everyone a fruitful and enjoyable IDFA Forum, on behalf of the Board of Directors and the Forum team.

Adriek van Nieuwenhuyzen Head of Industry

Want to travel easily between IDFA's different locations? With the GVB Day Ticket, you can travel anywhere in the city for 24 hours.

Venues

Cinemas/Theatres

De Balie Kleine-Gartmanplantsoen 10

Bijlmerbios Bijlmerplein 888

Cinema The Pulse Clara Schumannstraat

Cinema De Vlugt Burgemeester de Vlugtlaan 125

Het Documentaire Paviljoen Vondelpark 3

Eye Filmmuseum IJpromenade 1

Het Ketelhuis Pazzanistraat 4

Koninklijk Theater Carré Amstel 115-125

Koninklijk Theater Tuschinski Reguliersbreestraat 26 (Box o�ice)

Kriterion Roetersstraat 170

Pathé City Kleine-Gartmanplantsoen 15-19

(Press and Industry)

Pathé Noord Buikslotermeerplein 2003

Podium Mozaïek Bos en Lommerweg 191

Rialto de Pijp Ceintuurbaan 338

Rialto VU De Boelelaan 1111

DocLab locations

ARTIS Planetarium Plantage Kerklaan 38-40

Vlaams Cultuurhuis de Brakke Grond Nes 45

Professionals venues

@droog Groenburgwal 44 (DocLab Forum)

De Balie Kleine-Gartmanplantsoen 10 (IDFAcademy & Industry program)

Het Groene Paleis Rokin 65 (Forum lunches)

Het Documentaire Paviljoen Vondelpark 3 (Docs for Sale)

Internationaal Theater Amsterdam Leidseplein (Festival Center, Industry, Guest Desk, Forum, Industry program)

Kanarie Club Bellamyplein 51 (Guests Meet Guests)

Pathé City Kleine-Gartmanplantsoen 15-19

(Press & Industry screenings)

Cafés

Café Kuyl Rembrandtplein 26

Café Vertigo Vondelpark 3

Vlaams Cultuurhuis de Brakke Grond Nes 45

Hotels

Eden Hotel Amsterdam Amstel 144

Leonardo Hotel Amsterdam City Center

Tesselschadestraat 23

Volkshotel Wibautstraat 150

JOIN EXCEPTIONAL STORYTELLERS FROM AROUND THE GLOBE AT AIDC 2026

CONFERENCE

2– 5 MARCH 2026

ACMI, MELBOURNE AUSTRALIA

INTERNATIONAL MARKETPLACE

11–12 MARCH 2026 ONLINE

Practical

These pages contain practical information and short summaries to help you navigate the industry offering at IDFA 2025. For the latest and most up-to-date information, check IDFA.nl—we’ve included QR codes in this booklet to help you find the right web pages.

FORUM CATEGORIES IN BRIEF

Producers Connection & Forum Pitch Presentations

Monday, November 17, 9:00–13:00

Tuesday, November 18, 9:00–13:00

Location: International Theatre Amsterdam (ITA), Leidseplein 26 – ITA

Studio 1 and via a live stream in ITA Pleinfoyer

This year, IDFA Forum brings Producers Connection and Forum Pitch Presentations together in one joint program, highlighting international coproduction as a key financing model for artistic documentaries.

Producers Connection focuses on supporting projects looking to finance their films through international coproduction. The program features 10-minute moderated, conversationstyle presentations of twelve selected projects.

The Producers Connection is made possible in part by Eurimages and Buma Music in Motion.

The Forum Pitch Presentations cater to projects in all stages of production seeking co-financing, collaboration, and/or distribution. Each team presents in a 10-minute classic pitch format for twenty-one documentary projects. Open to IDFA Forum passholders.

Rough Cut Presentations

Sunday, November 16, 10:30–13:30

Location: Pathé City, KleineGartmanplantsoen 15-19 – Screen 6

Six selected project teams will introduce a 20-minute excerpt of their rough cut. This presentation format caters specifically to film projects in editing or in rough cut stage looking for sales, distribution, or other exhibition opportunities. After the presentations, the full rough cut files or presentation excerpts will be made available online to industry professionals. Open to IDFA Forum and Docs for Sale Acquisition passholders.

IDFA DocLab Forum Presentations

Monday, November 17, 09:00–13:30

Location: @droog, Groenburgwal 44 –The Red Space

The DocLab Forum presents twelve interactive and immersive nonfiction projects in different stages of production and financing. Presented in a program on Monday morning, the project teams get an opportunity to discuss the content and form of their project and explore relevant next steps. Each team gets 15 minutes in total, starting off with a presentation of the project including visual material, after which several industry professionals are invited to give feedback. Open to IDFA Forum passholders.

IDFA Markets Daily Program

Producers Connection, Forum Pitch Presentations, Meetings & Sessions Internationaal Theater Amsterdam (ITA) - Leidseplein 26

Cut Presentations Pathé City 6 - Kleine-Gartmanplantsoen 15-19

SERVICES AT THE FORUM

Live Stream of Producers Connection & Forum Pitch Presentations

Monday, November 17 | 09:00–13:00

Tuesday, November 18 | 09:00–13:00

Location: International Theatre Amsterdam (ITA), Leidseplein 26 – ITA Pleinfoyer

To ensure everyone can experience the Producers Connection and Forum Pitch sessions, a live broadcast will be available in the Pleinfoyer. If Studio 1 reaches full capacity, or if you prefer to join the sessions later, you are invited to watch the presentations from there.

One-on-One Meetings

Forum Pitch, Producers Connection & Rough Cut Presentations

Monday, November 17 | 15:40–18:30

Tuesday, November 18 | 15:40–18:30

Wednesday, November 19 | 09:30–13:00

Location: International Theatre Amsterdam (ITA), Leidseplein 26 Forum Pitch: ITA Koninklijke Foyer

Producers Connection: ITA Pleinfoyer Rough Cut Presentations: ITA Marnix-bordes

Pre-arranged one-on-one meetings for all projects selected for IDFA Forum Pitch, Producers Connection, and Rough Cut Presentations take place across three days at ITA. Each category meets in its own dedicated room as listed above.

DocLab Forum Presentations

Monday, November 17 | 15:00–18:00 Tuesday, November 18 | 10:00–13:00 & 15:00–18:00

Location: @droog, Groenburgwal 44 –The Grand Space

Pre-arranged one-on-one meetings for all projects selected for IDFA DocLab

Forum Presentations take place at @droog across two days.

Projects and industry professionals taking meetings can log in to their MyIDFA account to view their latest schedule via:

MyIDFA › Professionals › Appointments

Funding Sessions

Monday, November 17 | 15:00–15:30 Tuesday, November 18 | 15:00–15:30

Wednesday, November 19 | 10:00–11:15

Location: International Theatre Amsterdam (ITA), Leidseplein 26 – Studio 1 & Nieuwe Foyer

In 2025, the IDFA Forum launches a new series of thematic Funding Sessions, curated around specific financing models to offer filmmakers practical insights into navigating the documentary financing landscape. All accredited filmmakers at IDFA Forum are invited to sign up to attend. Pre-registration is required.

Forum Info Desk at ITA

Sunday, November 16 – 15:00–18:30

Monday, November 17 - Wednesday, November 19, 9:00–18:30

Location: International Theatre Amsterdam (ITA), Leidseplein 26 – Hall on the ground floor

The Forum Info Desk, located on the ground floor of ITA, operates as a reception, providing support to all IDFA Forum guests with questions about the venue, schedule, and navigating the wider festival offering.

Coffee & Meeting Spaces

Throughout the event, IDFA Forum passholders are welcome in the ITA Nieuwe Foyer, Foyer Studio 1, and Gijsbrecht-bordes for the Forum Lounge, your go to place to meet, work, or catch up over coffee or tea. During DocLab Forum, refreshments will also be available in The Grand Space at @droog. Complimentary coffee, tea, and water are provided throughout the pitch and presentation programs, including one-on-one meetings.

ITA Café

On the ground floor, ITA hosts the ITA Brasserie & Rotonde, open to the public, and a great place to book meetings with Amsterdam-based colleagues, festival-accredited guests, and any guests without a Forum accreditation.

Internet Access

Wi-Fi is available throughout International Theater Amsterdam and at @droog. Access codes are displayed throughout the buildings and available at the Information Desk at ITA.

Guest List

All festival delegates are listed in our online Guest List. There, you can filter on professionals attending, for instance by people’s profession or accreditation type.

Accessibility of IDFA Forum venues IDFA Industry is working to remove access barriers in our programming and services, with the goal of making IDFA Forum accessible to all participants. IDFA provides closed caption service for people who are deaf or hard of hearing at multiple industry events: all Industry Talks, Dutch Doc Day, and all Forum presentation events, including DocLab Forum presentations. To make use of this service, find and scan the QR-code at the respective event location.

Please scan this QR code to get detailed accessibility information for all of our IDFA Forum venues. Include QR code locations and accessibility.

SOCIAL EVENTS

Producers Breakfast

Monday, November 17 – Wednesday, November 19, 8:00–9:00

Location: International Theatre Amsterdam (ITA), Leidseplein 26 – Nieuwe Foyer

All accredited producers at IDFA Forum are invited to sign up to attend the Producers Breakfast. Designed to connect international producers with each other over coffee, the Producers Breakfast event invites accredited producers at the Forum to kick-start the day together. Producers can indicate countries they’d be curious to get to know better, and we will plan table seating accordingly.

The Producers Breakfast is hosted by RAPA.

Pre-registration is necessary.

IDFA Forum Lunch

Monday, November 17, 13:15–15:00

Tuesday, November 18, 13:15–15:00

Location: Groene Paleis, Rokin 65

After the presentations on Monday and Tuesday, IDFA Forum guests are invited to have lunch at Het Groene Paleis. It is a short 15-minute walk from the International Theatre Amsterdam, and 5 minutes from @droog.

The Monday lunch is hosted by Chiledoc The Tuesday lunch is hosted by hosted by Documentary Organization of Canada

Open to IDFA Forum passholders.

IDFA Forum Lunch and Awards Ceremony

Wednesday, November 19, 13:00–15:00

Location: International Theatre Amsterdam (ITA), Leidseplein 26 – Nieuwe Foyer

Join us for the announcement of this year’s IDFA Forum award-winners. The jury will announce winners in four different categories:

• IDFA Forum Award for Best Pitch Project

• IDFA Forum Award for Best Rough Cut Project

• IDFA Forum Award for Best Producers

Connection project

• IDFA DocLab Forum Award for Best Project

The Wednesday lunch is hosted by FeverFilm and Posta Vermaas.

Open to IDFA Forum passholders.

Docs for Sale Happy Hour

Saturday, November 15 to Wednesday, November 19, 17:00–18:00

Location: Het Documentaire Paviljoen, Vondelpark 3 – Docs For Sale Lounge

Docs for Sale, the Forum’s sister event and one of the world’s premier markets and distribution incubators for documentary cinema, hosts daily cocktail hours in Docs for Sale Lounge at Het Documentaire Paviljoen. For this networking event, IDFA Forum participants are welcome to join to mingle with filmmakers as well as sales, distribution, and exhibition professionals taking part in Docs for Sale.

The Docs for Sale Happy Hours are sponsored by Autlook Filmsales, SEE NL, Rise & Shine, Lightdox, and Millennium Docs Against Gravity.

Open to Docs for Sale Acquisition, Docs for Sale Participant, and IDFA Forum passholders.

Guests Meet Guests

Friday, November 14 – Wednesday, November 19, 18:00–19:30

Location: Kanarie Club, Bellamyplein 51 Bringing together IDFA passholders daily, the Guests Meet Guests cocktail events are a great moment to connect with other delegates and enjoy the pulse of the of the festival.

The Guests Meet Guests drinks are hosted by Polish Docs PRO, Wajda Film Centre, FilmED, ARTE, Catalan Films, Hot Docs and DocsBarcelona.

Open to all IDFA passholders, excluding Docs for Sale Participant and Docs for Sale Acquisition passes that are not PLUS.

Markets Drinks

Tuesday, November 18, 21:00–23:00

Location: De Duif, Prinsengracht 756

IDFA Industry team invites you to come celebrate this year’s Markets and the 33rd edition of Forum. Join us for a drink and come connect with fellow industry guests. Open to IDFA Forum and Docs for Sale passholders.

WIDER INDUSTRY PROGRAM AT IDFA

Press & Industry screenings

Location: Pathé City, Kleine-Gartmanplantsoen 15-20

All films selected for the International and Envision Competitions, all world premieres from Luminous and Frontlight are available to accredited press and industry.

Passholders must reserve a free ticket online to gain admission. Tickets are available the day before the screening starts and will be uploaded onto your pass. Log into your MyIDFA account and book the screening of your choice.

Festival Center

Location: Internationaal Theater Amsterdam (ITA), Leidseplein 26

Once again at ITA, our Festival Center is open to all accredited guests and visitors to meet up, catch a film or performance, and absorb a wide range of talks. Here you’ll find all guest information, the Guest Desk, Industry Desk, Consultancy Desk, Press Desk, and plenty of social and meeting spaces. To read more about the industry program, please visit:

Consultancy desk

Saturday, November 15, 9:30–17:15

Sunday, November 16, 12:30–16:30

Location: Internationaal Theater Amsterdam (ITA), Leidseplein 26 – Plein Foyer (First floor) Monday, November 17 to Wednesday, November 19, 9:45–17:30

Location: De Balie, Kleine-Gartmanplantsoen 10 –Ground floor

From the Saturday until the Wednesday of the festival, there are multiple consultants on-site for you to ask questions about all aspects of documentary filmmaking, from distribution and festival strategies to, grant writing, impact producing and more. Stop by the Consultancy Desk to see the availability of our industry consultants or cue for a last-minute seat.

People at the Forum

IDFA Forum is the result of teamwork. On this page, you can read more about the industry professionals who are involved in making this year’s Forum happen.

IDFA Forum Selection Committee

Adriek van Nieuwenhuyzen

Alex Szalat

Alok Adhikari

Ana Fernandez Saiz

Anke Petersen

Anna Berthollet

Antoinette Engel

Arunas Matelis

Azza Chaabouni

Bob Moore

Burcu Melekoglu

Cecilie Bolvinkel

Christian Popp

Christy Garland

Clara Vuillermoz

Ella Pham

Fabien Greenberg

Gary Byung-Seok Kam

Gema Juárez Allen

Giedrė Žickytė

Gitte Hansen

Guevara Namer

Heather Haynes

Jordana Leigh

Juliana Fanjul Espinoza

Julianna Ugrin

Katarzyna Slesicka

Keisha Knight

Khalid Shamis

Luis González-Zaffaroni

Mandisa Zitha

Maria Bonsanti

Marina Burić

Oleksandra Kravchenko

Oliver Sertić

Peter Jaeger

Ruthie Doyle

Ryan Krivoshey

Sarah Spring

Sarra Ben Hassen

Victor Ede

Zdenek Blaha

Moderators

Heejung Oh

Ingrid Kopp

Mitchell Harper

Rodolfo Castillo-Morales

Ulla Simonen

Presentation Consultation Trainers

Margaux Misskia

Mikael Opstrup

The presentation consultation trainers support the selected Forum projects in preparation of their presentations.

Board of Directors IDFA

Artistic Director

Isabel Arrate Fernandez

Executive Director

Cees van ’t Hullenaar

Deputy Director

Jan Sirag

Executive Director IDFA Bertha Fund

Selin Murat

IDFA Forum Staff

Head of Industry

Adriek van Nieuwenhuyzen

Industry Markets Manager

Marina Burić

Forum Producer (Venue Production)

Jelte Zonneveld

Forum Producer (DocLab Forum)

Carla Navarro

Forum Producer (Forum Pitch Presentations)

Laura Quarto

Markets Producer (Rough Cut Presentations)

Dumitrita Pacicovschi

Forum Producer (Producers Connection, Producers Breakfast, Presentation Consulation)

Stavros Markoulakis

Forum Producer (One-on-one meetings)

Sophie Duncan

Markets Intern

Fabianna Sanchez

Presentation overview

Rough Cut Presentations – Sunday, November 16

10:30-11:55 Welcome

Dreams of the Wild Oaks

The Cord Architecture as Invention

11:55-12:15 Break

12:15-13:30 Bugboy

Getting the Message

Sweet Belonging

IDFA DocLab Forum Presentations – Monday, November 17

09:00–11:00 Welcome

Ghost Towns

Metramorphosis

Fear City Paradise

Amasonic

Body Count

Inside A Stripper’s Mind

11:00–11:30 Break

11:30–13:30 Cripping Up

Reframing Queer Exile

I’m in Love with my Testo

Like Every Cloud (Zayy Kulli Ghaima)

Anatomy of Revolution

The Eyes of Mila Kaos

Producers Connection & Forum Pitch Presentations –

Monday, November 17

9:00- 10:20 Welcome

Tongues of Fire

Resisting Residents

Eleven Ears

Trail on the Water

The Pylon and the Lake

My Sister Gaza

10:20-10:50 Break

10:50-11:50 Untitled Petra Costa Project

The Face of Power

The Path That Walks

Karsai vs Hungary

Nighthawk

11:50-12:10 Break

12:10-13:00 Todo lo Solido

The White Doctor

Sundays

A Film for One

All Fixed Up

Producers Connection & Forum Pitch Presentations –

Tuesday, November 18

9:00- 10:20 The Video Guy Into the Mist

The Black Wedding - 7 Years of Eternal Mourning

Flying Like a Bird

Serraria

Four Comrades, One Echo

10:20-10:50 Break

10:50-11:50 Never Arrive

Codename: Guster

I’ve Always Said We

The Documenters

My Name is Khalil

11:50-12:10 Break

12:10-13:00 Small Expectations

Lonesome Land

ExCoded

Talia after Talia

Inframince

Please keep in mind that the order of the projects might change.

IDFA Forum

The Forum facilitates encounters through three presentation formats, each designed to adapt to documentary projects in different stages and with different needs. Read more about the projects selected for the Producers Connection, Forum Pitch and Rough Cut Presentation categories here.

DocLab Industry Track

For nearly two decades, IDFA DocLab has been a leading international space for immersive and interactive documentary art, inviting audiences to explore new ways of experiencing, interpreting, and questioning reality. Through its Industry Track, DocLab extends this mission into a professional context, supporting the development and sustainability of emerging practices through research, collaboration, and exchange.

Designed as both a living lab and an industry network, the DocLab Industry Track connects independent artists, creative technologists, and cultural institutions across disciplines to explore new forms of non-fiction storytelling. Since 2018, the ongoing R&D program (developed with partners such as the MIT Open Documentary Lab) has strengthened this focus on experimentation and critical reflection. Built around three core components: the DocLab Forum, R&D Summit, and DocLab Playrooms, the Industry Track provides a cohesive framework for artistic growth, knowledge sharing, and innovation across the immersive and interactive field.

The DocLab Forum serves as IDFA’s coproduction and co-financing market for immersive and interactive documentary works. Open to projects at any stage, it welcomes a broad range of non-fiction forms. From web experiences and digital art to VR/AR/MR installations, fulldome films, and live performances. By connecting creators with potential partners and funders, the Doclab Forum supports the development of new work and contributes directly to IDFA’s wider new media program. Each year, up to fifteen projects are selected to present during the festival’s opening week.

The R&D Summit is a one-day, invite-only gathering that brings together the Dutch industry with international professionals

shaping the immersive field. Artists, studios, technologists, researchers, and institutional representatives meet to share insights, discuss emerging trends, and examine the challenges of developing new immersive storytelling formats. The day combines presentations, roundtable sessions, workshops and informal networking, encouraging collaboration across artistic and industry boundaries.

Sunday, November 16 | 10:00–18:00 Vlaams Cultuurhuis de Brakke Grond & @droog

The DocLab Playrooms complete the Industry Track with a series of handson events where artists and audiences engage directly with emerging technologies in practice. Each Playroom focuses on a specific theme and takes an experimental, open format that encourages participants to explore, prototype, and exchange ideas in an informal setting.

While Audiences cry out for new experiences, and artists continue to innovate with XR documentary storytelling, we need to understand how to create better distribution models that bring artists and audiences together. To complete this year’s program, there will be an Industry Talk on new strategies in XR distribution.

Industry Talk: Headsets and beyond –New strategies in XR distribution

Saturday, November 15 | 14:00–15:30

International Theatre Amsterdam – Studio 1

DocLab Playroom: Connected Offline

In this playroom artists present their works in the Interactive Cinema, offering audiences a collective way to experience documentary games and digital art. From Matt Romein’s livegaming performance MILKMAN ZERO: The First Delivery to Maisha Wester’s darkly atmospheric, immersive game about the history of slavery and racism in Coded Black, the session opens dialogue on agency, representation and creative resistance within virtual worlds.

Saturday, November 15 | 14.00-17.00

Vlaams Cultuurhuis de Brakke Grond

DocLab Playroom: I Feel Zine

This playroom turns attention to digital preservation and authorship. In a workshop-style format, participants create zines exploring what parts of digital culture are worth saving. Guided by artists such as Jeroen van Loon, Nathalie Lawhead, and Avinash Changa, the session links individual expression to the broader industrychallenge of archiving and sustaining immersive art in an everchanging technological landscape.

Monday, November 17 | 14.00-17.00

Vlaams Cultuurhuis de Brakke Grond

DocLab Playroom: Hacking Reality

This Playroom examines the art of perception and the constructed nature of experience. Through prototypes and performances by Bart van de Woestijne, Sjef van Beers, and Celine Daemen, participants encounter how systems (digital or otherwise) shape what we see and believe.

Tuesday, November 18 | 14.00-17.00

Vlaams Cultuurhuis de Brakke Grond

IDFA DocLab Forum

The DocLab Forum offers a unique platform for filmmakers to engage with artistic project teams and meet new players in the interactive and immersive field. Read on to discover 12 immersive and interactive projects in all stages of production seeking co-production, financing, distribution, and exhibition opportunities.

The Creative Europe MEDIA programme strengthens Europe’s film and audiovisual sector with funding for development, distribution and promotion, alongside broader support for cinemas, festivals, VOD, training, markets, and cross-border circulation. Check out some of the MEDIA-supported titles at this year’s IDFA, including Imago, Better Go Mad in the Wild, and Those Who Watch Over

The Black Wedding -

7 Years of eternal Mourning

Director Dragan Nikolić

Production Jovana Nikolić

Contact dragans.nikolic@gmail.com

Production country Serbia

Production stage Rough Cut Stage

Length 75’ & 52’

Open talent for co-production Composer, actor (narration), sound designer, graphic designer, colorist, clearing rights attorney.

Co-pro potential in storyline We invite European, Asian and American partners, as the film is rooted in the Vlach community and its EU diaspora, exploring poshumous rituals shared across cultures and universal themes of death and love.

Total budget € 218.214

Amount still requested € 105.856

Looking for The main focus is to find right foreign co-producers, potential broadcasters, international distributors, funds and festivals for the world premiere of the film.

In the fading of an ancient pagan ritual, a mother’s vow to resurrect her dead son becomes an eternal elegy, where love transcends death yet remains forever wounded by grief.

Synopsis

In 1992, in a small ethnic community in Serbia — today on the verge of assimilation and disappearance — a young woman was ritually married to her deceased fiancé in a pagan custom known as the “black wedding.” The groom’s mother, Mila, believed, as did her entire Vlach community, that the death of her unmarried son disrupted the natural order, and that a posthumous marriage was necessary for him to begin his afterlife properly. Even more, she believed that by fulfilling all the ancient pagan rituals of her community, she might bring her son back to life. Mila was convinced that when she opened his grave forty days after the funeral, she would find him alive and well inside the family tomb. She even hired private cameramen to record the entire ritual of the black wedding and burial.

Forty days later, Mila opened the grave, but did not find her son alive. Following the customs of this small community, the body was taken out of the coffin, washed, redressed, and then returned forever to its wooden box and grave. She again called local cameramen, asking them to document what she believed would be her son’s resurrection. No one dared step into the cemetery to capture the final act of a mother, broken beneath destiny’s cruel weight and unspeakable grief. This

ritual, even rarer than the black wedding itself, was carried out at dawn, under the first rays of sunlight — said in oral tradition to occur only once every two hundred years.

This story gives us a profound insight into the mourning of Mila, who becomes a tragic female figure reminiscent of heroines from ancient Greek drama. Her grief is followed over seven years, unfolding in reverse through archival material, culminating in the desperate act forty days after her son’s death when she tried to bring him back. In the final chapter, archival footage shows him alive, and the film achieves what the mother could not — resurrecting him, if only through cinema.

The film moves backwards, from the seventh year after his death to the year before it, through a directed and scripted narration, led by the late Miki as the main narrator, and through two interwoven narrative threads: what happened then, and how those forgotten pagan rituals still echo today.

Black Wedding - 7 Years of Eternal

Mourning is not an ethnographic curiosity but a framework to reflect on the limits of love, faith, sacrifice, and death. Through archival VHS footage, contemporary observation, static portraits, and personal video messages to the deceased, the film creates a dialogue between past and present, life and death. It deconstructs the ritual, seeks its inner poetics, and reveals the link between personal grief and the collective need to believe that death is not the end, but a beginning.

Eleven Ears

Director Yashaswini Raghunandan

Production Yashaswini Raghunandan for Paper Scratch LLC

Heejung Oh for Seesaw Productions

Contact hj.oh.film@gmail.com

Production countries India, South Korea

Production stage Development

Length 70’ & 20’

Open talent for co-production We are looking for post-production partners, particularly in sound design, which plays a crucial role in shaping the emotional and spatial dimensions of the film. We are also seeking colorists experienced in black-and-white grading, with a sensitivity to textural detail and the integration of on-screen poetic text design.

Co-pro potential in storyline We are exploring co-production opportunities in France, where the producer has previously received support from CNC Cinéma du Monde, and in the Netherlands, where the producer is based. We are open to other European partners, prioritizing organic, pragmatic collaborations that support rather than disrupt the creative process.

Total budget € 283.200

Amount still requested € 200.000

Looking for European co-producers for post-production, engaged across all stages, and partners who truly understand and share our artistic vision.

As a daughter and father translate her late uncle’s Tamil poems, their apartment stirs with memory, revealing the weight of silence, where grief becomes language and tenderness a quiet form of resistance.

Synopsis

Eleven Ears is an intimate, intergenerational story set in contemporary Bangalore. A daughter asks her father to translate his late brother’s Tamil poems, decades after the poet’s suicide. The father, a retired fabricator of aluminium doors and windows, hesitantly agrees. He knows Tamil, the language of the poems, but has never passed on to his children.

What begins as a simple act of moving words between languages becomes a layered excavation of memory, loss, and quiet relief. Rooted in personal grief yet alive with social and political resonance, the film explores how translation of poetry, of emotion, of silence itself becomes a cinematic method of connection across time, language, and ideology.

The daughter, a filmmaker who doesn’t speak Tamil, begins recording their sessions in an attempt to understand the silences that shaped their home. As they move through the poems, certain words and sentences begin to unearth memories - childhood scenes, passing encounters, moments long suppressed. Translation here is not about fidelity, but about what starts to surface between them: humour, contradiction, grief. Slowly, it becomes a space where they meet not only as father and daughter, but as two people shaped differently by the same absence.

Their sessions unfold alongside the rhythms of the neighbourhood - streetlevel encounters with neighbours, electricians, agents, and shopkeepers who animate a city in flux. The middle-class home, insulated by appliances and propaganda, flickers with its own ghosts as the electricity cuts in and out. Bureaucratic absurdities, casual corruption, romantic confidences, and WhatsApp forwards all find their place. Structured into five chapters, Eleven Ears resists resolution but offers a proposition. It moves between the poetic, the political, and the mundane, allowing meaning to surface through memory, miscommunication, and quiet resistance.

flying like a Bird

Director El Mahdi Lyoubi

Production Hicham Falah for Cinema Salama

Contact hicham.falah@yahoo.fr

Production country Morocco

Co-production Deuxième Ligne Films | GoGoGo Films

Co-production country France

Production stage In Production

Length 75’

Open talent for co-production All position at the post-production stage excluding image editing.

Co-pro potential in storyline We wish to broaden the scope of our artistic and financial partners to producers, funds, broadcasters and sales agents from European, Mediterranean and North American territories, interested in better understanding what motivates the youth's movements in African and Arab countries.

Total budget € 280.000

Amount still requested € 170.000

Looking for The project is a co-production between Morocco and France, and we are looking for new partners and opportunities to exploit its full creative potential and reach a wide audience.

The story of a friendship between Mehdi, the rapper who left the city of salé for becoming filmmaker in france and hamza, the circus acrobat remaining in Morocco. Two children of the Arab Spring driven by the same desire for freedom and making art for their people.

Synopsis

Flying Like a Bird is above all a story of friendship between Mehdi, the rapper who left Morocco to become a filmmaker in France, and Hamza, the circus acrobat who stayed behind.

Mehdi and Hamza have the same age, sharing the same passion for committed music and attachment for the rebellious city of Salé.

Both children of the Arab Spring, they are driven by the same desire for freedom and the urge to make art for their people.

Hamza is the youngest and most talented member of an urban circus troupe, the Colokolo, founded by a group of childhood friends, who learned the basics of their art in a local association that helps children failing at school.

The Colokolo’s shows combines street theater celebrating the Moroccan popular culture and aerial tricks with a teeterboard that propel them ten meters in the air. Favoring a collective and horizontal approach, the troupe operates without a designated director.

Unable to practice or perform in public spaces in Morocco, these acrobats and dancers must cross borders to earn a living. The Colokolo therefore tour, mainly in Europe, earning during the summer the money to live for part of the year in Salé.

Mehdi performed his first rap concerts at the same time as Colokolo their first show, before choosing to study cinema abroad and staying there to live and work.

Since 2019, Mehdi follows the journey of Hamza with his camera, capturing his friend’s life - hard, romantic -, marked by heart-breaking choices he’s facing himself: to leave or to stay? Betray or pay the high price for loyalty and integrity?

Unlike the other Colokolo, who are married and fathers, Hamza remains connected to the street youth and asserts a certain radicalism in his lifestyle.

Also consumed by the desire to leave, he searches opportunities, confronts limits, oscillating between hope and impasse. Always on a wire, he constantly pushes forward… But could he bear to live far from his family and buddies, the admiration by the young people of the neighborhood, to join a foreign country that could reject him, a young Moroccan man from the suburbs?

The narrative is built around their dialogue, both human and artistic, between Mehdi’s images and rhymes, and Hamza’s wanderings and acrobatics, telling this pivotal moment where their lives as artists and political hopes are at stake.

four comrades, one echo

Director Kiva Liu

Production Kiva Liu

Contact kiva312@gmail.com

Production country The Netherlands

Production stage Development

Length 90’ & 52’

Open talent for co-production Director of Photography, script coach, editor, sound designer, and colorist.

Co-pro potential in storyline The project lends itself to a co-production between the Netherlands and China. While the protagonists and stories are based in China, the storytelling began in the Netherlands, as the director looked back on her experiences. The film challenges Eurocentric feminist narratives by advocating for plural, culturally and historically grounded feminisms, rather than a singular, linear idea of progress.

Total budget € 385.000

Amount still requested € 375.000

Looking for Main producer, co-producers, as well as other creative partners.

four sisters reunite through the daughter they raised together to rewrite each other’s lives. As dreams, essays, and a propaganda opera intertwine, they collectively tell stories about sisterhood, motherhood and feminist resistance in China.

Synopsis

In the heart of Sichuan, far from China’s political and economic centers, four aging sisters reunite around the daughter they raised together. Having reached their retirement years, they share their past dreams and unfulfilled aspirations with the daughter. Mediated by a camera, the exchanges turn into a collective story-writing, in which they reflect on their lives and imagine alternatives for themselves and for one another: a more caring and attractive husband, a different career path, a better education opportunity… Their fantasies encapsulate the meaning of being a woman in China, from their upbringing under Mao to adulthood during China’s intense marketization. In these fictional worlds, their lives are transformed, yet their sisterhood remains the unwavering bond that sustained them through decades of patriarchal and ideological oppressions.

This film is an attempt to engage with their lived experiences and fantasies, from the point of view of the daughter. In the film, the mothers act as themselves, merging their real life with their liberated imaginations. The real life from the past might contain many feelings of unfulfillment, yet it is not a terrain merely defined by barrenness. Returning repeatedly to a piece of classic revolutionary music they performed in their youth, they find resonance with each other, uncovering personal sentiments and desires hidden beneath the monotonous political melody.

As they embody these imagined selves and reconstruct their past, fiction and reality dissolve while personal memory and history intertwine. In the end, they move as one: sisters, mothers, daughters. Voices from the past share a single breath and become one echo.

into the Mist

Directors Azadeh Moussavi, Kourosh Ataee

Production Azadeh Moussavi, Kourosh Ataee for Fanoos Films

Contact kourosh@fanoosfilms.com

Production country Iran

Production stage Development

Length 100’ & 58’

Open talent for co-production Sound designer, composer, colorist, graphic designer.

Co-pro potential in storyline We aim to establish an international co-production that supports production, post-production, and global outreach, in collaboration with producers experienced in documentaries about prominent artistic figures and socio-political themes.

Total budget € 180.000

Amount still requested € 160.000

Looking for Co-producers, funds and broadcasters.

An unconventional portrait of the life and career of Iranian pioneer filmmaker.

Synopsis

In a time when Iran is overshadowed by crisis, war, and censorship, renowned filmmaker and courageous voice for women and society, Rakhshan Banietemad, strives to complete her longdelayed screenplay Descending Mist. After decades of relentless struggle to preserve her artistic independence, she now resists submitting to censorship and official permits. At 70, aware of political and physical limitations and driven by the urgency of time, she experiments with a radically different approach.

By reclaiming authorship in this way, she transforms an unfinished script into a living cinematic gesture—one that tests visibility in the face of erasure. We are documenting this process as it unfolds, a moment that has become the emotional and narrative fulcrum of our documentary: the point where the film we are making (Into the Mist) and the film she has been struggling to make (Descending Mist) intersect in rehearsal.

Alongside this act of exploration, the camera turns to the past. From before the revolution to the decades that followed, Banietemad has documented every moment of her life within cinema and society. Family and political archives blend with personal memories and collective history, weaving the story of a woman whose life mirrors the artistic and social realities of a nation.

The film unfolds through an intimate and reflective narrative. Banietemad’s voice emerges in conversations with two filmmakers who explore the complex layers of her personal and public worlds. Together, they reflect on the making of a film that hovers in a liminal space—between possibility and prohibition, past and future.

This documentary is more than the portrait of a female filmmaker; it is the story of a society struggling to speak its truth, silenced repeatedly but never fully muted. It is an effort to preserve the collective memory of a generation that has lived, witnessed, and endured until the end.

My sister gaza

Directors Mohamed Jabaly, Rima Jabaly, Ibrahim Jabaly

Production Mohamed Jabaly for Palarctic Productions AS

Contact meljabaly@gmail.com

Production countries Palestine, Norway

Co-production Idioms Film

Production stage Development

Length 85’ & 52’

Open talent for co-production Editor, composer, sound editor, sound designer.

Co-pro potential in storyline We are open to co-production potential where there is a real possibility to expand the global reach of our story and to maintain its strong drive as a Palestinian-led narrative. We are particularly interested in partnering with a Spanish company, as this is where Rima and Ibrahim are now based.

Total budget € 333.500

Amount still requested € 286.750

Looking for Pre-sales, broadcasters, distributors, financiers, festivals, and co-producers.

as the genocide begins in gaza, two siblings, rima and ibrahim, document their family’s displacement, capturing months of struggle to survive and the shattering of lives—a raw, intimate story of war, love, loss, resilience, and unbreakable bonds.

Synopsis

As war engulfs Gaza, two siblings, Rima and Ibrahim, document their family’s harrowing journey. Through their lens, we witness the human impact of war,

the daily struggle for survival, and the eventual forced displacement of their family. Their raw, firsthand experience in Gaza contrasts with that of their older brother, award-winning filmmaker Mohamed Jabaly, who observes the devastation from afar, using filmmaking as a means of communication and comfort during these overwhelming times.

This is a story of survival, family, and a reflection on the long journey toward freedom in the Palestinian struggle.

The Pylon and the Lake

Director Sylvain Yonnet

Production Cécile Lestrade, Elise Hug for Alter Ego Production

Contact elise.hug@alterego-prod.com

Production country France

Production stage Development

Length 70’

Open talent for co-production Sound engineer, sound designer, music composer, sound mixer, colorist and graphic designer.

Co-pro potential in storyline We seek an international co-producer who can bring a complementary perspective and help the film reach wider audiences while supporting its artistic and political vision.

Total budget € 370.000

Amount still requested € 297.000

Looking for International co-producers. We are also interested in receiving creative feedback from sales agents and festival representatives.

At high altitude in the middle of a vast ski area, a pylon is living its final months. around it, the natural world coexists with the mass tourism industry. The landscape is changing. A sensitive project for an artificial lake is stirring tensions.

Synopsis

High in the French Alps, in a remote alpine valley at 2,800 metres of altitude, the sparse presence of plants and animals sharply contrasts with the seasonal, noisy occupation of humans. In winter, snow transforms the landscape into an enchanted playground for more than a million tourists, all under the watchful eye of employees in blue uniforms. This takes place in Les 2 Alpes, one of the largest and highest ski resorts in the Alps. This takes place in one of the largest and highest ski resorts in the French Alps.

Slightly outdated in terms of infrastructure, the resort launched an ambitious modernization campaign in 2023: a €500 million investment over five years aims to propel it into the future. The film closely follows two major ongoing developments in the valley: the construction of a new gondola lift system with new pylons and concrete stations, and the creation of an artificial lake for snowmaking. Although these two projects overlap in space, they do not overlap in time: the lift has already been completed, while the lake only exists as a computer model.

Filmed over 4 years, the film takes an observational and contemplative approach, capturing the slow metamorphosis of a mountain landscape and the conflicting temporalities at play: geological, human, administrative and speculative. While the machines are at work on the mountaintop, engineers and industry executives in the valley below prepare the next phase. In meeting rooms and public hearings, they design and present the lake project using 3D visualizations. They promote an eco-responsible approach through concepts such as “environmental performance” and “four-season diversification”. Meanwhile, local associations and environmental activists are raising their voices, questioning the irreversible transformations being imposed on alpine ecosystems—decrying noise pollution, the soil artificialization, and the commodification of water.

Combining observational sequences, archival footage, and digital imagery, the film leads the viewer on a sensory and political journey through a fragile territory. By alternating human viewpoints with the mountain’s own rhythms, The Pylon and the Lake invites a shift in perspective—challenging dominant narratives of progress, tracing lines of power and resistance, and sketching a poetics of the high-altitude world in a time of deep ecological disruption.

resisting residents

Director Nikos Pilos

Production Dafni Kalafati for FILMIKI S.A

Contact kalafati@filmiki.gr

Production country Greece

Production stage In Production

Length 90’ & 52’

Open talent for co-production As far as technical personnel is concerned, all positions regarding post production of image and sound are open, such as coloring, sound design, title design etc, as well as the artistic position of the original score composer.

Co-pro potential in storyline Due to the emerging themes of the project we believe that France with its vibrant scene around urban struggles, squatting, and post-colonial narratives would be an ideal co-production country, alongside Germany and Norway, where audiences seem to have high interest in sociopolitical films and refugee themes. Also, some of the characters who appear in the film originally come from France and Germany, so this is an extra hook for a co-producer from those countries.

Total budget € 250.000

Amount still requested € 150.000

Looking for European co-producer to join the project, bring a national broadcaster, and help secure funding. Distributors, sales agents, NGOs and fellow filmmakers are welcome.

In Prosfygika — one of Europe’s largest residential squats, located between Athens’ Supreme Court and Police Headquarters — a diverse community persists, guided by the principles of direct democracy.

Synopsis

In a time when Europe grows increasingly conservative, undermining human rights and dismantling the welfare state, a succesful sociopolitical experiment thrives in the heart of Athens.

Prosfygika is one of the largest residential squats in Europe. Eight Bauhaus-style buildings, originally constructed to house Greek refugees after WWI, are now home to a multinational community that has transformed the neighbourhood into a living model of solidarity and self-organization.

Since its election in 2019, the Greek government has systematically evacuated social centers and squats across the country. In 2024, a new penal code further criminalised political activity, placing activists under constant threat. Police brutality has escalated, leading to violent arrests and lengthy trials. Prosfygika faces growing pressure, as state repression and judicial harassment pave the way for gentrification and privatisation.

Resisting Residents sheds light on the personal stories and collective struggles of this community. Through the daily lives of its members, the film reveals the challenges, the essence of communal ownership, the workings of assemblies and the constant negotiation of problems and solutions through collective decisionmaking. Viewers witness the reality of police intimidation, detentions and violence, as well as the community’s determination to resist eviction and defend its way of life.

The residents are not just individuals, but neighbours. They gather every Monday in assemblies, share meals at the Thursday communal kitchen and divide tasks essential to sustaining the community. Arrests and detentions often push them into prolonged legal battles, yet each character’s story adds colour and depth to a larger narrative: how insecurity and fear can transform into persistence and collective resistance.

At a time when war draws closer and tensions in Western societies intensify, Prosfygika stands as more than a utopian ideal. It is a living example of another possible world — a society built on solidarity, where people focus on what unites rather than divides them. By immersing ourselves in this unique universe, we come to understand what it truly takes to create and sustain a community rooted in resilience, dignity, and hope.

Serraria

Directors Matias Borgström, Ricardo Imakawa

Production Matias Borgström, Ricardo Imakawa for Salga Filmes

Contact matias@salgafilmes.com.br

Production country Brazil

Production stage Start Production

Length 80’ & 52’

Open talent for co-production Producers, executive producers, editor, sound designer and re-recording mixer, post-production supervisor, colorist, music department, graphic and motion designer, distribution and festival coordinator.

Co-pro potential in storyline Portugal, as the current mayor is negotiating with Portuguese corporations to implement a luxury resort in the community — a contemporary form of colonization echoing Brazil’s colonial past. Additionally, countries such as France, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and the Scandinavian nations often show interest in co-producing documentaries shot in South America that explore themes similar to those in Serraria.

Total budget € 180.000

Amount still requested € 150.000

Looking for Committed international co-producers, film funds, and industry partners, including international sales agents, distributors, and festival programmers.

Through his childhood memories and Serraria Beach’s present, caiçara filmmaker ricardo weaves together his family’s displacement and the community’s resistance, revealing decades of land speculation threatening traditional fishing communities in Brazil.

Synopsis

In 2009, Ricardo Imakawa’s caiçara family was forced by land speculation to leave their home on Armação Beach, where for generations they had run an artisanal fish salting and smoking business. Before leaving, young Ricardo filmed his family’s daily activities at their seaside home, and recorded two interviews with his grandfather.

Nearly two decades later, those personal memories resonate with the struggle of Serraria Beach, a remote caiçara community of about 80 people on the same island of Ilhabela. Descendants of Indigenous peoples, Portuguese settlers, and enslaved Africans, caiçaras have inhabited Brazil’s southeastern coast for centuries, maintaining artisanal fishing as their livelihood and cultivating an ancestral relationship with the land and sea.

Unlike other nearby caiçara communities that became economically dependent on tourism, Serraria has chosen to protect its anonymity, tranquility, and culture.

At the heart of the film is Ícaro, the 14-year-old grandson of community matriarch Dona Tereza. Between school and fishing, Ícaro embodies both the joy of childhood and the onset of adult awareness. Serraria’s collective life and traditions are suddenly disrupted when a local radio broadcast reveals that the mayor has expropriated the community’s land and is negotiating with Portuguese investors to build a luxury resort.

Through archival footage and present-day encounters, the film weaves together the director’s personal history with Serraria’s struggle. Since the 1920s, the Imakawa family had maintained close ties with Serraria’s families – a connection that deepens the parallels between Ricardo’s childhood and Ícaro’s, between his grandfather’s recollections and Dona Tereza’s memories, and between the trajectories of the Armação and Serraria communities, both threatened by rampant land speculation and mass tourism, driven for decades by the same mayor on Ilhabela Island.

Tongues of fire

Director Alyx Ayn Arumpac

Production Alyx Ayn Arumpac for Guerreros

Contact alyx.arumpac@gmail.com

Production country Philippines

Production stage Development

Length 90’ & 52’

Open talent for co-production Score composer, sound designer, and sound mixer, post digital imaging technician, motion graphic designer, and archival researcher.

Co-pro potential in storyline The story aligns well with a co-production with the Netherlands. Rodrigo Duterte is currently held at the International Criminal Court detention facility in The Hague. We are filming there.

Total budget € 500.000

Amount still requested € 462.423

Looking for Co-producers in Germany, The Netherlands, and France. The key creatives are based in Germany and France.

Tongues of Fire follows a rare reckoning in a nation caught between denial and accountability.

Synopsis

A mayor who would become president ruled through fear and blood. A former member of his death squad and a senator try to expose him, but they pay a devastating price.

Towards the end of his term as president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte’s violent anti-drug campaign left some 30,000 dead. But the killings began long before he came to the capital. The playbook wasn’t new. It was perfected in Davao, where he was mayor for over two decades, and reports of a death squad first surfaced.

Juan was recruited as a young man by his city’s new mayor. He carried out tasks alongside the police, targeting suspected drug users, petty criminals, and political enemies. The mayor was clear: kill, no questions asked.

Twenty-four years later, he wants out. He reaches out to a human rights lawyer who once investigated the killings, the same person he was ordered to assassinate years before. They try to expose Duterte’s crimes. But the response is swift: she is imprisoned on fabricated charges and he is forced back into hiding.

Years after leaving office, Duterte remains revered by millions. In a nation where institutions repeatedly fail the people and justice appears to serve only the powerful, his strongman persona and promises of order came to feel like fairness. Amplified by social media propaganda, Filipinos all over the world have come to rationalize and justify the killings as a form of necessary discipline. For them, Duterte is a patriot, even a martyr.

What comes after a life of violence? What does justice look like when a nation lives in parallel truths? Tongues of Fire follows a rare reckoning in a country caught between denial and accountability.

Trail on the Water

Director Juan Pablo Polanco

Production Laura Nogal Garcia for Los Niños Films

Contact lauranogal@gmail.com

Production country Colombia

Production stage Development

Length 90’

Open talent for co-production We are open to co-production & post-production talent from the co-producer’s country (co-editor, sound designer, colorist) to enrich the film technically and artistically, and to foster meaningful international collaboration. We also welcome creative partnerships, which have shown to strengthened the script and vision, bringing new perspectives.

Co-pro potential in storyline We are interested in a co-production with Europe. In Latin America, the project strongly resonates with Brazil, as the filming takes place near the Colombian-Brazilian border, a fluid territory where cultures blend. Many of the characters are Brazilian, and the stories and traditions depicted are deeply connected to Amazonian Indigenous heritage shared by both countries. This cross-border dynamic makes Brazil a natural and meaningful co-production partner.

Total budget € 215.286

Amount still requested € 164.286

Looking for Co-producers. We value partnerships beyond finances, with collaborators who contribute and open dialogues. We would also like meetings with funds and broadcasters.

After his grandfather’s death, venancio, a Yukuna man, and his nephew journey through the amazon to recover an ancestral tale: the origin of dance. orality becomes a collective act of resistance.

Synopsis

After the death of his grandfather, Venancio, a 53-year-old Yukuna man, begins to dream fragments of a traditional story he does not fully know: the tale of the origin of dance. Knowing this story is essential to perform the ritual dance that helps overcome mourning, and his grandfather was one of the few who still knew it in its entirety.

For this reason, Venancio and his nephew Brujo (23), a young apprentice healer, set out on a journey along the river in the Amazon jungle, searching for other Yukuna who might complete the story. As their journey unfolds, Venancio’s grandfather and the traditional tale start appearing in visions and in performative actions they carry out, the world of the dead and the mythical blend with their path.

Once the story is complete, they return to their community and share it, making it possible to perform the traditional dance that renews alliances with the spirits and closes the mourning for their grandfather. A round trip along the river to bring back the word and turn it into a collective gesture and a dance that heal the loss.

The Video Guy

Directors Sam Howard, Alexander Dickerson-Watson

Production Erica Starling Productions

Production country United Kingdom

Production stage Start Production

Length 90’

Open talent for co-production Producers, executive producers, director of photography, sound designer, production manager.

Co-pro potential in storyline We envision an open creative relationship where together we create a funding, festival and distribution plan. Crucially, we are aiming to secure finishing production funds for the film.

Total budget € 826.760

Amount still requested € 568.931

Looking for A producer to help secure further funding to completion, generate an impact campaign, and find the right distribution home to gain maximum exposure upon release.

Aged 18, Alexander Jay makes gangster rap videos for his friends in Virginia. When violence erupts his camera stops. Years later, he questions what was real and what was fantasy.

Synopsis

The Video Guy documents aspects of African-American life that are rarely captured outside of fiction. What started for me as a hustle—shooting music videos for local rappers—evolved into something deeper: a story about identity, survival, and expression in a place where opportunities are limited.

This film is about the artists I’ve worked with in Virginia Beach, but it’s also about me, the person behind the camera. I grew up with these characters. I’ve seen their hopes, dreams and losses, and helped shape the image they present to the world—sometimes wild, sometimes glamorous, often dangerous—but never the full truth. To many, these artists are just “gangsters” with face tattoos, guns, gold teeth, and hard lyrics. But that’s only the surface. They’re some of the most creative, loyal, and funny people I know—just trying to survive and build something out of nothing. While most films about rappers focus on the 1% who make it, this film is about the 99% who don’t. I want to reframe how people view African-American culture—beyond stereotypes—by capturing the nuance of everyday lives.

In our music videos, we create hyperreal fantasies—money, cars, designer clothes. I’ve helped construct those fantasies, but they only live when I hit record. This documentary pulls the curtain back. It shows what people are willing to risk to chase that image—and how dangerous it can be. Being labeled a gangster rapper might sell records, but it can also make you a target. The deeper theme here is how perception shapes reality, and how limited choices shape the paths we take.

I want this film to illuminate what it’s like growing up as an African-American man in a community that feels invisible to the rest of the country. It asks a fundamental question: Why do so many of us see gangster rap as the only way out? And what does that say about the system we live under?

At its core, The Video Guy is about more than music. It’s about how young AfricanAmerican men see themselves, what they’re willing to do to feel seen, and the blurred line between survival and self-expression. In showing this world as honestly and intimately as possible, with archive spanning over a decade, I hope to offer a fuller, more human picture of the lives so often reduced to a headline or a hook.

Architecture as Invention

Director Michael Madsen

Production Per Damgaard Hansen for Paloma Productions

Contact per@paloma-productions.com

Production country Denmark

Co-production Auto Images | Majade filmproduktion GmbH

Co-production countries Germany, Sweden

Production stage Rough Cut Stage

Length 50’ & 90’

Total budget € 1.363.273

Amount still requested Fully financed

Looking for Broadcaster, distributors, festivals.

Architecture as Invention offers an intimate glimpse into the visionary mind of architect Daniel Libeskind, inviting the viewers into the sacred space of invention, where creativity meets the essence of being human.

Synopsis

In Architecture as Invention director Michael Madsen enters into a creative conversation and creation process with Daniel Libeskind, the visionary architect behind the Jewish Museum in Berlin and Ground Zero in New York, in which they explore the edge of human creativity. This process happens through six architectural challenges that Libeskind has to tackle over six days, aiming to create a final masterpiece resonating Libeskind’s previous work and his life story.

Architecture as Invention meets Libeskind in the fall of his life, struggling with his own creative existence and reflecting upon what may lie ahead of him, both professionally and personally. The film includes moments with Libeskind touching upon his past, his upbringing in Poland and being the son of Holocaust survivors, as well as his shared life and work with his wife Nina, strategic mastermind behind their company’s brand.

As we follow the challenges and scenes of the Libeskinds’ every day life, we come to the realization that one of the deepest fears fueling Libeskind’s work is the fear of forgetting (our history). This fear is a driving force for Libeskind in all of his creation and as such the film also points into the current state of events in the sociopolitical and historical context.

Architecture as Invention offers an intimate glimpse into Libeskind’s mind, inviting the viewers into the sacred space of invention, where creativity meets the essence of being human.

Bugboy

Director Lucas Paleocrassas

Production Rea Apostolides, Yuri Averof for Anemon Productions

Contact rea@anemon.gr

Production country Greece

Co-production Toolbox Film ApS | Flach Film Production

Co-production countries Denmark, France

Production stage Rough Cut Stage

Length 52’, 75’ & 85’

Total budget € 471.617

Amount still requested € 68.994

Looking for Theatrical distribution, pre-sales, outreach partners, and festival premieres to bring this story to the widest possible audience.

The unlikely friendship between a boy and an insect reveals the transformative power of nature.

Synopsis

Bugboy follows 16-year-old George, a withdrawn teenager struggling to connect with others. Marked by his parents’ traumatic divorce and a condition that misaligns his eyes, George has grown disillusioned with human relationships and finds refuge in the microcosm of insects.

One summer, he bonds with an adventurous cricket he names Isabella. Through this fragile yet fearless companion, George learns resilience, empathy, and the courage to reimagine his place in the world. Inspired by Isabella’s presence, he decides to undergo a risky eye operation, hoping to open a path toward new friendships.

As George navigates adolescence, his relationship with his father becomes increasingly important: weekends at his dad’s house, surrounded by insects and the care of his grandmother, offer him acceptance and safety, yet his father’s love can also feel suffocating. Confronting this dynamic—and his mother’s absence—becomes a crucial step in his growth.

By spring, George faces a profound dilemma: should he leave behind the safety of the insect world to focus on human connections, or find a way to balance both?

A tender coming-of-age story, Bugboy is a portrait of transformation and selfdiscovery. Through the lens of George’s unusual bond with nature and his complex relationship with his father, the film explores how fragility can coexist with strength, and how even the smallest creatures can teach us what it means to belong.

The Cord

Director Nolwenn Hervé

Production Estelle Robin You for Grande Ourse Films

Contact estelle.robin@grandeoursefilms.fr

Production country France

Production stage Rough Cut Stage

Length 52’ & 90’

Total budget € 325.593

Amount still requested € 86.293

Looking for Festival programmers, TV broadcasters, theatrical distribution, funders and foundations for the post-production and for our impact campaign.

venezuela, Maracaibo. in a broken health system where life hangs by a thread, Carolina rises as a maternity warrior. Drawing strength from a violent past, she relentlessly preserves the vital cord between pregnant women and their babies.

Synopsis

In Venezuela, giving birth has become a life-threatening act. Amid hyperinflation, sanctions, and the collapse of the health system, maternal and child mortality have soared. Many women are forced to choose between food and contraception or flee the country to deliver their babies safely. At the center of this crisis is Carolina, a fearless activist who has been fighting for justice since her teenage years.

With her right hand Yanni, Carolina transforms a small car into a makeshift ambulance — part hearse, part nursery, part safe space for conversations about sexuality. A chorus of women enter and leave this vehicle, each seeking to give birth as safely and with dignity as possible. Some welcome healthy babies, while others are forced to deliver stillborns after being rejected by overcrowded hospitals lacking basic supplies. Carolina and Yanni also run a neighborhood foundation, offering women a safe place to take their sexual health into their own hands while foraging in Maracaibo for medical resources.

From these struggles emerges Carolina’s most radical idea: a birth house, created outside failing state structures. Initially skeptical of her grandmother’s animistic spirituality, Carolina finds guidance in Flor, a Wayúu midwife from the native communities of Venezuela and Colombia. With Flor’s knowledge and the support of a sympathetic private doctor, Carolina envisions a space where ancestral practices and Western medicine come together, offering women safe and dignified births. This center marks the beginning of a self-sustaining, community-led model of care — a place where women reclaim autonomy over their bodies, their births, and their futures.

dreams of the Wild oaks

Director Marjan Khosravi

Production Milad Khosravi for Seven Springs Pictures

Contact milad.khosravi.baledi@gmail.com

Production country Iran

Co-production Lukimedia S.L. | Avant la Nuit

Co-production countries France, Spain

Production stage In Post-Production

Length 80’

Total budget € 224.300

Amount still requested € 60.800

Looking for Festivals, sales agents, distributors, and other financing partners in order to close the budget and secure our world premiere in early 2026.

A race against time to save her freedom: Samaneh, a young Bakhtiari girl in iran, must find rare and endangered birds to escape a forced marriage and a tradition of cease Blood sacrifice, in a journey that challenges her beliefs and tests the limits of her father’s love.

Synopsis

Samaneh, a 13-year-old Bakhtiari girl, lives in a remote Iranian village where girls can only attend elementary school. According to Islamic tradition, they are expected to marry as soon as they reach puberty, before their first menstrual period, which Samaneh anticipates with great fear. She dreams of continuing her studies in the city, far from restrictive ancestral traditions. Her story is further complicated by a family tragedy: When Samaneh was eight, her father, a skilled hunter, was accused of accidentally killing another tribe member. In Bakhtiari culture, to cut the chain of revenge, a girl is offered as a peace gift to the victim's family, a tradition called "Khoon-Bas" (cease blood sacrifice). Samaneh was chosen by the clan elders to be given to the victim's family once she reaches puberty, to prevent further bloodshed and bring peace between the two families.

With Samaneh's first period imminent, the victim's family is preparing for the wedding. However, her father refuses to surrender her as blood compensation, infuriating the victim's family and the tribe's elders, as it violates local traditions. A new possibility arises: according to an old tradition, if the perpetrator cannot provide a girl for blood compensation, they must offer a rare and precious bird, a golden-winged partridge, considered equivalent in value to a human life.

The victim's family demands not just one, but seven of these rare birds—an almost impossible task, as many locals believe them to be extinct due to massive capture for sale. Nonetheless, father and daughter venture into the mountains daily. Samaneh attends school in the mornings and hunts with her father in the evenings, constructing traps to capture the birds alive, as they hold no value when dead. The birds' shelter is the beautiful oak forest that provides villagers with precious materials like fruits and wood. Uncontrolled and massive hunting of rare animals and the cutting of oak trees are disturbing the balance with nature. The father must maintain his honor within the community and accept the elders' decision. Samaneh, who loves nature and animals, realizes that capturing the birds is her only escape from a marriage where she will be worthless, and she and her children will not be respected. Can she fly away from her harsh reality by capturing the birds?

getting the Message

Director Neasa Ní Chianáin

Production David Rane for Soilsiu Films

Contact david@soilsiu.com

Production country Ireland

Co-production Clin d’oeil films | Docmakers

Co-production countries Belgium, The Netherlands

Production stage In Post-Production

Length 52’ & 100’

Total budget € 832.412

Amount still requested € 164.000

Looking for Sales agent to work towards world premiere (in 2026), distributors in territories with strong documentary audiences, and broadcast and streaming pre-sales/acquisitions.

an irish political leader fights for climate justice amid global crises and public resistance. His bond with his autistic son reveals the personal stakes and humanity behind his relentless pursuit of a better world.

Synopsis

The film begins in July 2023, when Green Party Leader and Cabinet Minister Eamon Ryan and his team are in their final 18 months of government. They came into power on the crest of a Green wave that swept across Europe in 2020 when climate was in the public eye.

Two years on, the world has changed, with wars in Europe and the Middle East, soaring energy costs, high inflation, and a constant flow of migrants fleeing to Europe. Climate has slipped off the agenda at a time when the alarm bells could not be louder.

Eamon and his team are finally at the top table of politics and travel from global meeting to global meeting: the United Nations General Assembly, COP 28 Dubai and 29 Azerbaijan, the International Energy Agency, laying the stepping stones for a solution to the climate crisis, and laying out his personal ambition – to empower the global south, with financing, to improve their grid connectivity and use renewable energy sources.

At home in Ireland, in his own backyard, the Minister and his team have managed to enshrine in law one of the most ambitious climate action plans in Europe, but here he is also confronted daily by angry citizens who are reluctant to give up their diesel cars, cheap Ryanair flights, or consumerist lifestyles. Eamon is also the recipient of a campaign of vile hate messages through social media.

Eamon’s time spent with his autistic son Tommy weaves a second and important layer throughout this story. The patience he displays in caring for his son echoes the patience needed to keep pushing in politics. Calm, quiet with steely determination, Eamon’s mantra of ‘we can do this’ is as relevant to the climate movement as it is to caring for his son, Tommy. And it is in these moments that we learn to trust and understand this politician’s motivation. Tommy represents the invisible, those that are rarely heard and those that are more vulnerable to climate change, and, in Tommy’s case, those who thrive in nature.

Shot in an intimate, observational style over 18 months, this is a film that focuses on the human side of politics, it illustrates that not all politicians are untrustworthy but there is a personal cost endured by those who choose to put themselves in the firing line.

Sweet Belonging

Director Benjamin Bucher

Production Olivier Zobrist for Langfilm

Contact oz@langfilm.ch

Production country Switzerland

Production stage Rough Cut Stage

Length 52’ & 80’

Total budget € 536.100

Amount still requested € 30.000

Looking for Festivals, broadcasters and a world sales partner. A €30,000 gap from extended editing remains, which we hope to cover via pre-sales, MGs or post-production funds.

At 22, a Chinese-Gabonese dancer struggles to define her own path, torn between artistic freedom and the expectations of her influencer mother.

Synopsis

At 22, Chinese-Gabonese dancer Joyce is no longer the prodigy once featured on Chinese TV talent shows. After graduating from a Swiss dance school, she seeks independence and the chance to grow as an artist. She chooses to stay in Europe, against her mother Xuexin’s wish that she return to China. But adult life is difficult: her residency status is unclear, her work is unstable, and she still depends on her mother for money.

Her mother, Xuexin, is a well-known TikTok influencer who has turned their family life into content, attracting a large audience in part because of her mixed-race children. What began as family memories has become the family’s income, funding Joyce’s studies and artistic ambitions. Joyce feels torn between gratitude for this support and frustration at the role TikTok plays in their lives.

As conflicts with her mother grow, Joyce pulls away and focuses on her career. But Xuexin, weighed down by loneliness and the constant demands of her online persona, begins to break down. Joyce comes to see that independence does not mean cutting all ties — and that she must find her place within the fragile balance of family and self.

all fixed up

Director Hao Zhou

Production Jenny Man Wu for Dudubu Ltd.

Contact haozhoustudio@gmail.com

Production country China

Co-production Mala Productions

Co-production country United States

Production

Total budget € 597.465

Amount still requested € 460.000

Looking for Funding, coproduction partners, collaborators for post-production, distribution.

After struggling to ‘straighten out’ their queer heir, a family pursues a dramatic masquerade that pushes the boundaries of care, identity, and cross-generational understanding.

Synopsis

All Fixed Up follows the Zhou family in southwest China, where Hao, a queer, childless adult in their 30s, is a source of shame in their conservative community. Hoping to “cure” Hao, their Ma and Grandma subject Hao to mystical treatments. As these efforts fail, Ma shifts her mission: protecting the family’s reputation by finding Hao a sham foreign bride, which she believes is the ideal cover story.

Together, Ma and Hao embark on a surreal journey with stops in Europe and Asia. As they meet the candidate brides, who are Hao’s lesbian and trans women friends, each encounter becomes a quiet act of resistance. Hao is secretly and gently altering Ma’s experience of the world, hoping to restore their relationship. With each stop, Ma’s understanding of family, love, and autonomy begins to adapt. Back in their hometown, the spectacular staged wedding becomes something more: a family’s shared performance, a collaborative fiction that both protects and challenges them.

Through absurdity, heartbreak, and grace, All Fixed Up is a story of transformation, a mother learning to love her child as they are, and a family understanding its community and future in new terms.

Codename: Guster

Directors Katharina Warda, Jascha Hannover

Production Alexandre Tondowski for Tondowski Films

Contact alex@tondowskifilms.de

Production country Germany

Co-production Storyscope

Co-production country South Africa

Production stage Development

Length 90’ & 52’

Total budget € 621.000

Amount still requested € 485.000

Looking for International broadcasters, funders and sales agents who connect with the project.

codenaMe: gusTer

My father, a secret anc soldier, fled Apartheid to East Germany, where love defied race. decades after his death, I uncover his story—and a hidden history of resistance.

Synopsis

At the age of six, I saw Nelson Mandela on TV and wondered if he might be my father. All I knew was a codename: Guster. No photo, no voice — just whispers of a man who disappeared before I was born. A Black South African freedom fighter hidden in East Germany, Guster lived a life erased by secrecy, ideology, and the cold realities of the Cold War.

For 38 years, I knew almost nothing about him. He had joined the African National Congress (ANC) and its armed wing Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) in 1970 and, in 1980, was sent to the GDR — a key ally in the global anti-apartheid struggle. But his love for my white East German mother defied both the ANC’s rules and the racial conservatism of the East German state.

The East German secret Police (Stasi) urged her to have an abortion. When she refused, Guster was threatened with expulsion. My mother severed contact to protect us. Though he lived only kilometers away, I grew up never knowing him.

Guster survived exile, the fall of the GDR, and returned to South Africa after Mandela’s election. He rose through military ranks — and died in 2006 under suspicious circumstances. Some believe he was assassinated. His life remained a void — until a phone call in 2023 changed everything.

By chance, I discovered that several of Guster’s comrades had been living near me all along. One by one, they welcomed me into a hidden world — former ANC soldiers who had trained in East Germany, shared meals, families, and memories long buried. I found Ronnie, one of MK’s original members, who confirmed Guster’s training in Soviet and GDR paramilitary camps. Ribbon, of the ANC Women’s League, led me to others: Khulu, Sepho, ‘German.’ They became family. Through them, I glimpsed the life I was denied — ANC veterans and their East German wives barbecuing in South Africa, speaking a hybrid of English and East German dialects.

My journey led to Guster’s siblings — and to a half-sister I never knew existed.

But this story is not just about one man. It’s about exile, love, state control, forgotten alliances, and the lasting trauma of systemic racism. As I uncover my father’s story, I uncover my own — and a buried chapter of Black history in East Germany.

Codename: Guster is both personal and political: the search for a father, a history, and a place to belong.

The Documenters

Director Loretta van der Horst

Production Claudio Montesano Casillas for The Waves Ilja Roomans for Docmakers

Contact ilja@docmakers.nl

Production country The Netherlands

Production stage Development

Length 90’ & 55’

Total budget € 1.216.000

Amount still requested € 1.051.409

Looking for Broadcasting partners in different countries, to further develop our international co-production strategy. International funding possibilities and potential co-producing partners.

As pioneer Hadi al Khatib and his team of ‘documenters’ capture evidence of war crimes their ideals for justice collide with the harsh realities of geopolitical interests.

Synopsis

The Documenters follows those preserving evidence of war crimes for future accountability. In Berlin, above a shop in a graffiti-filled neighborhood, lies the office of Syrian documenter Hadi Al Khatib. In 2014, Hadi founded the Syrian Archive, collecting open-source evidence of human rights abuses, later expanding the archive to Ukraine, Yemen, Iran and Sudan under his NGO ‘Mnemonic’ (which works with the UN and International Courts). ‘Mnemonic’ means adjective. aiding or designed to aid the memory.

The film highlights Hadi’s case against former Syrian president Assad for the 2013 Ghouta chemical attack and the work of a Palestinian documenter gathering war crimes evidence abroad, exposing Western bias in global justice. Simultaneously, a young female Sudanese law student based in London leads a team documenting war crimes committed in Sudan, and a Paris based woman researcher leads the team documenting the crimes committed in the war in Ukraine.

But how likely is justice, when international pressure, a war on facts and shifting geopolitics are exposing and exacerbating the effects of Western double standards? Since all of the characters have personal experiences with the wars they document, the film will not only follow their professional journey in chasing war criminals in their respective home countries, but it will also show the personal impact on their own lives as well as on those who were most affected, witnesses.

ExCoded

Director Javier Lovera

Production Hannah Donegan for Have Magic Media

Marc Serpa Francoeur for Lost Time Media

Contact Hannah@hannahdonegan.com

Production country Canada

Production stage Development

Length 90’ & 52’

Total budget € 546.950

Amount still requested € 346.250

Looking for Co-producers (especially in Europe, Asia, and Australia), broadcast licenses and pre-sales to round out our financing, world sales and distribution opportunities.

amidst the steady creep of facial recognition Technology into policing, immigration cases, and even schools, three victims are taking on a system that’s rapidly rewriting the rules of public life.

Synopsis

In 2020, Detroit police wrongfully arrested Robert Williams in front of his wife and daughters. The warrant for retail theft was based on a grainy security image run through facial recognition technology (FRT). Robert became the first documented case of a false arrest caused by this kind of mismatch, launching a years-long legal battle to reform Detroit’s FRT policy.

In Toronto, Abdiqani Ali received refugee status after fleeing Somalia, only to have the decision reversed because FRT confused him with another man in a government database. For years now, Abdiqani has been locked in a legal battle to prove his identity and remain in the country he now calls home with his wife and toddler. Making matters worse, as we learn from Abdiqani’s lawyer, Tina Hlimi, is that she’s representing several Somalis trapped in the same FRT mismatch nightmare.

In 2019, civil rights lawyer Stefanie Coyle received a panicked email from Jim Shulz, a concerned parent in Lockport, NY. The city’s school district had quietly spent millions on FRT, installing it in schools without the consent of students, parents, or teachers. Stefanie jumped on the case with Jim as her plaintiff and sued both the state and local school district. Their fight led to the first statewide ban on FRT in US public schools. Since then, Stefanie has identified over fifty other school districts actively using FRT. With no institutional support or funding, she’s desperately trying to replicate the New York victory across the country.

Meanwhile, the systems keep spreading. Despite a growing list of wrongful arrests and misidentifications, FRT is being sold to police departments, immigration agencies, and schools. Globally, the trend is accelerating: Hungary recently employed FRT and more than thirtyfive thousand CCTV cameras to track attendees at a banned Pride Parade, Sweden is proposing a bill to allow police to use FRT, and the tech is already widely used by police in the UK and being tested in France and Germany.

ExCoded follows Robert, Abdiqani, and Stefanie as they challenge a surveillance system expanding quietly and rapidly into every corner of public life. Through their stories, we expose the tech giants, policymakers, and investors driving the spread, asking what safeguards are needed to protect us all before it’s too late. Will Abdiqani win his case? Will Stefanie succeed in stopping the spread of FRT in US schools? And how far will this technology go if no one pushes back?

The face of Power

Director James Jones

Production Sasha Odynova

James Jones

Contact odynova.a@gmail.com

Production country United Kingdom

Production stage Development

Length 90’

Total budget € 1.084.700

Amount still requested € 1.050.000

Looking for A coalition of partners who share our enthusiasm and vision for the film.

Told through rare and iconic archival footage, The Face of Power is a chilling, immersive portrait of Vladimir Putin’s rise from obscurity to autocracy—an epic psychological study of how one man weaponized television to control a nation, deceive the world, and lead russia into war.

Synopsis

On New Year’s Eve 1999, an ailing Boris Yeltsin quietly hands over the Russian presidency to a little-known former KGB officer—Vladimir Putin. That same night, millions of Russians tune in to watch their new leader deliver the traditional holiday address. It is the dawn of a new century—and the beginning of a regime that will reshape Russia and reverberate far beyond its borders.

The Face of Power is an immersive documentary and unflinching chronicle of Putin’s 25-year rule, told almost entirely through archival footage—much of it rare, iconic, and newly uncovered. From propaganda-laden broadcasts to intimate moments behind the scenes, the film reveals how Putin constructed a persona of strength and order, while methodically building a system rooted in fear, violence, and absolute control.

Woven through this hypnotic flow of state media are audio testimonies from those who witnessed his rise and lived under his rule: journalists, insiders, dissidents, and ordinary citizens. Their voices—unseen, yet emotionally present—pierce through the spectacle, offering moments of reflection, grief, resistance, and warning.

There are no talking heads. No commentary. Just Putin’s Russia, as seen and heard from within.

At first, he appears as a pragmatic technocrat, surrounded by ambitious allies and projecting a modern, liberal-friendly image. But the illusion of stability quickly gives way to something darker. The country descends into a series of brutal wars and devastating terror attacks, and hostage crises —Chechnya, Beslan, Nord-Ost, and more—each used to justify the tightening grip of power. The circle around him shrinks. Allies are exiled, silenced, or eliminated. Cabinet meetings are held at comically long tables. Eventually, even those are replaced by remote screens. The more isolated he becomes in life, the more omnipresent he becomes on-screen. Putin lives inside the homes of millions—broadcast on TVs, glowing from smartphones, looming from billboards.

As the years go by and the lies grow bolder, the dissonance between the official narrative and lived reality becomes increasingly stark. Tanks roll through shattered Ukrainian cities even as broadcasts insist they are ‘liberated.’ The same New Year’s speech returns, year after year, delivered with clinical calm as violence escalates outside the frame.

The Face of Power is not just the story of Putin’s rule. It is the story of how he was seen—misunderstood, mythologized, enabled. A psychological portrait of modern authoritarianism, it is both a reckoning with the past and a warning for what lies ahead.

a film for one

Director Alexandre Donot-Saby

Production Valérie Montmartin for Little Big Story

Contact vmontmartin@lbstory.fr

Production country France

Co-production Portage Films

Co-production country Canada

Production stage In Production

Length 90’ & 52’

Total budget € 465.500

Amount still requested € 285.120

Looking for Pre-buys, co-productions, funds.

filmmaker nora gruber travels the u.s. to make short documentaries advocating for criminal defendant in an effort to reduce their sentences. each of these films has an audience of one: the judge.

Synopsis

A crime has been committed. The accused pleaded guilty. But before the judge signs off on the sentence, there is still a brief ‘mitigation film’ to consider. In it, filmmaker Nora Gruber dives deep into the accused’s past to tell the story behind the story and explain the circumstances surrounding the crime. While overburdened courts often focus on the ‘how’, Nora delves into ‘why’ her clients broke the law, and whether they can redeem themselves. After watching the film, the judge has an opportunity to weigh the full narrative before delivering a final decision.

All across the US, courts have become an assembly-line of justice, where offenders are squeezed into neat packages and shipped off to serve time in a sprawling prison system. What often gets lost in the shuffle are the circumstances, the remorse they might feel, and the possibility of recidivism, if they get trapped in the penal maze.

Nora Gruber wants to bring all of that to the forefront. A talented filmmaker, she wants the justice system to consider that not all thieves, embezzlers or drug traffickers are the same, and that a lifetime of events leading up to their crimes can be turned around, if the whole of their stories are known. With camera and editing board at the ready, she’s often the first to piece together the sum of her clients’ past and present. She gives them a voice to plead their case before the judge.

A mother of two coerced by cartels to serve as a drug mule. A young man introduced to heroin by one of his mother’s johns. A clergyman, spiritual leader of a tax-exempt religious organization, defrauding the IRS of millions of dollars. These are just a few of the cases Nora has dealt with. She probes each case intently, often spending more time with her clients than their attorneys. Then she films her subjects and the people closest to them, to piece together another critical, 15-minute layer to their stories.

Sought out by defense attorneys and the families of the convicted, her carefully structured films consist of three ‘acts’: an introduction to the antagonist, a seemingly hopeless conflict, the possibility of redemption. Only the sentencing judge will see the final product, but with mitigation films, that could be all it takes to give her subjects a fresh start...and Nora, a chance to move on to her next client.

I've Always Said We

Director Lucia Sanchez

Production Valérianne Boué for Les Films d’Ici

Marie Régis for Anoki

Contact valerianne.boue@lesfilmsdici.fr

Production country France

Co-production Delicias Films

Co-production country Spain

Production stage Development

Length 70’

Total budget € 402.527

Amount still requested € 297.027

Looking for Pre-sales, funds, financial partners, international sales agents.

in 1970 a woman died in valencia, my hometown. Her name was the same as mine: lucia sanchez. a worker, poet, journalist, and a leading figure of the 1930s anarchist feminist movement ‘free Women’, she has since been forgotten. Together with other women, we set out to rediscover her story, convinced she still has something to say to us.

Synopsis

A portrait of a woman from the past, this is a story of investigation and the reclaiming of a long-suppressed collective memory. The film embodies all these elements simultaneously. Fusing documentary, fiction, and personal exploration, we trace the forgotten legacy of Lucía Sánchez, a Spanish poet, anarchist, and libertarian feminist. The director first discovered her existence in a cemetery in Valencia, intrigued by a simple grave bearing the same name as hers and an evocative inscription: “Is it true that hope has died?”

The film weaves together official history with personal memories, archives with letters, and eyewitness accountswith newspapers from the time. Lucía Sánchez’s life and fate are reimagined in the present day by Spanish actresses. It reveals what is known, as well as what has been lost or erased. These “gaps in memory” become the very fabric of the film, embodied by the actresses, who bring Lucía’s story to life through their own questions and personal family memories. The film unfolds like a treasure hunt, moving across different locations and journeys in time—from her tomb in Valencia to her exile in France, and back to her youth and childhood in Madrid. Lucía becomes a symbol for all those whose voices have been silenced. Her journey, marked by ideals, defeat, commitment, and dignity, resonates deeply with struggles both past and present.

Inframince

Director Alison O’Daniel

Production Maya E. Rudolph for Louverture Films

Contact mayaevagunstrudolph@gmail.com

Production country United States

Production stage Development

Length 90’

Total budget € 810.000

Amount still requested € 742.000

Looking for Soft monies ($150,000 USD), co-production funding, strategic and intellectual partnerships from Europe, Latin America, and Asia.

from the global to the personal, Inframince is a sensory exploration of the weaponization of sound and what it means to be believed.

Synopsis

‘Inframince’ is a concept invented by the artist Marcel Duchamp that describes an ephemeral, nearly unquantifiable sensory phenomena - like sitting down in a chair and detecting the body heat of someone who has just stood up.

In Inframince, events connected to and inspired by Havana Syndrome - the alleged ‘sonic attacks’ on US Diplomats that began in 2016 - inspire a cinematic exploration of sound as it is weaponized, manipulated, and misunderstood. The film centers those who seek to express experiences often met with skepticism and disbelief.

Since 2016, when US diplomats in Havana first reported hearing inexplicable sounds and feeling painful symptoms, the phenomenon that US media outlets named ‘Havana Syndrome’ has been widely debated as a political, scientific, and physiological enigma. Some have dismissed the spread of Havana Syndrome among diplomats around the world as mass psychogenic illness or moral panic; some believe short-tail

crickets are responsible, while others point the finger at micro-wave-wielding spies. Today, the preeminent scientific paper published by the University of Pennsylvania in 2018 that described the Havana Syndrome as a sonic attack resulting in brain injuries among affected targets has been widely decried as ‘science fiction’. Yet many of the people who experienced these symptoms have reported lasting physical effects, including permanent hearing loss.

In Inframince, Havana Syndrome is situated not only as an unresolved crisis of the recent past, one that upends our sense of the body’s relationship to sound and technology, but also as discourse in the realm of disability justice. The skepticism and politicking around Havana Syndrome obscure the fact that many of those who experienced these extreme physical symptoms are now disabled. What can Havana Syndrome teach us about how many people in disabled bodies struggle not only to express their experiences, but to be believed? How can a person articulate their experience when the language available to express what they feel or know in their body is dismissed as science fiction? How can something as powerful and ephemeral as perception - the sensation of warmth lingering in a chair - be understood and trusted by another person?

Karsai vs Hungary

Director Marcell Gerö

Production Sára László for Campfilm

Contact sara@campfilm.eu

Production country Hungary

Co-production Films de Force Majeure | MPhilms

Co-production countries Slovakia, France

Production stage In Production Length 100’

Total budget € 581.172

Amount still requested € 379.000

Looking for Production and post-production financing, co-producers or broadcasters, international sales representation.

A terminally ill 45 year old constitutional lawyer’s personal and legal fight for a dignified death in the context of a polarized hungary.

Synopsis

Constitutional lawyer Dániel Karsai (45) was diagnosed with ALS at the peak of his life. The statistical time until death is 2-5 years but the total paralysis comes much earlier while all mental capacities function on 100% all time long.

Having overcome depression, he begins a legal fight in Strasbourg for his right to end-of-life decisions. He puts all his remaining strength to start a meaningful conversation about the topic in Hungary. His passion and profession gives meaning to every moment he can still express himself. Surrounded by loving friends and family, and admired by endless online followers, he keeps bouncing back from Viktor Orbán’s cynical government that refuses all dialogue and blocks all legal options.

However, the populist government may have a serious problem in dealing with an issue that, on the one hand, enjoys considerable support among the most diverse layers of society and, on the other, represents principles that are at odds with the practice of a government that implicitly limits free will. Meanwhile, time passes and Dániel’s illness is slowly but inexorably taking away more and more of his physical freedom. His increasing difficulties and physical pains are a clear sign that his time is running out and that his attention, hitherto focused on public and legal affairs, is turning more and more towards his inevitable confrontation with mortality.

By July 2024 almost all his endeavours fail. Despite this, he continues to repeat his raison d’être: He is a fighter, and – as he learned from his jiu- jitsu master – he wants to die standing. Just like the trees.

Our crew followed Daniel throughout his legal battle until his very last hours before his death in September 2024.

Using our own filmed material and a considerable amount of archive footage our film follows Dániel’s fight for the cause he choose, the ever-mounting waves provoked by his actions – and his everydays, including the physical degeneration that was gradually eating away at his life.

Lonesome Land

Director Virpi Suutari

Production Virpi Suutari for Euphoria film oy

Contact virpi.suutari@gmail.com

Production country Finland

Production stage Development

Length 90’

Total budget € 571.000

Amount still requested € 443.000

Looking for Co-production partners, tv pre-buys, artistic collaborations, sales agent.

one day, everything went to shits. Thousands of endangered freshwater pearl mussels were crushed in an instant. Absurd tale in the middle of nowhere.

Synopsis

One day, everything went to shits. A forestry machine driver crossed a river and, without realizing, crushed thousands of highly endangered freshwater pearl mussels.

Lonesome Land is a philosophical crime film with an absurd twist. It paints a cinematic portrait of forestry loggers and other living creatures in a remote area of eastern Finland, near the Russian border.

While the story centers on one of the most severe environmental crimes in the country’s history, the film ultimately explores deeper themes: our perception of time and the growing alienation of humans from the very ecosystems that sustain us.

The starting point of Lonesome Land is an environmental crime committed by an unfortunate logger in the fall of 2024. A man in his 60s was working at a logging site when he was stopped by a biologist. He was simply following instructions from Stora Enso - one of the largest forestry companies in Sweden and Finland - when he crossed the river to retrieve logs from a logging site. In doing so, he had caused massive damage to freshwater pearl mussel population.

The investigation is ongoing, and charges are expected to be filed in late 2025.

Lonesome Land expands from this single incident into a broader human landscape. The film portrays the harsh realities faced by forestry machine drivers in the Kainuu region, which has become an Eldorado for multinational mining corporations, wind energy projects, and forestry companies. Regional officials appear pale and exhausted, caught between conflicting pressures.

The central protagonists of the film are local forestry machine drivers and their families. Supporting characters include river biologists, a crime investigator, a mayor, and forestry company executives.

Something has happened, and people testify from their own perspectives. They reflect on the freshwater pearl mussel case while also sharing their living conditions, histories and personal relationships with nature.

Meanwhile, the freshwater pearl mussels lie at the bottom of the river, purifying the water. Some of them have lived since the late 1700s. Humans and mussels perceive time very differently.

Lonesome Land is a heartfelt tale about small human lives caught in the gears of capitalism – a story of our shared planetary loneliness.

The film intertwines majestic nature cinematography with the work, lives, and destinies of people.

My name is khalil

Director Bilal Alkhatib

Production Tania El Khoury for Les films de l’Altaï

Contact khamsinfilms@hotmail.com

Production countries Palestine, France, Lebanon

Production stage Development

Length 85’

Total budget € 252.100

Amount still requested € 197.500

Looking for Broadcaster, distributors, sales agents, (European) co-producers.

The film follows khalil, who was given the name of his brother, martyred in the first Palestinian intifada. in a family that sees him as the embodiment of the late khalil, he struggles to define his own identity. Through dance and music, he expresses his inner conflict and seeks to free himself from a name tied to memory, loss and expectation.

Synopsis

Born in 1993 in the village of Idhna, south of Hebron, Khalil carries the name of a brother he never met—a martyr whose memory lives on through family stories, photographs, and letters. From childhood, Khalil has grappled with this inherited identity. The turning point comes when he finds his own name engraved on his brother’s grave, confronting him with an unsettling question: is he living his own life, or someone else’s?

Determined to understand, Khalil revisits the family archive and interviews relatives, reconstructing a portrait of the brother whose legacy overshadows him. He stages a symbolic confrontation, challenging the reasons for his naming and the emotional burden it carries.

Khalil shaped his own identity through artistic expression. He moved to Ramallah, where he studies theater, directing, acting, and composing music. Performance becomes a means of selfdiscovery and resistance. Yet the expectations remain—his family and society still see him as a continuation of the martyr.

When he finds an old recording of his brother’s voice, singing during the First Intifada, he integrates it into his performances. Through this, he confronts history on stage, exploring the complex ties between name, memory, identity, and the personal struggle for freedom.

Never Arrive

Directors Tenji Takakura, Sansan Liu

Production Takahito Kanegawa for Temjin TV Production Co Ltd

Jia Zhao for Muyi Film

Contact jia@muyifilm.com

Production countries Japan, The Netherlands

Production

Looking for Co-producers, international broadcasters, festivals, sales agents.

Entangled in the gears of capitalistic China, a weathered trucker braves deadly roads—from Tibet to Laos to russia—seeking escape, but the highway keeps stretching, with no mercy, no end.

Synopsis

China, the world’s logistics giant, moves to the rhythm of 20 million nameless truckers—men caught in the machinery of a relentless economy. Among them is Zhang, a 43-year-old veteran driver weighed down by over $100,000 in debt, navigating not just roads, but the fragile line between survival and collapse.

Zhang sets out on a perilous delivery route with his unlikely companion, Liu Yang—a former white-collar worker who has fallen from grace. Inexperienced and clumsy, Liu is the opposite of the hardened Zhang. Yet bound by an old promise and a quiet loyalty, Zhang keeps him close as they drive through the sweltering jungles of Laos and the dizzying heights of Tibet, where roads coil above 5,000 meters and death waits around every bend.

They battle more than terrain: illegal fuel trades, corrupt checkpoints, mounting fines, and breakdowns test their resilience. But amid the hardship, there is laughter, fleeting brotherhood, and the aching silence of two men chasing different kinds of redemption.

When Zhang finally returns home after the long and exhausting journey, he finds it gone—washed away by a flood. The rest he had longed for vanishes with it. With no choice left, he accepts an even riskier offer: to drive to Russia, a destination unknown, in hopes of earning enough to rebuild what was lost.

This new route reveals more than personal struggle. On the 10,000-kilometer journey from Qingdao to Moscow, we witness how Sino-Russian trade has surged under the Ukraine war. Trucks loaded with Chinese goods—from electronics to construction steel—flow daily across Manzhouli, feeding Russia’s wartime economy. Through Zhang’s eyes, this geopolitical connection emerges not as commentary but as lived experience: every border crossing, every checkpoint, every moment of extortion marks how global systems bear down on the individual.

For Zhang, the Russia route is no salvation but a desperate wager. His story mirrors that of countless workers who, however hard they push forward, are trapped in a loop where effort only fuels the system that exhausts and replaces them. Through Zhang’s eyes, we also glimpse the silent infrastructure behind China’s global rise: the Belt and Road expansion, the shadow economy, the unspoken toll of progress.

This is not just a road movie. It is a journey through the underbelly of China’s economic engine and its uneasy entanglement with Russia—a sweeping yet intimate portrait of a man, a machine, and the price of survival.

Nighthawk

Director Adam James Smith

Contact ajsfilm@alumni.stanford.edu

Production countries China, United States

Production stage Start Production

Length 75’ & 50’

Total budget € 250.000

Amount still requested € 195.000

Looking for Co-production partners, financing, programmers, distributors, receiving critical feedback.

At the world’s largest art factory in shenzhen, china, a lonely painter - shaped by Edward Hopper’s depictions of urban alienation - wanders through the night, discovering connections with fellow migrants that spark his own creative journey.

Synopsis

At the world’s largest art factory in Shenzhen, China, thousands of painters work on recreating historic masterpieces for a global market. Xu, a migrant artist grappling with feelings of isolation, finds solace in the haunting imagery of Edward Hopper’s “Nighthawks.” As he reproduces Hopper’s iconic work night after night, the echoes of urban loneliness resonate deeply within him, reflecting his own experiences in China’s sprawling urban landscape.

Driven by a profound yearning for connection, Xu ventures into the vibrant cityscape after dark. In the shadows and flickering neon, he discovers a tapestry of fellow migrant workers chasing their hopes amidst the chaos of a struggling economy and wavering modernity. Xu finds not just inspiration but a sense of solidarity that transforms his artistic process. As he translates his experiences and emotions into original creations, Xu breathes new life into the spirit of Hopper’s work.

A century on from his first portrayals of an atomized urban America, this story reimagines Hopper’s vision against the backdrop of a contemporary, postpandemic China grappling with the disillusionment of the “Chinese Dream.” Through Xu’s artistic journey, the film explores how art transcends barriers, forging connections across time, place, and culture.

The Path That Walks

Director Efthymia Zymvragaki

Production Efthymia Zymvragaki for Gris Medio

Contact info@grismedio.es

Production country Spain

Co-production Witfilm | Sisilo

Co-production countries The Netherlands, Greece

Production stage Start Production

Length 90’ & 52’

Total budget € 694.920

Amount still requested € 342.000

Looking for Broadcasters, festivals, international distribution/sales, streamers, partnerships for impact.

In a remote cooking school in the Pyrenees, I spend time with fragile, sometimes shattered young people whose stories simmer alongside the meals they create. As I connect with my own memories, dreams and reality blur in a shared ritual of healing, identity, and connection, where food becomes the first bond, the beginning of a world remade.

Synopsis

Nar’hi Nan (The Path That Walks) was born from a desire to find meaningful ways of relating—to others and to myself. For two years, I lived with a group of teenagers at a cooking school in the remote Pyrenees of Spain—young people marked by abandonment, migration, violence, and grief. Amid pots, routines, and shared meals, I watched them invent new ways of being in the world.

The film is a collective coming-of-age story where food becomes refuge, memory, and expression. It is also my attempt to name what I cannot yet express. The students question my presence, drawing me into honest exchanges that blur the line between filmmaker and participant. As a visitor, I listen, share doubts, and offer care, bringing fragments of my own adolescence—its uncertainty, joy, and vulnerability—to weave a thread between generations. Through this closeness, the film becomes both a personal search and a shared recognition of the bonds that hold us together.

The teenagers’ stories intertwine: Candela (19) bears the scars of an eating disorder and a suicide attempt; Pedro (18), adopted, seeks his African roots; José Ángel (18), once abused, spoke his first word—‘yoghurt’—at four; Jeremy (17), half-Ecuadorian, escaped gangs to live with a distant father; and Pedro and Constanza (16) find in each other the shelter the world denied them.

The film unfolds like an emotional recipe book, blending observation with imagined scenes that reveal fears, memories, and desires through the language of food. Cooking becomes a rebirth of relationships and meanings, where ancestral secrets surface to form a collective memory. Through empathy and intimacy, the film shows how everyday acts can open paths to a world constantly reimagined.

The teachers are essential guides: María Ángeles, the director, with her faith in inclusive education; Javier, who teaches through trust; José Luis, strict yet tender; Josemi, a Michelin-starred chef offering steady mentorship; and Bea, the psychologist, who supports the students with quiet care.

The Path That Walks is not a story of overcoming, but of seeking identity, belonging, and connection. It speaks of the fragile bonds that sustain us, of growing amid alienation and pain, and of how, in this kitchen, food becomes language, care becomes ritual, and together we learn what it means to belong.

Small Expectations

Director Alexandru Solomon

Production Ada Solomon for microFILM

Contact ada.solomon@gmail.com

Production country Romania

Co-production While We’re Here

Co-production country Belgium

Production stage In Post-Production

Length 90’

Total budget € 263.377

Amount still requested € 80.000

Looking for Sales agents, distributors, broadcasters and platforms. We also aim to establish festival contacts and create awareness about the film on the market.

Who wins when citizens mistrust politicians and when politics offer only small expectations? a dive into romania’s electoral farce that nearly derailed the country, echoing global patterns of democratic decline.

Synopsis

In April 2024, we started documenting the electoral rounds in Romania, convinced we were witnessing a turning point in our society, a reflection of global shifts such as: the rise of the far-right, the huge influence of social media, the Russian pressure. The expectations were rather small, because everybody was fed-up with the current politicians. But never did we foresee the countless twists that threw our country into chaos, a drama that extended well beyond our initial expectations.

We started filming the local campaign for the Bucharest town hall. While we gained extensive access to both the main far-right party and the liberal competitors, our closest connection emerged with the independent candidate who ultimately won the race. This was in June. His name is Nicusor Dan… A year later, he would become the new president of Romania.

To get back to the chronology: in Autumn we continued to film the parliamentary and presidential campaign. Nicusor was not in the race, but we kept close to him.

In December 2024, an unlikely candidate emerged: Georgescu - a neo-fascist figure risen from the depths of social media. The winner of the hybrid war. He triumphed in the first presidential round, only for the elections to be annulled due to his opaque campaign and Russian connections. Soon after, Nicusor Dan announced his own run for the presidency, becoming the only viable hope against the far-right...

It became clear that, against all odds, Nicu?or was the red thread uniting our film’s narrative. We followed his evolving journey until his recent victory in May 2025. Alongside his story, two other threads defined our documentary. First, the social media, the virtual bubble that dramatically reshaped reality. Second, the citizens: from the beginning, we started to follow and talk to a number of people that we met on various occasions, linked to the electoral process. They are of very different backgrounds and political stands; we made them meet and talk.

Nicusor Dan’s unexpected victory after a dramatic, anxiety-ridden race, marks the end of our film’s journey. A happy ending for a story that started with small expectations. But this is not the end of our hurdles. It leaves behind more than 5 million far-right voters, disenchanted and eager for retribution. We hope to capture this dynamic in the film, as the challenges continue.

Director Justine Martin

Production Amélie Tremblay for Nemesis Films inc

Contact amelie@nemesisfilms.com

Production country Canada

Production stage Development

Length 75’ & 52’

Total budget € 446.577

Amount still requested € 347.330

Looking for International sales agents, distributors, broadcasters and European co-producers.

over a decade, Sundays follows twins rémi and raphaël as they navigate adulthood, facing the challenges of raphaël’s disabilities while struggling to preserve their bond against the pressures of the outside world.

Synopsis

Sundays is a feature-length documentary exploring the evolving relationship between twin brothers Raphaël and Rémi over a decade. As Raphaël, living with both autism and cerebral palsy, faces increasing physical and cognitive challenges, Rémi grapples with adulthood gradually pulling him away from his brother.

Now 18, the twins are at a turning point: soon, Raphaël will be required to move into a residence for adults with disabilities. For the first time, the twins will be separated.

Rémi plans to visit his twin brother at the residence on Sundays. Aware that his life choices will determine how close he can remain to Raphaël, he fears that, over time, these visits may become less frequent. Raphaël is fully aware of his surroundings and how his condition affects those around him. He witnesses the social injustices that deprive him of a fairer future, as he dreams of a life that always seems just out of reach.

Sundays unfolds through the rituals the brothers build for one another, most vividly embodied in their annual road trip—a journey that becomes both tradition and a quiet rebellion. Planning the route with care, they venture beyond the constraining routines of their daily lives, collecting moments that belong only to them, moments that, for Raphaël, become an escape from the limits imposed by his disabilities.

Raphaël’s condition also steadily affects his memory. With each passing year, details slip away, leaving behind only fragments of emotions. While Rémi carries the weight of remembering, Raphaël lives fully in the present, savoring every instant before it disappears.

The journeys become an act of protest against time itself: a chance to witness Raphaël’s way of being and learn from a life measured not in milestones but in shared moments. Through the years, Rémi nurtures Raphaël’s dreams—like his hope of seeing the ocean—knowing that Raphaël may not remember the experience later. In turn, Raphaël leads Rémi to new ways of loving and connecting with others. Together, they infuse ordinary life with meaning. What begins as a simple escape gradually transforms into a portrait of two lives diverging yet forever intertwined.

Talia after Talia

Director Pedro Speroni

Production Tomas Raimondo Pedro Speroni for El Ojo Silva

Contact pedrosperoni87@gmail.com

Production country Argentina

Production stage In Production

Length 72’

Total budget € 220.000

Amount still requested € 120.000

Looking for Co-producers, distributors, broadcasters, platforms with an interest in social issues.

Talia regains her freedom after spending 8 years in a maximumsecurity prison. During that time, she formed a deep bond with her fellow inmates—a connection that goes beyond friendship.

Synopsis

Talia regains her freedom after spending 8 years in a maximum security prison in Argentina. She is only 27 years old and during her time in prison she forged a deep bond with her fellow inmates that transcends friendship. For Talia, these girls are part of her family, they are her “sisters”. That is why when she crosses the immense pavilion for the last time to the last fence of the prison, the women hug her and cheer with emotion while they film the farewell with their cell phones as if they were celebrating an idol.

Once outside, Talia returns home, where her mother awaits her, to live in a marginalized neighborhood and begins a tortuous path toward reintegration. But reintegration into what? How? Into what kind of society? In her neighborhood, the dominant economy is one of survival — often intertwined with crime. Talia wants to take control of her life, even though she misses the friendships forged in

prison. Paradoxically, prison was a protective cocoon. Life in her neighborhood is uncertain and dangerous. Every step she takes in her new life, she shares virtually with her “sisters” through video calls. Her phone screen becomes their eyes to see how life unfolds on the outside. But it’s also the way Talia, in some way, remains inside prison.

Talia is a time bomb, a sweet and tender woman but also intense and anxious. With no concrete plans, she is unable to promise her mother that she is going to give up crime, although she assures her that from now on, she wants to do things right. She gets a job selling coffee, takes out loans to buy a one-bedroom apartment, but she is constantly being stalked by “her devil” and the temptation of marginality. She makes deals, small swindles and visits her old crime cronies who make her offers to steal again as if they were children playing. While planning a heist, she meets Leo. They fall in love. Their bond grows stronger, but it’s also fragile in the face of temptation. If they get caught, they could lose each other forever. Talia is torn between returning to crime — and reuniting with her prison “tribe” — or trying to reintegrate into a society that constantly excludes her, while fighting to build a possible future with Leo.

Todo Lo Sólido

Directors Luis Gutiérrez Arias, Zaina Bseiso

Production Luis Gutiérrez Arias, Zaina Bseiso for Bahia Colectiva

Contact luis.yyz@gmail.com

Production country Cuba

Co-production Warboys Films | Estudio ST

Co-production country France

Production stage In Production Length 80’

Total budget € 431.519

Amount still requested € 214.396

Looking for Funding (pick-up shoots & post-production), sales agents, distributors, programmers, WIP platforms.

Set in present-day Cuba and structured as a road movie, Todo Lo Sólido tells the story of an island sinking into the Caribbean Sea. As a nameless drifter searches for explanations about the island’s destiny, reality and fantasy merge to reflect on nation-building and the burden of progress.

Synopsis

A nameless drifter returns to his homeland after hearing rumors of an imminent, divisive storm to consult his spiritist. When the drifter’s ancestors are summoned, the spiritist confirms the island’s impending fate and the need to ask for protection. Determined to understand his country’s potential disappearance, the drifter embarks on a journey across diverse terrains and communities to uncover its causes.

Along the way, he encounters five main characters: a historian, a fisherman, a farmer, a tourist, and a contractor—each revealing a different interpretation of the “sinking”. For some, it manifests in the unbearable economic reality, reflected in the scarce and unjust allocation of resources, or the growing exodus of loved ones through migration. For others, it manifests physically, as rising waters displace them from their homes and workplaces. Meanwhile, those tied to tourism turn the climatic and economic shifts into opportunities for profit. Through these interactions, we explore major Cuban economic development projects, from the early land reforms of the revolution to present-day industrial tourism. The documentary portraits reflect on the impact these projects have had on the island by recounting the personal stories of those who participated in them.

Interwoven with these portraits are minor characters the drifter meets on trains, horse carts, and boats. A wide range of testimonies is presented with equal significance, from word-of-mouth, jokes, legends, and gossip to expert advice and personal interviews. This chorus of voices provides a pulse of the island’s rapidly shifting socio-economic landscape. His brief exchanges with them, coupled with diaristic reflections, provide moments of self-exploration and narrative building. A central question emerges: who will the island remain habitable for?

untitled Petra Costa Project

Director Petra Costa

Production Rémi Grellety for Busca Vida Filmes

Contact rgrellety@warboys.fr

Production country Brazil

Production stage Start Production

Length 120’

Total budget € 1.548.000

Amount still requested € 563.300

Looking for Co-producers, funding partners (production and postproduction funds/grants) to help bridge our financing gap, festival programmers.

Blurring fiction and documentary, Petra Costa draws from personal history to explore the Western genre and reveal how historical inequalities fuel climate collapse and endanger millions of Brazil’s poorest today.

untitled Watermelon Pictures Documentary

Production Ayah Selene

Contact aya@10mils.com

Production stage

Total budget € 863.540

Amount still requested € 713.890

Looking for Seeking value aligned support to close our funding gap, as well as strategic partners to drive an impact campaign.

a gazan journalist uses their page to document the unfolding atrocities.

The White Doctor

Director Zippy Kimundu

Production Colum McKeown for Little Wing Films

Zippy Kimundu for Afrofilms International Company Ltd

Contact colum@littlewingfilms.com

Production countries Kenya, Ireland

Co-production Tondowski Films

Co-production country Germany

Production stage Start Production Length 90’

Total budget € 683.490

Amount still requested € 579.490

Looking for Funders, financiers and commissioners who can become part of the project and close the current finance gap.

a ugandan journalist investigates an American missionary who stands accused of pretending to be a doctor in uganda and being responsible for the deaths of over a hundred children in her care; but the story becomes a deeper and harrowing look into the evangelical and volunteer industry in Africa.

Synopsis

At the heart of the film The White Doctor is a terrifying and unbelievable question - did a white American evangelical missionary go to Uganda, set up an unlicensed health facility and treat seriously ill children resulting in the deaths of over a hundred infants?

The film follows the Pulitzer nominated and award-winning investigative journalist Halima Athumani as she not only investigates the case of Renee Bach but also explores the industry and world of missionaries and volunteerism in Uganda. It is a question that allows the film to investigate and delve deeper into the missionary and charity industry that is booming in third world countries and especially in sub Saharan countries.

At the heart of Halima’s investigation is the case of an American missionary, Renee Bach. Known locally as The White Doctor, Renee Bach, who had no medical experience or qualifications is alleged to have treated sick children, resulting in the deaths of those placed in her care.

The White Doctor poses serious and worthy questions about the role of the West in the development of Africa. The documentary touches on some of the most pressing issues that the world faces such as poverty, colonialism, the role of religion in society and women’s rights.

In Uganda alone, there are an estimated 10,000 volunteers travelling there annually, bringing in revenue of €3 million. These volunteers mainly come from North America, Europe and Australia and are aged between 18 – 30 with an increasing number of older volunteers and retirees.

It is not only volunteers who make up the industry, evangelical NGOs in Uganda are now bigger and better funded than most secular aid organisations. They account for more than one-fifth of all NGOs in the country. 20 years ago 2002, evangelical groups’ humanitarian operations in Uganda were already worth more than $2bn annually – a number which has doubtless grown.

The White Doctor is in a unique position for Halima to use the horrifying case of Renee Bach and her unlicensed medical centre as a way in to explore the wider industry of missionaries and voluntourism in Uganda. Halima will dig into the effect that these volunteers and missionaries have on the communities they visit and also investigate scandals that are happening now in Uganda.

DocLab Industry Track

For nearly two decades, IDFA DocLab has been a leading international space for immersive and interactive documentary art, inviting audiences to explore new ways of experiencing, interpreting, and questioning reality. Through its Industry Track, DocLab extends this mission into a professional context, supporting the development and sustainability of emerging practices through research, collaboration, and exchange.

Designed as both a living lab and an industry network, the DocLab Industry Track connects independent artists, creative technologists, and cultural institutions across disciplines to explore new forms of non-fiction storytelling. Since 2018, the ongoing R&D program (developed with partners such as the MIT Open Documentary Lab) has strengthened this focus on experimentation and critical reflection. Built around three core components: the DocLab Forum, R&D Summit, and DocLab Playrooms, the Industry Track provides a cohesive framework for artistic growth, knowledge sharing, and innovation across the immersive and interactive field.

While Audiences cry out for new experiences, and artists continue to innovate with XR documentary storytelling, we need to understand how to create better distribution models that bring artists and audiences together. To complete this year’s program, there will be an Industry Talk on new strategies in XR distribution.

Industry Talk: Headsets and beyond –New strategies in XR distribution

Saturday, November 15 | 14:00–15:30

International Theatre Amsterdam – Studio 1

The DocLab Forum serves as IDFA’s coproduction and co-financing market for immersive and interactive documentary works. Open to projects at any stage, it welcomes a broad range of non-fiction

forms. From web experiences and digital art to VR/AR/MR installations, fulldome films, and live performances. By connecting creators with potential partners and funders, the Doclab Forum supports the development of new work and contributes directly to IDFA’s wider new media program. Each year, up to fifteen projects are selected to present during the festival’s opening week.

The R&D Summit is a one-day, invite-only gathering that brings together the Dutch industry with international professionals shaping the immersive field. Artists, studios, technologists, researchers, and institutional representatives meet to share insights, discuss emerging trends, and examine the challenges of developing new immersive storytelling formats. The day combines presentations, roundtable sessions, workshops and informal networking, encouraging collaboration across artistic and industry boundaries.

Sunday, November 16 | 10:00–18:00

Vlaams Cultuurhuis de Brakke Grond & @droog

The DocLab Playrooms complete the Industry Track with a series of handson events where artists and audiences engage directly with emerging technologies in practice. Each Playroom focuses on a specific theme and takes an experimental, open format that encourages participants to explore, prototype, and exchange ideas in an informal setting.

DocLab Playroom: Connected Offline

In this playroom artists present their works in the Interactive Cinema, offering audiences a collective way to experience documentary games and digital art. From Matt Romein’s livegaming performance MILKMAN ZERO: The First Delivery to Maisha Wester’s darkly atmospheric, immersive game about the history of slavery and racism in Coded Black, the session opens dialogue on agency, representation and creative resistance within virtual worlds.

Saturday, November 15 | 14.00-17.00

Vlaams Cultuurhuis de Brakke Grond

DocLab Playroom: I Feel Zine

This playroom turns attention to digital preservation and authorship. In a workshop-style format, participants create zines exploring what parts of digital culture are worth saving. Guided by artists such as Jeroen van Loon, Nathalie Lawhead, and Avinash Changa, the session links individual expression to the broader industrychallenge of archiving and sustaining immersive art in an everchanging technological landscape.

Monday, November 17 | 14.00-17.00

Vlaams Cultuurhuis de Brakke Grond

DocLab Playroom: Hacking Reality

This Playroom examines the art of perception and the constructed nature of experience. Through prototypes and performances by Bart van de Woestijne, Sjef van Beers, and Celine Daemen, participants encounter how systems (digital or otherwise) shape what we see and believe.

Tuesday, November 18 | 14.00-17.00

Vlaams Cultuurhuis de Brakke Grond

The Creative Europe MEDIA programme strengthens Europe’s film and audiovisual sector with funding for development, distribution and promotion, alongside broader support for cinemas, festivals, VOD, training, markets, and cross-border circulation. Check out some of the MEDIA-supported titles at this year’s IDFA, including Imago, Better Go Mad in the Wild, and Those Who Watch Over

your local Creative Europe Desk for advice

more about

IDFA DocLab Forum

The DocLab Forum offers a unique platform for filmmakers to engage with artistic project teams and meet new players in the interactive and immersive field. Read on to discover 12 immersive and interactive projects in all stages of production seeking co-production, financing, distribution, and exhibition opportunities.

Amasonic

Directors Marcel van Brakel, M. Cecilia Oliveira

Created by Marcel van Brakel / Polymorf, M. Cecilia Oliveira, Corine Meijers / Studio Biarritz

Production Corine Meijers for Studio Biarritz

Contact corine@studiobiarritz.nl

Production country The Netherlands

Production stage Development

Length 30’

Type of new media project Interactive, Immersive

Stand-alone versions Multi-user, VR Room Scale, Audio, Interactive narrative, Installation

Total budget € 416.500

Amount still requested € 375.000

Looking for Partners to collaborate financially and for distribution. Partners for presentations, audience reach and audience engagement. We are combining Arts/Culture and Science, as well as environmental topics from the Amazon region. We are looking to connect with potential partners within these 3 disciplines.

Amasonic is an xr experience where the user can experience different (non)human perspectives on the amazon river gathered by local communities and scientists, while exploring the installation, users compose a sonification, translating their interaction and co-existence with the river echoing the multitude of life connected to the amazon river.

Synopsis

Amasonic is both a scientific project with the aim to collect the many voices of humans and nonhumans connected to the river and an XR Art project functioning as local and remote access points to the river songs created out of gathered data and stories. With Amasonic we create a community-based project where we Invite local Amazonian communities and scientist to collect tales and data on the river and its inhabitants. Working together we create a living sound archive that will grow in a 5-year project span. The sound archive will be used to generate river songs. Sonification of the river that may be accessed from different human and nonhuman perspectives.

In the XR installation the user can both compose with and access the sound archive by choosing a Human or Non-Human lifeform. By preselecting a perspective, you can listen to the Amazon River tales from a dolphin’s perspective, as a water plant, as a fisherman or as an ancestor or even from the perspective of the river waterbody itself.

By physically moving your body through the XR installation and by interacting with sound data points plotted on the Amazon river hoovering as a 3D object in the space, a user will intuitively spawn voices of other lifeforms or entities into existence. By triggering sounds and interacting with the river the user creates a highly personal journey and unique sound experience.

Since the installation is multiuser and can accommodate 8 persons simultaneously at any time, all interactions with the system will also create a collective sound design. This collective river song can be ported as a live audio feed to a standing audience, or a website, or to another remote location like a festival, event or museum. The ever-evolving sonification will act like a user generated and adaptive and ever ongoing audio documentary on the Amazon river, with sometimes abstract and sometimes more specific tales interwoven into the sound design, resonating the interest of its users, the river and its habitants.

anatomy of revolution

Director Lara Baladi

Created by Lara Baladi

Production Lara Baladi

Contact mail@larabaladi.com

Production country Egypt

Production stage Development

Type of new media project Immersive

Stand-alone versions Installation, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Augmented Reality (AR)

Total budget € 120.000

Amount still requested € 120.000

Looking for Critical feedback from curators, technologists, and producers on how to most effectively translate the web-based experience of “Anatomy of Revolution” into a participatory, large-scale immersive installation. To explore the potential of integrating AR/AI technologies in ways that enhance engagement without compromising the political and poetic integrity of the project. To identify collaborators—particularly creative technologists and immersive production studios—with experience in spatial and interactive design. To connect with exhibition partners, institutions, and co-producers across the fields of documentary, contemporary art, and digital culture. To test the narrative and interactive potential of the ABC structure in dialogue with audiences familiar with nonfiction and interactive storytelling.

An immersive new media installation and ABC of global protest, Anatomy of Revolution explores the language, imagery, and spirit of uprisings through archival media, poetic narrative, and collective resistance.

Synopsis

Anatomy of Revolution is an ABC of global social movements, a new and mixed media, immersive art installation. Unlike its web-based counterpart, where the user scrolls through a lexicon of words and concepts related to revolutions, the installation spatializes the entire lexicon at once. Interspersed with artworks— videos, tapestries, sculptures, etc., which stem from the ABC, every letter comes to life, into a sensory, cinematic, compelling exhibition. Each letter draws the viewer deeper into a world of protests and revolts, creating a spectacular and thought-provoking atmosphere that calls to explore, reflect, and engage with the power of change.

The artistic narrative unfolds nonlinearly, weaving together the language, iconography, and spirit of revolts and revolutions across time and place. Each letter of the lexicon introduces a concept central to the vocabulary of revolt—bread, dignity, blood, exile, censorship, labor, balcony, love, migration, and more (about 200 entries in total). These terms are explored through an interplay of sound, imagery, texts—collaging news excerpts, poetry, literature, theory—and music with archival photographs and video footage sourced largely from the internet and social media networks.

Born out of the author’s direct participation in Egypt’s 2011 revolution, Anatomy of Revolution, is the culmination of over a decade of research into the political aesthetics of protests and the visual language of civic resistance. Rather than recounting a singular history, the project reveals the connective tissue between seemingly disparate events: from Tahrir Square in 2011 to Standing Rock, from May ‘68 to Hong Kong 2019, from the U.S. civil rights movements to Black Lives Matter, and most recently, today’s pro-Palestinian, anti-genocide mobilizations. In tracing these resonances, the project invites audiences to recognize patterns, reimagine agency, and reflect on freedom, justice, and solidarity—from the local to the global, from the political to the spiritual.

Within its hybrid form—part visual art, part interactive archive, part political educational tool, Anatomy of Revolution bridges artistic practice and academic inquiry. It contributes to critical conversations around democracy, transitional justice, and the aesthetics of protests. It also foregrounds the role of archives in shaping how revolutions are remembered—and how future ones might be envisioned.

Ultimately, Anatomy of Revolution is not just a document of past uprisings, but a living narrative: an artistic, poetic, and political gesture toward the anatomy of social and political transformation driven by collective action.

Body Count

Director Cris Bringas

Created by Cris Bringas, Mica Oliveros

Production Mica Oliveros

Sönke Kirchhof for INVR.SPACE

Contact bringas.cris@gmail.com

Production countries Philippines, Germany

Production stage Prototype

Length 20’

Type of new media project Interactive, Immersive

Stand-alone versions VR 360 video (interactive)

Total budget € 110.000

Amount still requested € 56.284

Looking for Ambisonic sound partners, connect with bold distributors, test our VR prototype, and launch Body Count, the first Filipino VR film, onto the world stage.

join Paul, a filipino nurse in Berlin, on his Grindr hookup with a former soldier. Move through a fragmented apartment and listen as their encounter unfolds into a familiar story of trauma and reckoning, revealing the hidden scars left by wars both ongoing and never-ending.

Synopsis

You enter a dingy Berlin apartment, guided only by the sound of two men talking. You don’t see them, but you hear them - close, intimate, immediate. At first, it’s casual: where they’re from, what brought them here, how often they meet men. You’re eavesdropping on a private moment. The conversation is light, playful - even flirty - until something shifts.

One weekend in Berlin, Paul, a Filipino nurse, meets David, a former Israeli soldier, through a hookup app. Paul is an immigrant grieving the brutal death of his brother in former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s “War on Drugs”. The murder - intentionally misreported by police as a “personal dispute” - pushed him to leave the Philippines, seeking escape and anonymity.

David fled Israel at the height of the war in Gaza. Pressured into the military by his father, an army commander, he spent years fighting Palestinians. Now, he claims to have walked away from the violence he once enforced.

At winter’s end, in David’s apartment, Paul and David share a fleeting moment of intimacy. Paul, closeted, has never been able to live freely - his brother was the only one who knew. David, by contrast, found in Berlin the space to live openly. As their conversation deepens, you begin moving through the apartment - walking the hallway, brushing past the kitchen, standing still in the bathroom, and finally lying on the bed. The walls are uneven, and the rooms are filled with echoes. You’re not just listening; you’re searching. The apartment looks fractured and fragile - like memory itself. Each room and object reveals fragments of who they are: their breath, their silence, their pain.

Paul recalls the night of his brother’s murder. He had been on a double shift. When he came home, only blood remained. His mother described it: one bullet to the leg, two to the chest, one to the temple. David listens - quiet, affected - like he’s hearing this kind of story for the first time.

For a moment, you feel what Paul feels: a fragile closeness born of shared vulnerability. But as the libido wears off, so does the illusion. David doesn’t care. Their connection meant nothing beyond that moment.

And then, you’re pulled out. The apartment slips away. A rush of cold. A sudden whoosh. Black. You realize you’ve always known this story, and now, you feel what Paul is left with: the silence, the pain, the absence. You are just reminded. And it stays with you.

Note: Paul and David are not the real names of the subjects.

cripping up

Directors Amy Crighton, Meg Fozzard

Created by Meg Fozzard / Unlikely Tangent Studios, Amy Crighton

Production Meg Fozzard for Unlikely Tangent Studios

Contact megfozzard92@gmail.com

Production country United Kingdom

Production stage Development

Type of new media project Immersive, Interactive

Stand-alone versions Virtual Reality (VR), Interactive narrative

Total budget € 97.117

Amount still requested € 80.786

Looking for Funders and distributors, we are developing a prototype currently and looking forward to future production. Meet with Impact producers. Gain feedback on the project.

Cripping Up is an interactive vr experience where audience members embody Meg, a wheelchair user, confronting everyday ableist barriers she faces during a simple journey.

Synopsis

You open your eyes in Meg’s London flat. A voice note from a friend invites you to the pub at short notice—an invitation that sparks unease. You pack your bag and try to put your shoes on, but your hands are too jerky the first few times as you try to tie your laces. Eventually, you manage and head for the door. When you open it, a tall, blurred figure stands there—familiar, watchful. This is when you realise: you’re using a wheelchair, because of the height difference. She gestures for you to follow and becomes a flickering presence, reappearing throughout your journey.

At the bus stop, you feel people staring. You try to catch their gaze, but every time you turn, their heads snap away.

Anxiety builds. A stranger finally steps in, confronting the person who was staring. In the commotion, you miss your bus. The next one arrives as the rain starts. As you board, someone with a buggy complains about your wheelchair being in the “buggy space”. Internally you seethe, knowing it is a wheelchair priority space. During the ride, an older woman leans in to say “It’s such a shame you’re in a wheelchair at your age”.

Further along, commercial bins block the pavement. You’re given a choice: go into the road or find another route. If you go into the road, you struggle to find a dropped curb and nearly get hit by a car before making it back to the pavement. If you turn back, you’re hit by sudden brain fog and lose your sense of direction. You have to steady yourself and refocus before you can continue.

As you move down the street, your wheelchair suddenly starts moving on its own. You realise someone’s pushing you—a stranger trying to “help”. You shout for them to stop. Then, new voice notes arrive. It’s Meg, reflecting on becoming disabled in her twenties and how things used to be easier. You reach the pub and see a step—seemingly inaccessible. But your blurred companion appears again, beckoning you around to a ramp into the beer garden. Your friends are there, throwing a surprise party.

For the first time, Meg wheels out of you— the audience member—as the experience fades. One final voice note reminds you: no matter how much you’ve felt like her… unlike Meg, you can walk away.

The eyes of Mila kaos

Directors Yimit Ramírez, Tony Alonso

Created by Yimit Ramirez / Free Hundred Media

Production Patricia Pérez Fernández for Free Hundred Media

Contact freemedia.contacto@gmail.com

Production country Spain

Co-production Vega Alta Films

Co-production country France

Production stage Prototype

Type of new media project Interactive, Immersive

Stand-alone versions Interactive narrative, Virtual Reality (VR)

Total budget € 474.420

Amount still requested € 188.300

Looking for Partners for distribution and international co-production, with a strong focus on programming, technical development and post-production.

The Eyes of Mila Kaos immerses in the mind of Mila kaos, an electrifying Havana drag queen who, on underground stages, transforms herself nightly, confronting and overcoming the fears and traumas caused by homophobia.

Synopsis

The Eyes of Mila Kaos is an interactive VR experience that combines documentary and animation to offer a profound immersion into queer identity, trauma, and empowerment. It seeks to shed light on the experiences of the LGBTIQ+ community, fostering empathy and understanding through a first-person immersive narrative.

Mila Kaos is a rebellious drag queen who emerged in Havana’s underground shows of the 2000s. She was born as the alter ego of Tony Alonso, an actor who created her in his adolescence to confront the trauma of a rape, and who, 15 years later, still finds in her an empowering refuge.

The experience is an immersive VR journey inside her mind: the participant embodies her unconscious and helps her overcome the fears caused by homophobia, only then allowing her to step on stage and perform.

fear city Paradise

Director Darren Emerson

Created by Darren Emerson / East City Films

Production Dan Tucker for East City Films

Contact darren@eastcityfilms.com

Production country United Kingdom

Production stage Development

Length 45’

Type of new media project Interactive, Immersive, Physical

Stand-alone versions VR Room Scale

Total budget € 1.300.884

Amount still requested € 1.205.000

Looking for Funding partners and exhibition partners.

Fear City Paradise is a new vr documentary experience that takes audiences on a journey into one intoxicating night in the new York city of 1978, where they will discover the roots of the Disco music revolution born from the Queer, Black and latino communities of new York.

Synopsis

This is the story of the real Disco scene, a dance music revolution born from the Queer, Black and Latino communities of New York, who at the beginning of the 1970s created their own nightlife in order to be seen, and dance together in safety. A new musical culture would be born, where DJs, parties, and dancing would create its own musical genre in Disco, and would break out of the underground and take over the world.

This experience celebrates that movement, and takes audiences back to the underground, authentic scene to discover where the music came from, in the loft parties and the all night sweaty nightclubs where a sense of community and acceptance were more important than velvet ropes and being photographed with a celebrity.

This documentary lifts the lid on the origins of disco: how a community’s obsession with freedom, funk and soul music, audio fidelity, dancing and celebrating life, created musical innovations and artistry in the bleakest of decades. A movement that would influence popular dance music forever more.

Welcome to New York 1978, and a night time journey to meet the real people of Disco.

Ghost Towns

Director Robin Coops

Created by Robin Coops / Coops&Co

Production Floris Smit for UPscaleXR Robin Coops for Coops&Co

Contact robincoopsandco@gmail.com

Production country The Netherlands

Production stage Development

Length 30’

Type of new media project Immersive, Performance

Stand-alone versions Performance, Live Experience, Multimedia, VR Room Scale, Multiuser, Augmented Reality (AR)

Total budget € 72.500

Amount still requested € 64.000

Looking for International co-producers, additional financing, and festivals or venues to present the work. We are also open to exploring other forms of collaboration.

director-composer robin coops reflects, through the ghost town of Pyramiden in Svalbard, on the transience of life and communal connectedness. an ar concert in which the audience can freely wander through 3D-scanned ruins, immersed in live-created musical landscapes and spoken reflections.

Synopsis

Director-composer Robin Coops invites the audience to travel with him to the ghost town of Pyramiden, located about 1,300 km from the North Pole. Through this desolate abandoned place, frozen in time, he questions our own relationship to transience and what we wish to leave behind.

The audience is asked to position themselves around the edge of a large circle, while Robin stands in the center. He gives an introduction in which he explains that everyone will receive a device that allows them to walk through the memories of the ghost town, listening both to Robin’s own recollections and to other ghostly voices that have remained behind. A small ritual follows to cleanse the spirit and fully open up to what is to come, after which Robin invites the audience to put on the AR headsets and step into the circle.

For 30 minutes, Robin guides the audience through the town, touching on various themes including: the history of Pyramiden, the dreams of its inhabitants, the ghosts in our own minds, and the question of which ghosts we choose to feed for the future.

He performs the music live, as if he were a medium inviting the spirits to speak, while the audience is free to wander or sit among the fragmented 3D scans of the village that appear before their eyes. They are invited to interact with each other and the environment.

As you walk to different parts of the place, you hear fragments from Robin’s diary, in which he reflects both on the background stories of the sites and on his own relationship to mortality and transience in relation to the dreams of Pyramiden’s former inhabitants. In this way, a musical, fragmented collage emerges, woven from historical, contemporary, and future memories.

After 30 minutes, the audience is invited to leave the circle once again, creating space for individual reflections on mortality and impermanence, before the performance comes to a close.

I'm in Love with my Testo

Director Juno Álvarez

Created by Juno Álvarez

Production Nell Córdova for Cacao Cinema

Contact nell@cacaocinema.com

Production country Spain

Co-production Paola Alvarez

Co-production country Germany

Production stage Start Production

Type of new media project Interactive

Stand-alone versions VR 360 video (interactive), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Augmented Reality (AR), Installation

Total budget € 42.700

Amount still requested € 32.700

Looking for Co-producers to complete financing for the interactive experience and find partners for its global distribution.

During their gender transition, Juno’s psyche is a corrupt video game, and their memory is an AI trained on three years of diaries and therapy. Through a card oracle, present and past meet in a ritual to embrace fear and rewrite their story.

Synopsis

“Who are you?”. This is the entry point to “Mirrorland”, an immersive journey into the psyche of Juno, a non-binary person navigating their gender transition.

The participant explores a “corrupted video game” landscape from the 2000s, where spaces subtly deform and pixelated textures give way to hyperrealistic reflections. In this world, the user confronts the fears and anxieties of the transition represented in the environment itself, holding a mirror up to their own uncertainties. The purpose of the journey is not to win or reach a final goal, but to embrace the process itself. Catharsis arrives with the understanding that the experience is the objective, redefining the game with a new, inviting question: “Are you coming to play with me?”.

After this immersion, the project offers a ritual of intimate dialogue. Using a set of physical cards themed around the Body, the Mind, and the Environment, the participant can converse directly with the voices of Juno’s past. This AI, trained on real diaries and testimonies, functions as a living emotional archive that allows for a direct encounter with the memory, vulnerability, and hope of someone who transitioned without a map.

I’m In Love With My Testo is an invitation to inhabit uncertainty and to dialogue directly with the living archive of a transition.

inside a stripper's Mind

Director STORRY

Created by STORRY

Production Karimah Zakia Issa for KZI Films

Contact storrymusic@gmail.com

Production country Canada

Production stage Prototype

Type of new media project Immersive, Interactive

Stand-alone versions Audio, Virtual Reality (VR), Interactive narrative

Total budget € 115.000

Amount still requested € 115.000

Looking for Financing, distribution and bold collaborators for Inside A Stripper’s Mind and beyond, focused on survivor-led storytelling across doc, film, music and cross-media.

a vr experience that pulls you into the inner world of a trafficked stripper, where the boundaries of body and mind blur, revealing both the brutal cost of exploitation and the fight to survive.

Synopsis

Inside A Stripper’s Mind is a surreal 20-30 minute VR experience that flips the script on objectification and trauma. Participants step into a desert strip club on a distant planet, lured by a seductive host who shape-shifts into a talking Nipple Tassel - a humorous yet disarming guide into the mind of the woman they came to consume.

Built around the music and lived experience of 2X JUNO nominated musician and sex-trafficking survivor, STORRY, the project blends dark humour, spatial audio and interactive storytelling to unpack the complexities of sex-work, coercion, and personal reclamation.

Participants explore a world with ten sand dunes, each etched with a question. With every answer, a personal story is revealed and paired with an original song from STORRY’s concept album “Chapter 2: Run”. Sculptures emerge, musical orbs become manipulatable instruments, and a once barren desert transforms into a fantastical landscape of uncovered truths.

Two modes allow for different engagement levels: a structured “STORRY mode” where users select 3 questions (a choose your own adventure type of narrative), and an open “SANDBOX mode” for deeper self-paced exploration. The tone shifts between absurdity and intimacy, sarcasm and sincerity, entertainment and empathy.

The work avoids voyeurism or moralizing, because our goal isn’t to shock or lecture. Instead it offers a window into a lived reality, encouraging dialogue, not solutions. Its purpose is to humanize, provoke curiosity, and challenge our assumptions around sex-work and trafficking by offering a survivor-led, emotionally intelligent experience.

Through music, radical honesty and play, Inside A Stripper’s Mind invites us to meet truth differently, with intrigue, not fear. This is a story of reclamation, told with grit, glamour and grace.

Like Every Cloud (zayy

kulli ghaima)

Director Bentley Brown

Created by Bentley Brown

Production Bentley Brown for Aboudigin Films

Turki Al Mutairi

Sama Al Taei

Contact brown.bentley@gmail.com

Production country Chad

Production stage Development

Length 10’

Type of new media project Immersive

Stand-alone versions VR 360 video (interactive)

Total budget € 26.300

Amount still requested € 18.500

Looking for Creative and technical feedback to enhance 6DOF elements. Also co-producers and distributors who can help unlock finishing funds and get the product to appropriate audiences.

in this immersive vr essay, a now-defunct cassette studio in Chad— once a hub for archiving Sudanese music—is reconstructed across time to explore how shifting technologies have preserved, transformed, and sometimes lost a sonic heritage at the edge of war, displacement, and digital obsolescence.

Synopsis

This virtual reality essay explores how the archiving of Sudanese music has extended across borders, particularly into Chad, where recording and copying practices helped preserve songs that might otherwise have been lost amid the ongoing war. The project is based on a 3D reconstruction of a cassette studio that for years served as a bridge between Sudanese music and local Chadian listeners.

Using interviews and documentation from earlier fieldwork together with new digital modeling, the VR experience recreates the studio at different moments in time:

when it was busy copying cassette tapes, and when it later became obsolete as people began freely sharing music by phone and the studio's owner returned to his previous pastime of sewing.

Users enter this space, choose a cassette, and move through a ten-minute journey that reflects on changing modes of musical preservation, including cassette digitization, phone archives, and live performance, often happening by displaced communities abroad during the war in Sudan.

Rather than serving as an archive itself, the project examines the feelings tied to cultural preservation: nostalgia for what has been lost, fear of what might still disappear, and questions about who bears the responsibility to preserve it.

The title comes from a song about a love that appears then vanishes "like every cloud," a nod to the ephemerality of the musical archive and the desire to keep these sounds alive.

Metramorphosis

Director Laura Yilmaz

Created by Laura Yilmaz / Strange Gate LLC

Production Fanni Fazakas for RumeXR

Contact fanchi@rumexr.com

Production countries New Zealand, Hungary

Production stage In Production

Length 20’

Type of new media project Interactive, Physical

Stand-alone versions Game, Installation, Multi-user, Multimedia

Total budget € 134.300

Amount still requested € 40.000

Looking for Exhibition partners and top financiers to help close the final 30% gap of our budget. We welcome critical feedback on our current demo and installation design.

A multidisciplinary game installation exploring the maternal body as a site of essential metaphysical interplay between the other and ourselves. Here, “mother” is transformed from marginalised actor to universal action.

Synopsis

As Jacqueline Rose writes, “not only motherhood is impoverished if it fails to connect to the wider world”. Blending experimental game design, spatial design, hand-drawn animation, and large-format sculpture, Metramorphosis creates a de-gendered and de-politicised space for maternal experience in its most essential and urgent form: a sensual, surreal encounter between the Other and ourselves in a cyclical dialogue of mutual creation, transformation, and obliteration.

Rooted in figural imagery and somatic sensation, the story world of Metramorphosis unfolds across three interactive animated vignettes, designed for either individual play by a single visitor or collaborative play between two visitors. Each vignette explores a thematic facet of maternal experience: dissolution of the bounded self, transformation of the animal body, and subsumption into the metaphysical Other. With simple touch controls, users move, morph, and multiply human figures in an increasingly complex choreography of hand-drawn animation and emergent soundscape. As boundaries both between and within bodies blur, the border space between any One and every Other dissolves in a multi-sensory crescendo of sound and movement.

The installation comprises two interlocking, sculptural spaces: the “Head Pod”, housing the interactive experience, and the “Body Pod”, projecting looped animations from the interactive piece. While physical movement through the installation is a central expression of its narrative themes (see project description below), the interactive piece also stands alone as a digital work.

Born out of my own journey through pregnancy and parenthood, Metramorphosis is a labour of love in dialogue with our fraught historical moment. Sexual and reproductive freedoms are being eroded amid a global lurch rightward, propelled by cultural anxieties over gender expression, bodily autonomy, declining birthrates, and economic destabilisation. In the fight for these most basic human rights, motherhood is caught between the historical rock of entrenched misogyny, and the contemporary hard place of our moral imperative to transcend reproductive biology. Complex yet positive representations of motherhood are achingly rare; rarer still are works that embrace motherhood as a source of philosophical inquiry beyond its imposed borders, where it is seen most charitably as ‘a woman thing’ or, as fewer women choose to become mothers, less than even that.

Metramorphosis documents maternal experience as a unique communion with Otherness – not one of duality or co-existence, but of mutuality and co-creation. Here, the maternal body becomes both a universal metaphor and (r)evolutionary force, resisting those that would devalue, dehumanise, and propagandise it as an object of political control.

reframing Queer exile

Director Emma Hamilton

Created by Emma Hamilton

Production Anne-Lise Miller for Adventice

Contact al.miller@adventice.io

Production country France

Production stage Development

Length 60’

Type of new media project Physical, Interactive, Immersive

Stand-alone versions Participatory, Multimedia, Installation, Multi-user

Total budget € 264.300

Amount still requested € 218.419

Looking for Production funding (public & private), festivals, partner locations for distribution / touring, and tech partnerships with AV specialists (projectors, audio, servers etc).

Reframing Queer Exile is an experiential documentary series that centres the voices and lives of LGBTQ+ asylum seekers and refugees.

Synopsis

Conceived as a space for deep listening, Reframing Queer Exile transforms audio-visual portraits into immersive installations—merging first person narration, spatial design, and sensory effects to place audiences at the heart of each testimony. Here, stories are not only witnessed but felt.

The experience unfolds as a journey through several uniquely designed spaces, each crafted to amplify a powerful memoir. These intimate encounters culminate in a final interactive “postcode lottery” environment, where each attendee is assigned a random set of geographical coordinates— representing a birthplace somewhere in the world.

Through a large-scale projected map, they discover this new “place of origin” and explore what life there would mean as an LGBTQ+ person, revealing how something as arbitrary as birthplace can determine access to safety, dignity, and fundamental freedoms.

In an era defined by the rise of reactionary politics and the erosion of fundamental rights, Reframing Queer Exile confronts misleading portrayals of LGBTQ+ asylum seekers. By challenging the myth that fleeing one’s homeland is ever a “choice”, it calls for solidarity and a more compassionate response to those seeking protection.

Colophon

THE IDFA FORUM PUBLICATION

Coordination Laura Quarto

Editing & Production Carla Navarro, Danny Veekens, Dumitrita Pacicovschi, Ellen Bannink, Jelte Zonneveld, Laura Quarto, Maria Jose Crespo, Marina Burić, Nina van Doren, Sophie Duncan & Stavros Markoulakis

Design Gerald Zevenboom

Print Damen Drukkers, Werkendam

© IDFA, 2025

International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam Vondelpark 3

1071 AA Amsterdam

The Netherlands

T: +31 20 627 33 29 www.idfa.nl info@idfa.nl