A total of 30 Nordic films out of 297 world entries are part of the programme of Amsterdam’s top documentary film festival (November 16-27).

After Sweden last year, Norway has the largest slate heading off to IDFA with nine titles. Two of them are competing for the €12,500 Best Feature Length Documentary Prize and €2,500 IDFA Special Jury Award. 


Mogadishu Soldier by Torstein Grude, focuses on the ongoing war in Mogadishu, Somalia, filmed by two Burundian soldiers, deployed there to fight the Islamist extremists Al-Shebaab. Top Danish editor Niels Pagh Andersen collaborated on the film produced by Norway’s Piraya Film with backing from the Fund.

Nowhere to Hide by Kurish-born Zaradasht Ahmed, follows a male nurse who is forced to flee when his home city occupied by IS. The film was produced by Norway’s Ten Thousand Images.

Two other Nordic films are competing for Best Feature Length doc. The Finnish entry The Good Postman by Tonislav Hristov is a tragi-comic portrait of a Bulgarian postman trying to solve depopulation in his small village and the refugee crisis. Making Movies is producing and Cats & Docs handles world sales. The Danish film Amateurs in Space by Max Kestner tells of two Danes who dream of building a rocket and making the first ever manned amateur flight to the moon. Danish Documentary is producing with support from the Fund. Autlook Film Sales handles sales.

The First Appearance Competition section has three Nordic films including Venus by Lea Glob and Mette Carla Albrechtsen. Glob won the Nordic Talents Pitch Prize for the documentary which investigates female desire and sexuality. As part of their research for the film, the directors sent out a casting call. The result is a candid bedroom portrait of young women who recorded their own erotic diary. The film produced by House of Real with backing from the Fund is represented by DR Sales.

Three other films supported by the Fund are outside competition entries.

  • The Borneo Case (Sweden/Germany/Wales) is screening at the Masters sidebar. Filmmakers Erik Pauser and Dylan Williams spend five years following the trail of an unlikely group of activists whose aim is to investigate how profits from the illegal logging that has annihilated more than 90% of the Malaysian Borneo Rainforest have been money laundered into property portfolios all around the world. The film had its world premiere at the Freedom Film Festival in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia last August.
  • The War Show by Andreas Dalsgaard and Obaidah Zytoon is part of the ‘Best of Fests’, after screening successfully in Venice (where it won the top Venice Days award) and in Toronto.
  • Light Year by Swedish director Mikael Kristersson is screening in the Quiet Eye section. The film from 2008 was selected for the 2009 Nordic Council Film Prize 2009. It’s a poetic meditation on the director's own garden.

The winners of the 29th IDFA film festival will be announced on November 23.

For the full programme, check:  www.idfa.nl