IDFA adds more than 100 titles for 39th edition in November
More than 100 titles are heading to Amsterdam for the 39th edition of IDFA, the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam.
The festival will run from 12 to 22 November in the Dutch capital, with the latest additions spread across five strands, according to Deadline. They cover Signed, Paradocs, Best of Fests, the Short Documentary Competition and DocLab, the festival's strand for new media and interactive work.
Signed has some of the most recognisable names in the announcement. Ava DuVernay brings 14th, Michal Marczak brings Closure, and David Greaves brings Once Upon a Time in Harlem. The section also includes two shorts: They're Here, directed by Laura Poitras and Rachel Lauren Mueller, and The Revolution Against Death, directed by Joshua Oppenheimer.
Best of Fests accounts for the largest share, with almost 60 titles selected. The section gathers documentaries that have already played at other festivals. Paradocs, for more experimental and artist-led work, comprises 16 titles in 2026.
Isabel Arrate Fernández is artistic director of IDFA. The festival is revealing its programme of films, events and new media projects in stages throughout September and October.
The 2026 programme runs across eleven days and includes documentary screenings alongside Filmmaker Talks and industry events, according to IDFA. Since 2022, the festival has invited artists from its own community to design its visual campaign. This year's campaign was developed by Mehrdad Oskouei and Soraya Akhlaghi, the director and co-director of A Fox Under a Pink Moon, which won the IDFA Award for Best Film in the International Competition in 2025.
For fans, this means the shape of November is now clearer. The main competitions are still to come, but these five sections set the range: new work from known directors, festival favourites getting a Dutch outing, shorts, and digital projects built for headsets and installations as well as cinema screens.
