IDFA adds more than 100 films for November edition in Amsterdam
IDFA has added more than 100 films to its 39th edition, set for Nov. 12 to 22 in Amsterdam, Variety reported.
The announcement fills out much of this year's line-up. It covers new titles for the Competition for Short Documentary alongside sections titled Signed, Best of Fests and Paradocs.
The short documentary contest holds 15 films. Shorts are typically films with a compact running time, programmed together in festival slots rather than as solo evening screenings.
Two of the newly named titles trace very different searches. Michal Marczak's Closure follows a father looking for his missing son along the Vistula River near Warsaw. Ava DuVernay's 14th traces the legacy of the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution, from Reconstruction to the present.
The festival also revealed the first projects for the 20th anniversary programme of IDFA DocLab, its strand for immersive and interactive work. The complete DocLab programme will be announced on Oct. 13.
That first DocLab selection includes the two winners of the 2026 Film Fund DocLab Interactive Grant. The Love Files by Sanne De Wilde and Samir Veen and All the Downtime by Ant Hampton each receive €10,000 to finalise and present the work at IDFA DocLab.
Other anniversary projects look back and outwards at once. Tamara Shogaolu's The Invisible Woman is a VR opera that recovers the story of Francisca de Angola, a 17th-century Black woman in Amsterdam. Dries Verhoeven's Orgasmagoria will screen at Casa Rosso, the city's well-known sex theatre.
Archive Arcade restores landmark immersive works. It includes Thanatorama by Ana Maria de Jésus, the first project ever selected for IDFA DocLab.
For audiences, this means a November festival with a broad spine of new documentaries plus a separate interactive trail. The IDFA site notes that since 2022 the festival has invited artists from its community to develop its visual campaign, with Mehrdad Oskouei and Soraya Akhlaghi shaping the 2026 edition after their film A Fox Under a Pink Moon won the top international prize in 2025.
