The IDFA, which will take place in Amsterdam from November 14–24, 2024, has seven African documentaries playing in different categories of the festival.
By Seyi Lasisi
The International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) has announced its 2024 selection. The festival, which will take place in Amsterdam from November 14–24, 2024, has seven African documentaries playing in different categories of the festival.
Karimah Ashadu’s Machine Boys, an 8-minute documentary from Nigeria, is showing at the Paradocs section. Daphne Matziaraki and Peter Murimi’s The Battle for Laikipia, from Kenya, and Hind Meddeb’s Sudan, Remember Us, from Tunisia, are playing in the Best of Fests category. Showing in the Signed section of IDFA are Mati Diop’s Dahomey and Raoul Peck’s Ernest Cole, Lost and Found.
Playing with other documentaries directed by Johan Grimonprez, the festival’s guest of honour in the Retrospective: Johan Grimonprez is the black and white Soundtrack to a Coup de’tat. Julia Dahr and Dina Mwende’s With Grace, another short documentary, will be having its world premiere at the IDFA Competition for Youth Documentary, dedicated to films that challenge the understanding of documentary filmmaking.
Ashadu’s Machine Boys follows a group of young men driving okada (motorbike) who continually “defy the dangers of Lagos” in a bid to earn money for economic sustainability. Matziaraki and Murimi’s Battle for Laikipia, which had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, interrogates the header’s community response to climate change whilst also accommodating conversation around colonial legacy. Meddeb’s Sudan, Remember Us premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and captures how young people stood in defiance of a dictatorial regime.
Diop’s Dahomey, probably one of the continent’s most traveled and successful films of 2024, judging from the many laurels it won at Berlinale, is a hybrid documentary that “imaginatively builds a bridge between past, present, and future.”
Grimonprez’s Soundtrack to a Coup d’etat is a documentary that espouses, using archival footage and soundtracks of top African-American musicians, Louis Armstrong and Nina Simeone, and the complex involvement of the Belgian and US governments in suppressing Congolese economic fortune.
Dahr and Mwende’s With Grace devote itself to capturing the realities of a close-knit family during a drought that unsettles the rhythm of their economic life.
The International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) will be held from November 14th to 24th, 2024. It will also feature activities such as an industry conference, panel discussions, and other special events.
See the full list of selected films here.
Seyi Lasisi is a Nigerian creative with an obsessive interest in Nigerian and African films as an art form. His film criticism aspires to engage the subtle and obvious politics, sentiments, and opinions of the filmmaker to see how they align with reality. He tweets @SeyiVortex. Email: seyi.lasisi@afrocritik.com.