38th International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) Unveils Competition Lineups

The 38th edition of International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) taking place in Amsterdam from November 13 to 23, 2025 unveiled the main competition lineups.

Newly unveiled selections include the Envision and International Competitions, the entire IDFA DocLab program, Luminous, Frontlight, and the nominations for all cross-section awards.

IDFA 2025 will open with a selection of timely short films: As I Lay Dying by Mohammadreza Farzad, Pegah Ahangarani, Intersecting Memory by Shayma’ Awawdeh, and happiness by Firat Yücel.

“As filmmakers and artists from all over the world share their work, they remind us that there is a space for reflection and connection. They bring other perspectives. They open conversations about cinema—about what touches us, what feels urgent, what truly matters right now. Through them, we get to be part of the courage of filmmakers and artists who refuse to give up—who keep pursuing their creative vision, and their commitment to stories that they feel matter,” IDFA’s Artistic Director Isabel Arrate Fernandez said of the IDFA 2025 program.

The International Competition and the Envision Competition each will present twelve films.

The premiere-only section Luminous presents twenty-seven titles, from observational to personal to experimental – among them both feature-length and short films. Co-directed by filmmaker Toia Bonino and incarcerated Marcos Joubert, Do or Die is a rare, intimate portrait of prison life and a meditation on cinema itself—filmed entirely on a phone behind bars. In House of Hope, Marjolein Busstra follows a Palestinian woman running a Waldorf school on the West Bank with her husband, capturing their struggle to create a safe haven for children amid escalating violence and uncertainty. In Paikar, Dawood Hilmandi returns to Iran to confront his authoritarian father, crafting a poignant family portrait that wrestles with exile, reconciliation, and the meaning of home.

The premiere-only section Frontlight showcases fifteen films, many of them exploring urgent current issues. Reporting directly from Gaza, Gaza’s Twins, Come Back to Me by Mohammed Sawwaf follows a mother desperate to reach her two newborn babies in urgent care, evacuated amid bombings and prevented from seeing them by travel restrictions and checkpoints. Steal This Story, Please! by Carl Deal and Tia Lessin profiles independent journalist Amy Goodman, highlighting the vital role of fearless reporting in upholding democracy and a free press.

The winners will be announced during the IDFA 2025 Awards Ceremony on Thursday November 20.

International Competition

All My Sisters, dir. Massoud Bakhshi (Austria/France/Germany/Iran), 78’ – World Premiere
December, dir. Lucas Gallo (Argentina/Uruguay), 105’ – World Premiere
Flana, dir. Zahraa Ghandour (Iraq/France/Qatar), 85’ – European Premiere
Flood, dir. Katy Scoggin (United States), 75’ – International Premiere
A Fox Under a Pink Moon, dir. Mehrdad Oskouei (Iran/France/United Kingdom/United States/Denmark), 76’ – World Premiere
The Kartli Kingdom, dir. Tamar Kalandadze, Julien Pebrel (Georgia/France), 105’ – World Premiere
Mailin, dir. María Silvia Esteve (Argentina/France/Romania), 89’ – World Premiere
Palimpsest: The Story of a Name, dir. Mary Stephen (France/Hong Kong/Taiwan), 109’ – European Premiere
The Shipwrecked, dir. Diego Gutiérrez (Netherlands), 115’ – World Premiere
Silent Flood, dir. Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk (Ukraine/Germany), 90’ – World Premiere
Synthetic Sincerity, dir. Marc Isaacs (United Kingdom), 72’ – World Premiere
Those Who Watch Over, dir. Karima Saïdi (Belgium/France/Qatar), 88’ – European Premiere

Envision Competition

Amílcar, dir. Miguel Eek (Spain/Portugal/France/Sweden/Cape Verde), 87’ – World Premiere
Blood Red, dir. Martin Imrich (Czech Republic), 75’ – World Premiere
Confessions of a Mole, dir. Mo Tan (China/Poland), 92’ – World Premiere
Fordlândia Panacea, dir. Susana de Sousa Dias (Portugal/Brazil), 62’ – World Premiere
Holy Destructors, dir. Aiste Žegulytė (Lithuania/France/Latvia), 85’ – World Premiere
I Want Her Dead, dir. Gianluca Matarrese (Italy), 86’ – International Premiere
Love-22-Love, dir. Jeroen Kooijmans (Netherlands), 84’ – World Premiere
Our Body Is an Expanding Star, dir. Semillites Hernández Velasco, Tania Hernández Velasco (Mexico), 84’ – World Premiere
Past Future Continuous, dir. Morteza Ahmadvand, Firouzeh Khosrovani (Iran/Norway/Italy), 76’ – International Premiere
Powwow People, dir. Sky Hopinka (United States), 88’ – European Premiere
Treat Me Like Your Mother, dir. Mohamad Abdouni (Lebanon), 76’ – World Premiere
Trillion, dir. Victor Kossakovsky (Norway/United States), 80’ – World Premiere

Luminous

32 Meters
Morteza Atabaki

9,192,631,770 Hz
Todd Chandler

Abel
Fabian Volti

And She Didn’t Die
Kethiwe Ngcobo

As the Crow Flies
Clara Lacombe

Blackout Dreams
Gabriele Licchelli, Francesco Lorusso, Andrea Settembrini

Do or Die
Toia Bonino, Marcos Joubert

The Flight of the Stork
Soumaya Hidalgo Djahdou, Berta Vicente Salas

Grounded
Simón Uribe Martínez

House of Hope
Marjolein Busstra

If You Don’t Like It, Look Away
Margaux Fournier

The In-The-Head Film
Konstantin von Sichart

Mohammed & Paul – Once Upon a Time in Tangier
Nordin Lasfar

Murmurations
Xavier Marrades

My Word Against Mine
Maasja Ooms

Nomad Spirit
Raúl Soto Rodríguez

Outliving Shakespeare
Inna Sahakyan

Paikar
Dawood Hilmandi

Passion According to Agnieszka
Wojciech Staroń

Pedro Tomás Explains the World
Kornelijus Stučkus

The Sessions
Sien Versteyhe

Stories of a Lie
Olia Verriopoulou

Truck Mama
Zippy Nyaruri

We Were Left Alone
Adrián Canoura

Weeping Rocks
Karlis Bergs

The Wind and All Times
Carla Valencia Dávila

The Wind Blows Wherever It Wants
Ivan Boiko

Frontlight

Asparagus Bear
Ivan Grgur

The Clown of Gaza
Abdulrahman Sabbah

The Desert of the Real
Luuk Bouwman

Elon Musk Unveiled – The Tesla Experiment
Andreas Pichler

Eyes of the Machine
Daya Cahen

Gaza’s Twins, Come Back to Me
Mohammed Sawwaf

My Foreign Land
Coletivo Lakapoy, Louise Botkay, João Moreira Salles

The New Policy Regarding Homeless Asylum Seekers
Dennis Harvey

No Sunshine in Here
Karol Maia

Palestine Comedy Club
Alaa Aaliabdallah

Steal This Story, Please!
Carl Deal, Tia Lessin

True North
Michèle Stephenson

We Are Pat
Rowan Haber

When I Get Jailed
Anastasiia Vedenskaia

The Woman Who Poked the Leopard
Patience Nitumwesiga

IDFA DocLab Competition for Immersive Non-Fiction

Feedback VR, un musical antifuturista
Claudix Vanesix

Handle with Care
Ontroerend Goed, Alexander Devriendt

In 36,000 Ways (Site-Specific Installation)
Karim Ben Khelifa

Lesbian Simulator
Iris van der Meule

Nothing to See Here
Celine Daemen

The Oracle: Ritual for the Future (for humans and non-humans)
Victorine van Alphen

Reality Looks Back
Anne Jeppesen

The Rift
Janire Najera, Matthew Wright

Under the Same Sky
Khalil Ashawi

We Are Dead Animals
Tote Tiere Maarten

IDFA DocLab Competition for Digital Storytelling

A Ü T O/M Ö T O R
Albert Johnson

Artificial Sex (Ep. 1 & 2)
Anan Fries

Coded Black
Maisha Wester

Deep Soup
Luna Maurer, Roel Wouters

Gamer Keyboard Wall Piece #2
Sjef van Beers

individualism in the dead-internet age: an anti-big tech asset flip shovelware r̶a̶n̶t̶ manifesto
Nathalie Lawhead

Life Needs Internet 2010–2025
Jeroen van Loon

Tracing Colombia
Jan Rothuizen

Unimaginable Red
Vitor Freire, Monique Grimord

IDFA DocLab Spotlight

Another Place
Domenico Singha Pedroli

Eternal Habitat
Sergey Prokofyev

The Exploding Girl VR
Caroline Poggi, Jonathan Vinel

Feedback Fulldome, un musical antifuturista
Claudix Vanesix

A Long Goodbye
Kate Voet, Victor Maes

MILKMAN ZERO: The First Delivery
Matt Romein

The Odeus
Thomas Vanz

Cross-section awards

IDFA has also announced the nominations for the cross-section awards—distinct awards that transcend the program sections to recognize outstanding artistic achievement across the festival program.

The IDFA Award for Best First Feature celebrates the most remarkable debut feature-length films, recognizing works that reveal a distinctive creative voice and the promise of an evolving signature. Drawn from the International Competition, Envision Competition, Luminous, and Frontlight, the award is accompanied by a €5,000 prize, awarded by an international jury. The films nominated for the IDFA Award for Best First Feature are also eligible for the FIPRESCI Award, chosen by an international jury of film critics.

32 Meters
Morteza Atabaki

Blood Red
Martin Imrich

Confessions of a Mole
Mo Tan

Flana
Zahraa Ghandour

The Flight of the Stork
Soumaya Hidalgo Djahdou, Berta Vicente Salas

Flood
Katy Scoggin

The Kartli Kingdom
Tamar Kalandadze, Julien Pebrel

Paikar
Dawood Hilmandi

The Sessions
Sien Versteyhe

Stories of a Lie
Olia Verriopoulou

We Were Left Alone
Adrián Canoura

Weeping Rocks
Karlis Bergs

The Wind Blows Wherever It Wants
Ivan Boiko

The IDFA Award for Best Dutch Film highlights exceptional Dutch filmmaking talent across the International Competition, Envision Competition, Luminous, and Frontlight selections. The winning filmmaker with receive €5,000, awarded by an international jury.

The Desert of the Real
Luuk Bouwman

Eyes of the Machine
Daya Cahen

House of Hope
Marjolein Busstra

Love-22-Love
Jeroen Kooijmans

Mohammed & Paul – Once Upon a Time in Tangier
Nordin Lasfar

My Word Against Mine
Maasja Ooms

Paikar
Dawood Hilmandi

The Shipwrecked
Diego Gutiérrez

The Beeld & Geluid IDFA ReFrame Award for Best Creative Use of Archive honors outstanding archival film, selected from across the film program. The winning film with receive a €5,000 prize, awarded by an international jury.

Amílcar
Miguel Eek

December
Lucas Gallo

Do You Love Me
Lana Daher

Love-22-Love
Jeroen Kooijmans

The Memory of Butterflies
Tatiana Fuentes Sadowski

Palimpsest: The Story of a Name
Mary Stephen

Remake
Ross McElwee

Treat Me Like Your Mother
Mohamad Abdouni

True North
Michèle Stephenson

With Hasan in Gaza
Kamal Aljafari