IBF Classic Selection 2022
Film still: Dreams and Sleeplessness Before Dawn in the Nineties, dir. Raydel Araoz
Supporting documentary films worldwide
IBF Classic offers direct development, production and post-production support to filmmakers from and living in the IBF regions.
Selection IBF Classic – Development
A Girl and a Gun
Dir. Arya Amber Lalloo South Africa
A Girl and a Gun is rooted in the filmmaker's complex relationship with her camera. A meditation on collective imaginaries, it insists the camera confront its role in producing imperial logics of combat and difference as it celebrates its unique potential as a tool for subversive representation, dialogue and relation.
Dir. Sein Lyan Tun Myanmar, Indonesia
When making films has become virtually impossible since the pandemic in Myanmar, a filmmaker decided to return to his parents to discover his true self and the meaning of family life.
Dir. Raydel Araoz Cuba
Record player in hand, poet Soleida Ríos recorded the testimony of the dreams of the people who lived on the island between 1983 and 1988. Inspired on that research, the documentary draws an archetype map of the eighties, now that those years are disguised as an ideal, as a dream.
Dir. Sourav Sarangi India
Rachael, a seventy-eight year old puppet artist, travels back and forth between her war-torn family past in Myanmar and the stressful present in India as a second-generation immigrant. She fights her loneliness, fears and losses with her puppets to tell stories of survivors that transcend all borders, even today.
Dir. Thy Nguyen Vietnam, The Netherlands
After a TV broadcast revealing my grandfather’s secret life at the end of the Vietnam War sparked a new cold war within my family, this film unravels the story of three generations of women, shaped by Vietnam’s history and its unspoken trauma.
Dir. Alyx Ayn Arumpac Philippines
In this country, memory morphs as easily as the tides and the wind alter the shape of the land. A different storm is coming. The nation braces.
Dir. Alaa Eldin el Dajani Egypt
By 1917, 300,000 or more peasants were conscripted into the Egyptian Labor Corps with many dispatched to Europe to dig trenches for allied defense in the Great War. Younis Abdallah was one of the few survivors to recount his ordeal: this is his story and the story of his comrades.
Dir. Erhan Arık Turkey
A farming couple, Oruç and Güneş, live from wheat seed inherited from their ancestors. They want to pass the inherited wheat to their children but their childrens’ dreams are different.
Anonymous
In 2022, for IBF Classic – Development, the fund selected two projects that must remain completely anonymous. For more information on this check the article on the next page.
Selection IBF Classic – Production & Post-production
Dir. Germán Scelso Argentina
Germán Scelso, filmmaker and son of a guerrilla who disappeared during the dictatorship, records his conversations with son of a businessman that his father kidnapped for political reasons in 1970s.
Dir. Mahmoud Massad Jordan
When a hidden lens through an old cinema ticket office becomes a confessional.
Dir. Nishtha Jain India, Norway, France
Farming the Revolution takes us to the heart of the massive year-long protests against the Indian government's unjust farm laws. The film crew lives among half million farmers to make us experience the daily texture and indomitable spirit of this historic farmers' movement until, finally, victory!
Dir. Everlane Moraes Brazil
The absence of black personalities in Brazilian high society took Germano de Souza to organize events for notorious black individuals in places traditionally occupied by the white elites. This is the origin of GBS: communicator, social columnist and promoter of the “black high society”.
Dir. Simón Uribe Martínez Colombia
In the remoteness of the Colombian Amazon jungle, people wonder what they will do if the long-lived DC-3 plane stops arriving.
Dir. Misha Vallejo Prut Ecuador
Family issues if not solved, recur. This drives Misha, a young photographer, to challenge his own family’s history only to understand that memory has multiple facades.
Dir. María Silvia Esteve Argentina
Mailin tells her daughter a bedtime story, a metaphor unfolding the protagonists’ search to recover the memory of her past. Through a collage of archive and childhood drawings, emerges the story of a girl, who for 15 years suffered the abuses of a priest that Justice has just set free.
Dir. Maricarmen Merino Costa Rica, Mexico
Patricia Mora waited her whole life to follow her dreams and now at 70, she has become the most relevant feminist left-wing politician in Costa Rica. Exploring a universe of mournings, questions and contradictions, Matryoshka is an intimate portrait of a mother through the eyes of her daughter.
Dir. Joe H. Silva Ecuador
The Cuvivi bird migrates from the northern continent to the Ecuadorian highlands. They dive into the Ozogoche Lakes, ending their journey in collective suicide. The locals await the flock with rituals while they wait for the return of their loved ones that migrated in the opposite direction.
Dir. Agniia Galdanova France, United States
Gena, a queer artist from a small town in Russia, dresses in otherworldly costumes and parades around Moscow to protest the government - it becomes a movement with a million followers she calls “drag activism” but it also puts her life in danger. After being arrested and threatened, we follow her as she tries to escape the country to keep her movement going.
Dir. Ricardo Martensen Brazil
What’s left of us after we die? How long do our traces of existence remain on Earth? Through human bones, and memories, this film chronicles personal stories of Brazilians who lived during different periods of history; and in all of them, one thing in common – the imposition of neglect.
Anonymous
In 2022, for IBF Classic – Production & Post-production, the fund selected three projects that must remain completely anonymous. For more information on this check the article on the next page.
The Selection Committee
1st IBF Classic selection round: María Campaña Ramia - Programmer, IDFA Adrian Kawaley-Lathan - Creative Director, Bertha Foundation Radu Stancu - Producer, deFilm Rada Šešić - Filmmaker, festival programmer, and documentary consultant Isabel Arrate Fernandez - Deputy Director, IDFA; Executive Director, IDFA Bertha Fund
2nd IBF Classic selection round: Adrian Kawaley-Lathan - Creative Director, Bertha Foundation Jia Zhao - Producer, Muyi Film/Silk Road Film Salon Alexandra Galvis - Producer, Pantalla Cines; Distributor, bf Distribution Tala Hadid - Filmmaker Isabel Arrate Fernandez - Deputy Director, IDFA; Executive Director, IDFA Bertha Fund