IDFA Artistic Director Orwa Nyrabia on ‘Recalibration’ Following Tense 2023 Edition and Rejecting Neutrality: ‘We Cannot Rely on an Ostrich Kind of Policy’

It’s been a long year at IDFA, Amsterdam’s renowned documentary film festival. Last year, the festival faced major scrutiny after pro-Palestinian protestors took over the stage during the event’s opening ceremony with a slogan seen as a chant of liberation to Palestinians, but viewed as an expression of hostility by those who support Israel. A head dive into murky waters ensued, with filmmakers withdrawing from the festival as the team tried to navigate a complicated political climate just five weeks after the events of Oct. 7.

This year’s edition, which runs from Nov. 14-24, comes after an “elaborate process of discussions, thinking and introspection,” says the festival’s artistic director Orwa Nyrabia, who recently revealed he will step down at the end of June. “Today, a lot of the spirit of defending the way we do things comes across a little bit like George W. Bush saying we need to defend our way of life. I think film festivals need to be better than that.”

“When it comes to a category of this size of festivals, IDFA was the first last year to happen after Oct. 7 and I must say we were rattled,” continues the director. “We found ourselves trying to do the right thing but also trying to avoid traps. To me that is quite an unsafe place to be. The main point of this year is to recalibrate.”

Nyrabia is positive about the industry response to IDFA’s stance since, saying the festival had record numbers of film and project submissions. “People see that they can trust our self-critical process and are invested in [IDFA]. They would like us to succeed in moving past a crisis.”

To Nyrabia, one of the main takeaways from this lengthy process of self-evaluation is that festivals cannot claim neutrality when it comes to polarizing issues. “We cannot rely on an ostrich kind of policy where we put our heads in the sand and say we are neutral. We are programming, we are designing, and that is absolutely full of statements, it is not a detached process,” he says.

“The old school claim of film festivals has always been that we only pick what’s excellent, so we become seen as the guardians of quality, but I think we know better. Today we know that ‘quality’ is also full of prejudice, it carries all the history of injustice and we need to admit that we are not objectively picking the ‘best’ because ‘best’ is a very relative term.”

Back in August, leading industry figures got together at a symposium in Amsterdam to discuss how festivals and cultural institutions can accommodate protests and debates. Headed by Nyrabia, the symposium featured an organizing committee composed of former Sundance head Tabitha Jackson, IDFA’s deputy director Isabel Arrate Fernandez, and Rima Mismar, executive director of the Arab Fund for Arts and Culture.

“Many of the artists and colleagues who were critical of us last year were trying to foster the spirit of collaboration as an answer, to work together and try to remember why we do what we do,” says Nyrabia of the aftermath of the discussions. “Documentary history has always been one of dissidence. Generally, time passes and people look back and discover that great art was ahead of its time.”

This desire to connect with the roots of documentary as a practice has led to IDFA curating a special selection on borders, titled “Dead Angle: Borders,” featuring works such as Yolande Zauberman’s Israeli doc “Would You Have Sex with an Arab?” and Lebanese filmmaker Lawrence Abu Hamdan’s “The Diary of a Sky,” plus a spotlight selection on Cuba.

“[Cuba] is a country in distress but out of any media attention,” adds Nyrabia. “This is also the place of documentary film, not only to allow us to reflect on the past in a meaningful way but to give us signs of what is coming. It operates in a very different way from the news and the media, where it only happens when it’s happening. In film, it happens before and it happens after, but it’s not the immediate that matters.”

As for this year’s opening film, Piotr Winiewicz’s “About a Hero,” the festival director says it was a choice that came out of the need to foster discussions about AI and new technologies not only from a pragmatic point of view in terms of how it will affect the industry but also when it comes to “human singularity.”

The film, a hybrid documentary about an AI tool conceived to mimic the work of Werner Herzog, was one of the very first films Nyrabia saw that “puts us in this place where we are not thinking if AI is good or bad, but it makes you think about the question of human creativity.” “There is more to this question and I enjoy having this annoying experiment as the starting point because we need to face this discomfort.”

This upcoming edition of IDFA will be the last with Nyrabia at its helm, with the director recently announcing he will step away after seven years on the job. He will remain in his role until July 1 “to ensure that the upcoming transition is well-planned and facilitated and that the early preparations for the 2025 edition continue smoothly,” according to a festival statement.

“I came to this job from being totally on the other side. I’m chronically a dissident, I cannot stop finding what is not fair,” says Nyrabia, when reflecting on his years at IDFA. “I think it is a very courageous thing, that I hope other organizations follow suit on, to bring someone like that, to break the wall between the institution and the filmmaking side, so that the two sides educate each other about what it is like to be on the other side of your table. I think we did some good stuff there.”

The director compares his leaving with the final act of a film, saying he doesn’t like it “when films end three times” and that he believes it is the right moment to leave, mostly because of how “great the program is” this year. “I feel a little sad, I must say. It’s not like I am happy or relieved. I just feel it’s the right decision and I want to return to being an individual.”