DocNomads films selected to IDFA International Film Festival Amsterdam
Nastia Korkia’s graduation film Dreams About Putin, and the short documentary Love, Your Neighbour by Jethro Westraad will premiere in the Competition for Short / Youth Documentary at the 36th IDFA - International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, the largest documentary festival worldwide, held between 8 and 19 November.
Three more films directed by DocNomads alumni after their graduation were selected to IDFA as well.
The feature-length documentary Rejeito by Pedro de Filippis (Brazil) and the short documentary Echo by Ross McClean (Ireland) will be presented in IDFA’s section Best of Fests, whereas the feature-length Another Day by Eneos Çarka (Albania) will have its World Première in the Luminous section of IDFA 2023.
By Nastia Korkia (Russia) • 30’ • 2023
Synopsis:
Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, many Russians have started having dreams about their president and sharing them on social media. More than a thousand dreams about Putin have now been recorded and posted on public platforms.
In Dreams About Putin, a selection of these dreams have been brought to life using Unreal Engine, a 3D graphics program for creating scenes for computer games. In this exciting experiment with form, the animations are complemented by rare archival footage of the Russian president.
The dreams are related by a narrator, and their “translation” into 3D scenes is not literal; likewise, the archival footage has been lightly edited. The result is sometimes dryly comic, sometimes absurdist, sometimes disturbing, and sometimes even hopeful. A series of bizarre but therefore oddly familiar nightmares as a vision of Putin’s Russia.
In IDFA catalogue
By Jethro Westraad (South Africa) • 8’ • 2021
Synopsis:
During the COVID pandemic, everyone withdrew into their homes, and social interaction came to a virtual standstill. But in the neighborhood in Durban, South Africa, where filmmaker Jethro Westraad comes from, this was hardly any different from the normal situation.
He realizes this when he returns home during the lockdown and sees with outsider’s eyes the way his neighbors live in isolation, barricaded behind high walls with barbed wire, security cameras and vicious guard dogs. There’s no opportunity to make contact with the neighbors — so Westraad tries it via the intercom.
In his short, vignette-like film Love, Your Neighbour, Westraad shows how living in a high-security bubble fuels racist prejudices and fear of the other. The tone is light and ironic, but the message is serious. The title can be read as the loving conclusion to an appeal to neighbors, but without the comma as a commandment with biblical connotations.
In IDFA catalogue