Festival DOC — 9 November 2026: what changes when we keep watching

Editorial · What changes when we keep watching

IDFA will open in Amsterdam on 12 November with White Tiger Column by Robert Mentov, Dwight Jantzi and Bryan Dickie. The choice of opening film was announced on 15 October. IDFA’s announcement.

The festival’s introduction describes a work filmed alongside young resistance recruits in Myanmar during 45 days of training. This starting point raises a specific question: what can time spent with people show us beyond the most immediate images of a conflict?

In news coverage, we often encounter someone at a decisive moment: an escape, a clash, a statement. A documentary can also stay before and afterwards. A meal, a wait or a conversation can help us understand what a choice means in the life of the person making it. They do not make a war less political: they allow us to see where politics enters someone’s day.

Yet the camera’s closeness cannot explain everything. Filmmakers choose where to stand; editors decide which moments to keep and which to leave out. The question to take into the cinema is therefore twofold: what do we learn by staying with these people, and what remains beyond the film’s field of view? A discussion can begin here, without asking a single work to tell the story of an entire country on its own.

In Focus · White Tiger Column, from screening to discussion

The White Tiger Column programme lists a public screening on 13 November at 14:00 at Carré, with a Q&A. On 15 November at 17:15 at Tuschinski 4, the film will be followed by a talk with all three directors. Times are local to Amsterdam. Screenings and talks.

Discussion after a screening can help us understand the work: how access was obtained, what boundaries were agreed and how footage was selected for the edit. These questions help us understand the images as well as the filmmakers’ intentions.

In Focus · Like Any Other Mortal, looking at a landscape

Like Any Other Mortal by María Molina Peiró is in IDFA’s Paradocs programme. Its first listed public screening is on 13 November at 21:45 at Tuschinski 5, with a Q&A. The synopsis brings together Mars exploration, mining in Andalusia and research into forms of life. The film’s programme page.

This juxtaposition suggests a question to explore while watching: when we look at a landscape, do we see only a surface, or also the activities transforming it? An image can fascinate us while making us forget the labour and environmental consequences that produced that place. Holding these aspects together is also a responsibility of the viewer.

Conversations · A question to take into the cinema

Before asking a director what message they wanted to convey, we might ask which encounter changed the project. The answer may reveal a doubt, a limit or a practical decision: things that often disappear when a film is summed up in a sentence.

The conversation we propose starts here: which images changed our minds, and why? Returning to a particular scene makes discussion possible even when we do not share an interpretation. The exchange becomes more useful when we can point to what we saw and explain how we came to read it.