منذ 5 أشهر
Each year, for 11 days in November, Amsterdam celebrates the flourishing documentary artform in all its diversity with more than 2.500 professionals and a wide audience that accounts for almost 300.000 festival visits.
In addition to the annual festival, IDFA engages year-round in a variety of activities. These include public programs, supporting new documentary projects and emerging talent, advocating for persecuted filmmakers, and developing educational initiatives.
NAAS went to IDFA (Netherlands) in November 2025 to take part in an Industry Talk about Alternative distribution and exhibition - Reconnecting with the audiences.
As traditional documentary distribution models falter and some formats start taking safer paths, the question is: Can we collectively shape a new kind of cinema that reimagines how films are experienced and shared? — Sevara Pan, film critic, writer and curator
Read more Sevara Pan’s coverage post about the Industry Talk: Alternative distribution and exhibition - Reconnecting with the audiences.
The crisis of documentary distribution shows that traditional models, as well as some formats that were only recently hailed as saviors, are crumbling or deciding to go into a financially safer but creatively limited direction. In most territories, cinemas are showing only a handful of creative documentaries, public broadcasters are increasingly losing their editorial independence, and streamers are populating their libraries with in-house true crime and celebrity fare.
This talk proposes stepping back from the broken system, taking a look at a place for documentary films from the audiences' perspective and the nature of cinema as a communal experience. Community cinemas and adjacent models do not only show films, they organize thematic programs and talks with filmmakers and scholars, and they are gathering places where audiences stay after a screening to share impressions and ideas over food and drinks, with curators eager to hear their reactions and input. At the end of the day, this is what creative documentary cinema is about: growing through art and exchanging opinions, ideas and emotions.
Moderator: Rohan Berry Crickmar (Lightdox/Cork International Film Festival)
Speakers: Nada Bakr (Network of Alternative Arab Screens), Abby Sun (IDA/Distribution Advocates), Can Sungu (SINEMA TRANSTOPIA)
Nada Bakr, Abby Sun, Can Sungu and Rohan Berry Crickmar (from left to right) © IDFA
Read more Sevara Pan’s coverage post about the Industry Talk: Alternative distribution and exhibition - Reconnecting with the audiences. Follow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook.
