IDFA, the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, will celebrate Portuguese documentary filmmaker Susana de Sousa Dias as its guest of honor for its 2025 edition, which takes place Nov. 13-23. “Known for her singular approach to archival images and cinematic form, de Sousa Dias has built an internationally acclaimed body of work that interrogates dictatorship, colonial legacies, and the fragile terrain of memory,” organizers said.
An extended conversation with her will be the centerpiece talk of this year’s IDFA.
Organizers on Tuesday also unveiled the second installment of the curated program Dead Angle, which will this year focus on institutions, and the latest edition of the new media program IDFA DocLab, which will explore “the paradox of our time: a world perpetually connected through technology, at risk of disconnection by the same tools.”
Dead Angle is IDFA’s multi-year focus program that takes a closer look at “the systemic structures
that shape our lives, using documentary cinema to reveal what remains outside our direct field of vision.” This year’s program focuses on institutions, “inviting a close examination of how they operate, where they falter, and their role moving forward,” IDFA organizers said. “Documentary film offers a lens to trace their histories and contradictions — and to reflect on their role in shaping society and the civic structures we collectively sustain today.”
First confirmed titles for the 2025 program are Frederick Wiseman’s State Legislature (2006), which “offers an observational portrait of the Idaho State Senate, capturing the slow, deliberate unfolding of lawmaking,” along with titles shining a spotlight on the “afterlives of colonial institutions and the ways they are being contested and reclaimed.” They are How to Build a Library (2025) by Maia Lekow and Christopher King, following the renovation of a former colonial library in Nairobi as it is transformed into a center for African literature, and Checks and Balances (2015) by Malek Bensmaïl, about the journalists of Algeria’s El Watan newspaper continuing to fight for press freedom. The full selection will be unveiled on Oct. 15.
Meanwhile, the 19th edition of IDFA DocLab will have the theme “Off the Internet.” Said organizers: “The program grapples with the growing desire to disconnect, the impossibility of ever truly logging off, and the inherent privilege of stepping offline. With ‘Off the Internet,’ DocLab turns to interactive and immersive art in search of new forms of presence and connection.”
The first announced titles for the program, described as “physical and collective immersive
experiences,” include the world premieres of Nothing to See Here by Celine Daemen and Handle With Care by Ontroerend Goed.
IDFA’s celebration of de Sousa Dias as the festival’s guest of honor will feature a retrospective of her work. “Her signature style emerged with Still Life (2005), an archival meditation on the
Portuguese fascist regime Estado Novo, Europe’s longest-running dictatorship,” IDFA organizers highlighted. “International recognition followed with 48 (2009), which juxtaposes the regime’s photographs of political prisoners with testimonies decades later, revealing the violence embedded in every image. Her latest works turn to the neo-colonial archives of Brazil, including the world premiere of Fordlândia Panacea (2025), an excavation of the former company-town founded by Henry Ford in the Amazon rainforest in 1928.”
‘Fordlândia Panacea’
Courtesy of IDFA
With the retrospective, IDFA said it wants to present “a comprehensive look at de Sousa Dias’ uncompromising approach to creating dissident counter-archives and her distinctive visual style.” It added: “By creating space for distance and reflection, her work prompts us to question how political histories are told through film and how we approach the narration of the past. Rather than using archival footage as mere illustration, she reframes these images of power to reveal erased histories of violence and resistance to authority.”
These themes are also extended to the filmmaker’s Top 10 program, which presents “an exploration into collective memory and filmmakers rewriting their political narratives.”
The selection includes Monangambééé (1968) by Sarah Maldoror and Images of the World and the Inscription of War (1989) by Harun Farocki. The other titles unveiled on Tuesday are Armas e o Povo (1975), directed by Colectivo dos Trabalhadores da Actividade Cinematográfica, From the Pole to the Equator (1986), directed by Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi, R 21 aka Restoring Solidarity (2022), directed by Mohanad Yaqubi, Río Turbio (2020), directed by Tatiana Mazú González, and
Rosa de Areia (1989), directed by Margarida Cordeiro and António Reis.
Susana de Sousa Dias
Here are all the titles of the Susana de Sousa Dias retrospective:
48 (2009)
Criminal Case 141/53 (2000)
Fordlândia Malaise (2019)
Fordlândia Panacea (2025)
Journey to the Sun (2021), directed with Ansgar
Schaefer
Obscure Light (2017)
Post Criminal Case (2025)
Still Life (2005)