Docs in Orbit

Hi everyone, Aylin Gökmen here, with a new episode featuring a conversation with Pablo Álvarez-Mesa about his film, The Soldier’s Lagoon (2024), which received the Docs in Orbit Invitation Award at Cannes Doc-Marché du Film last year.The Soldier’s Lagoon is a strikingly beautiful and multi-layered piece centered on the Colombian páramo region. The film explores the land’s history, encompassing Bolívar's political legacy, colonialism, and the presence of armed groups, shedding light on h...

Hello everyone. This is Hosein Jalilvand in Geneva with a new episode for Docs in Orbit featuring a conversation with Matthew Lancit about his latest film, Play Dead! (2023). Play Dead! is a funny, tender video diary on living with diabetes, where Lancit playfully transforms his personal experience and fear of dying into a body horror film, where an invisible disease crawls inside his body. The film premiered in the Camera Lucida sidebar of Dok Leipzig in October 2023 and available to s...

We are releasing a conversation recorded on Tuesday, November 14th, 2023, at IDFA, where I met with Julian Ross and Farah Hasanbegović to recap Corresponding Cinemas. Corresponding Cinemas was a new series at IDFA this year, and in many ways, it was an experiment to see what invisible connections surface when an institution decides to transfer over its curatorial control to filmmakers. The idea is simple and compelling. It would be a series of films and conversations with filmmakers who have ...

Today is the first day of the 36th edition of IDFA, the world's largest documentary film festival - a twelve-day event in Amsterdam featuring more than 250 titles in 22 sections. Earlier this week, I sat with Orwa Nyrabia, the Artistic Director of the festival, to speak with him about the role, responsibility and relevancy of film festivals and how IDFA is meeting the current moment. We also discuss some of the new sections in the program, including SPECIAL SCREENINGS, SIGNED,...

An abandoned house opens the door to revisit the past by bringing to life a unique, nearly destroyed image archive from the unrecognized territory on the border of the Black Sea: Abkhazia. A place normally inaccessible for Georgians because of the ethnic conflict that happened between Georgia and Abkhazia back in 1993. Combining voice, archive, and recent footage, the film examines a lost and split identity stuck between the margins. The audio-visual fragments of this archive are intricately ...