IDFA Amsterdam Sets International, Envision Competition Lineups; Adds “Musk,” “You Can See Everything”

The major documentary festival opens with the world premiere of “White Tiger Pillar,” which follows a group of soldiers through 45 days of training with Myanmar’s resistance movement.

The International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) has unveiled the main competition lineup for its 39th edition and the addition of other sections. The full official IDFA 2026 collection consists of 253 titles from 80 countries.

The 39th edition of IDFA will be held in Amsterdam from November 12-22, and the world premiere of Column of the White Tiger by Robert Mentoff, Dwight Jantzi and Brian Dickey is currently opening for the festival. The documentary, which will be shown in international competition, follows a group of recruits during 45 days of training with the Myanmar resistance movement. The synopsis reads: “In a training camp deep in the jungle, filmmakers capture the daily lives of young volunteers as they prepare for their freedom. IDFA calls this film "an outstanding example of documentary cinema" and "a moving portrait of a brave generation".

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IDFA organizers said the international competition will bring together 13 works. These films offer complex and layered views of the present in a wide range of filmmaking topics and approaches."

Meanwhile, IDFA's prediction competition showcases 13 films in which "form drives the narrative." "Through distinctive visual approaches and formal choices, the filmmakers deconstruct and reframe the complexities of our world, offering new ways of seeing and understanding the subjects they explore," IDFA said. And memory is clearly a key theme in this program, with three titles having the word in their titles.

The first-ever Luminous section presents 21 feature-length and short films that "wrestle with life's big questions through deeply personal, lived experiences." In this program, 19 titles are world or international premieres and 9 titles are feature films. The festival noted: "In Laura Bermudez and Jorge García's immersive and poetic film Where the Sun is Born, a dancer leaves a city in Honduras to travel to the Afro-Caribbean Garifuna community of his youth in search of his roots and a sense of community." Hossein al-Asadi from the IDFA Bertha Fund, supported by She Wasn't Alone, follows Zaira, an elderly woman who lives in close contact with nature in the swamps of southern Iraq, shedding light on an increasingly endangered idyllic place.

Also, Raluca Lopaszko's "Modern Roman Myth" follows 10-year-old Nicoletta, granddaughter of a Roman king, who grows up dreaming of living in a marble palace "while watching the women around her push the limits of the patriarchal traditions that shape her future." And in Every Death Reduces Me, Sergei Bazhnov trains as a medic to join the front lines, documenting his colleagues as they treat the wounded. Confronting the human cost of war

Organizers said Frontlight, rather than Frontlines, is the name of IDFA's first-time only section, which will feature 16 films, "ranging from critical examination of truth and pressing issues of our time to portraits of artists and their works." "Several films offer immediate responses to major current events, while others take time to examine the social realities and challenges that shape people's lives." Among the documents here is the book Tehran, Under the Skin by Afshan Salari, which examines the beauty clinics of Tehran and "the pressures behind the widespread culture of cosmetic surgery in Iran to achieve physical perfection in a conservative society that seeks to control the beauty of women."

IDFA on Tuesday also unveiled additions to its other sections, including Alex Gibney's Musk, Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim's You Can See Everything, and Albert Serra's Sixteen Moments of My Life.

Check out the IDFA matches and other key programs unveiled on Tuesday below.