The work of Susana de Sousa Dias will be “celebrated with a retrospective,” including the world premiere of her latest film, “Fordlândia Panacea” (2025), and previous documentaries like “Natureza Morta” (2005), “48” (2009), “Luz Obscura” (2017), “Fordlandia Malaise” (2019), “Viagem ao Sol” (2021), and “Processo Crime 141/53 – Enfermeiras no Estado Novo” (2001), which will be screened with the film-essay “Pós-Processo Crime.”
In the presentation of the Portuguese director, the festival highlights her “comprehensive vision” and “singular approach” to cinema, emphasizing her use of “archival images and the cinematic form” to “question dictatorship, colonial legacies, and the fragile ground of memory,” always “uncompromising in creating dissident counter-archives,” as noted on the IDFA website.
“By creating space for detachment and reflection, her work leads us to question how political stories are told through cinema and how we approach the narration of the past. Instead of using archival images as mere illustration, [Susana de Sousa Dias] restructures these images of power to reveal erased stories of violence and resistance to authority,” states the festival announcement.
The director’s new film “Fordlândia Panacea,” premiering in Amsterdam, “continues the work started with ‘Fordlandia Malaise’ (2019), addressing the history of the company-town founded by Henry Ford in the Amazon and revealing new indigenous archaeological discoveries that challenge the view of the locality as a ‘utopian city’ or ‘ghost town’,” indicates the producer Kintop in a statement.
As part of the tribute to Susana de Sousa Dias, she has also been invited to define a “personal selection” of ten films (Top 10), including works like “Monangambééé” by Sarah Maldoror and “Images of the World and the Inscription of War” by Harun Farocki, to be shown in a special section dedicated to collective memory and the rewriting of political narratives.
“As Armas e o Povo,” a documentary by the Colectivo de Trabalhadores da Actividade Cinematográfica, shot between April 25 and May 1, 1974, “Rosa da Areia” by António Reis and Margarida Cordeiro, “Río Turbio” by Tatiana Mazú González, “Dal polo all’equatore” by Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi, “R 21 aka Restoring Solidarity,” by Mohanad Yaqubi, are other films included in this “personal selection.”
According to the festival, “an extended conversation with the guest of honor, Susana de Sousa Dias, will be the highlight of this edition.”
In 2020, the documentary “48” by Susana de Sousa Dias was screened at the IDFA, as part of the Top 10 programmed by that year’s guest of honor, Italian director Gianfranco Rosi.
The IDFA, one of the most important festivals dedicated to documentary cinema, has previously honored filmmakers such as Agnès Varda, Werner Herzog, Laura Poitras, Gianfranco Rosi, and Wang Bing.
Among other films announced today for the next edition of the festival are “State Legislature” by Frederick Wiseman, “How to Build a Library” by Maia Lekow and Christopher King, and “Checks and Balances” by Malek Bensmaïl, “Nothing to See Here” by Celine Daemen, and “Handle with Care” by Ontroerend Goed.
