Jørgen Leth and Eva Marie Rødbro in competition at IDFA

The world's largest doc fest, IDFA in Amsterdam, has revealed the competition titles for this year's edition, including films by Danish documentary film's grand old man Jørgen Leth and debuting director Eva Marie Rødbro. Both films will be making their world premiere at the festival. 

Jørgen Leth's 'I Walk' is selected for the ​IDFA Competition for Feature-Length Documentary. As previously announced, Leth will be honoured with IDFA's Lifetime Achievement Award for his extensive and versatile body of work.

Read more:

Jørgen Leth to receive Lifetime Achievement Award at IDFA

Eva Marie Rødbro's 'I Love You I Miss You I Hope I See You Before I Die', which is the director's first film in feature length after a number of shorts and television series, is revealed for the IDFA Competition for First Appearance.

The full programme for IDFA 2019 is hereby announced. A total of nine Danish titles will be participating this year, in addition to a number of international co-productions with Danish participation. Get the full view below.

About a life spent

Filmmaker, sports journalist and poet Jørgen Leth survived an earthquake in Haiti, but since then he has shuffled unsteadily through life. 'I Walk' is a personal documentary about dealing with old age when the hunger for life hasn’t been satisfied yet. 

IDFA's Lifetime Achievement Award goes to the Danish documentarian for having "inspired generations of filmmakers with his strong auteur voice and fearless perspective on reality". The honorary award will be given during the festival. 

The 82-year-old director, poet, journalist, author, cycling commentator and much more has been a regular at IDFA over the years.

Jørgen Leth is renowned for a string of key works in Danish cinema since the early 1960s, from 'The Perfect Human' (1968) and 'Life in Denmark' (1972) to his 70s' cycling films 'Stars and Water Carriers' (1974) and 'A Sunday in Hell' (1977) and later classics like '66 Scenes from America' (1982), 'Haiti. Untitled' (1996), 'The Five Obstructions' (2003) with Lars von Trier and 'The Erotic Human' (2010) – and many more. 

Eva Marie Rødbro's 'I Love You I Miss You I Hope I See You Before I Die' will be making its world premiere at IDFA. Photo: Troels Rasmus Jensen

Portraying marginalised lives

In 'I Love You I Miss You I Hope I See You Before I Die', we follow Betty, a young mother-of-two living below the poverty line and sharing a house with ten others in suburban Colorado Springs. Resilient and emotionally sensitive, Betty is nonetheless continually tested by the realities of her daily life; mounting debts, a troubling partner and the expectations of motherhood.

With uncertainty always looming on the horizon, Eva Marie Rødbro’s privileged and inquisitive footage gently observes the female camaraderie and fleeting moments of joy that illuminate these marginalised lives. 

The director has a Bachelor's degree, from 2008, in photography from the Gerrit Rietveld Academie for Fine Arts and Design in Amsterdam. In 2015, she graduated as documentary director from the National Film School of Denmark. Her graduation film, 'We Chose the Milky Way', formed the basis for a popular series on national broadcaster DR about a group of girls from the Copenhagen Psy-Trance scene, 'Princesses from the Block' (2016). She has also directed a number of short films about wild teens, including 'I Touched Her Legs' (2010), 'Warrior' (2013) and 'Dan Mark' (2014).

'I Love You I Miss You I Hope I See You Before I Die' is produced by Julie Friis Walenciak for Paloma Productions with support from the Danish Film Institute's talent scheme New Danish Screen.

Danish directors have received the main prize in the First Appearance competition twice in recent years. In 2016, Sine Skibsholt won for 'Who We Were', and in 2017 Simon Lereng Wilmont was awarded for 'The Distant Barking of Dogs'.

Danish films and filmmakers at  IDFA 2019

Here is a summary of the Danish films and filmmakers for this year's festival:

Lifetime Achievement Award

• Jørgen Leth receives honorary award for his complete oeuvre.

​IDFA Competition for Feature-Length Documentary

• I Walk by Jørgen Leth. Produced by Sigrid Dyekjær for Danish Documentary Production.

IDFA Competition for First Appearance

• I Love You I Miss You I Hope I See You Before I Die by Eva Marie Rødbro. Produced by Julie Friis Walenciak for Paloma Productions.

IDFA Competition for Kids & Docs

• Bird Boy by Simon Lereng Wilmont. Produced by Maria Stevnbak Westergren for Toolbox Film.

Frontlight

• Fat Front by Louise Unmack Kjeldsen and Louise Detlefsen. Produced by Malene Flindt Pedersen for Hansen & Pedersen Film og Fjernsyn.

Best of Fests

• The Cave by Feras Fayyad. Produced by Kirstine Barfod and Sigrid Dyekjær for Danish Documentary Production.
• Hunting for Hedonia by Pernille Rose Grønkjær. Produced by Sigrid Dyekjær for Danish Documentary Production.

Masters

• Love Child by Eva Mulvad. Produced by Sigrid Dyekjær for Danish Documentary Production.
• The Winter Journey by Anders Østergaard. Produced by Mette Heide for Plus Pictures.

Focus: The Villain

• The Look of Silence by Joshua Oppenheimer. Produced by Signe Byrge Sørensen for Final Cut for Real.

Co-productions

• A Comedian in a Syrian Tragedy by Rami Farah (France, Denmark, Syria, Jordan, Norway). Danish co-producer is Signe Byrge Sørensen for Final Cut for Real. Festival series: Luminous.
• In Mansourah, You Separated Us by Dorothée Myriam Kellou (Algeria, France, Denmark). Danish co-producer is Sara Stockmann for Sonntag Pictures. Festival series: Focus: It Still Hurts, Best of Fests.
• Khartoum Offside by Marwa Zein (Sudan, Danmark, Norge, Frankrig). Danish co-producer is Henrik Underbjerg for Stray Dog Productions. Festival series: Best of Fests, Spotlight: Sudan.
• The Kingmaker by Lauren Greenfield (USA, Danmark). Danish co-producer is Sigrid Dyekjær for Danish Documentary Production. Festival series: Best of Fests, Focus: The Villain.
• My Darling Supermarket by Tali Yankelevich (Brazil, Denmark). Dansk co-producer: Good Company Pictures. Festival series: IDFA Competition for First Appearance.

I Walk

Jørgen Leth, 2020

Filmmaker, sports journalist and poet Jørgen Leth survived an earthquake in Haiti, but since then he has shuffled unsteadily through life. The film is a personal documentary about dealing with old age when the hunger for life hasn't yet been satisfied.

I Love You I Miss You I Hope I See You Before I Die

Eva Marie Rødbro, 2019

A harsh and dreamy story of a young girl and her longing heart. Through Betty, living below the poverty line in suburban Colorado Springs, we experience a tight family clan of children born by children born by children where love and dependency go hand in hand.

Bird Boy

Simon Lereng Wilmont, 2019

When 12-year-old Reshat looks around, he sees the oil fields of Azerbaijan. When he looks up dreamily, he sees pigeons flying to heaven. He misses his father, who died a year ago, and who also loved these birds.

Fat Front

Louise Detlefsen, Louise Unmack Kjeldsen, 2019

A revolution is happening in Scandinavia. This film is about young women who have had enough of self-hatred and shame and proudly call themselves FAT. They demand respect and recognition in a diet-fixated society while struggling with their lack of self-worth.

The Cave

Feras Fayyad, 2019

For the besieged Syrian civilians, hope and safety lie underground, inside the subterranean hospital known as the Cave, where pediatrician and managing physician Dr. Amani Ballour and her colleagues Samaher and Dr. Alaa have claimed their right to work as equals alongside their male counterparts, doing their jobs in a way that would be unthinkable in the oppressively patriarchal culture that exists above.

Love Child

Eva Mulvad, 2019

It is winter in Istanbul. A plane from Teheran has just landed. A couple, Leila and Sahand, have succeeded in fleeing Iran with their four-year-old son, Mani, without being arrested.

Hunting for Hedonia

Pernille Rose Grønkjær, 2019

An examination of the explosive development in "deep brain stimulation" (DBS). With permanent electrodes in selected areas of the brain, scientists can adjust abnormal activity and thereby normalise different kinds of psychiatric states. However, the method raises fundamental questions about what is normal, and how much we want our psyche manipulated with.

Winter Journey

Anders Østergaard, 2019

Martin Goldsmith never knew what really had happened to his parents Georg and Rosemarie before their escape from Germany in 1941. As he confronts his father over a long weekend, we are brought back to the complex 1930s, when his parents were young musicians in a bizarre organisation – Jüdischer Kulturbund. Here, at the mercy of Joseph Goebbels, they devoted their youth to music until they escaped at the very last minute.

The Look of Silence

Joshua Oppenheimer, 2014

Through Joshua Oppenheimer's footage of perpetrators of the 1965 Indonesian genocide, a family of survivors discovers how their son was murdered, as well as the identities of the killers. The documentary focuses on the youngest son, an optometrist named Adi, who decides to break the suffocating spell of submission and terror by doing something unimaginable in a society where the murderers remain in power: he confronts the men who killed his brother and, while testing their eyesight, asks them to accept responsibility for their actions. This unprecedented film initiates and bears witness to the collapse of fifty years of silence.