Audience Awards at IDFA: Interview with Janneke Rijpckema

You only present the 50 best results, not all of them, right?

Well, that’s the idea behind it. In the awards ceremony, the winners are announced and a list of the 50 first films is given. There are 198 films involved, so we cannot make the whole list. It’s possible to get the list on demand, though.

This year, it seems that many of the films chosen come from the Best of Fests selection.

Yes, I personally think it helps if a film has been shown at other festivals, if it has been in the press a lot. People who come to this kind of festival are really aware of what’s going at other festivals, so I do think it helps in order to get more audience. But then it doesn’t really mean that the audience will like it, so there is a difference between the appreciation and the number of people in a film. Some films have had a lot of press, but the audience didn’t like them, so it doesn’t always go together…

Have you had of any cases in particular of films with a great public, but poor appreciation?

Not at the moment. It seems that in the top 20 there are some newcomers, but most of them have already premiered before. We don’t have the other case either, of films that were successful abroad, but not at IDFA. It was what we expected, actually. It would be really nice if a premier won, but it is up to the audience to decide what they like best.

We have seen that Autumn Gold, on elderly athletes, is one of the favourites so far…

Yes! I’ve seen it and I can understand why, because I really liked it, and there are some of the people shown in the film present in the Q&A…

And you think Q&As have an influence on people’s vote?

Yes, absolutely. I do think so. Because we already try to tell the truth in the films, but Q&As make it even more real, you see the actual people, you can ask them questions, they become close to you. We could see that films with nice Q&As have better votes.

Also, we were wondering if the political themes were particularly appreciated by the public, because they seem to be privileged in the official selection.

I’m not sure. We had a big conversation yesterday with a few Q&A people and some visitors, and they say it is too obvious to take something polemic, controversial or very actual. Now, we have on the top Autumn Gold, Kinshasa Symphony and The World According to Ion B. which have very positive messages, they are feel good documentaries. People were wondering if this year people were looking for more positive messages in films, because of the crisis, maybe. That’s the rumour, at least. Of course, some strong political films like You Don’t Like the Truth are highly ranked, so people do think they are important; but Autumn Gold got so much applause, standing ovation; people were yelling with so much enthusiasm… and the theme has nothing to do with politics. I think people are looking for positive messages this year, that’s what we can see in the Audience Awards.

Do you have information on the number of people attending the IDFA this year?

We don’t have the statistics yet. There are fewer films that are being screened more often, with one more day, eleven instead of ten, so we do expect about 8 to 10% more audience. Last year, they filled each screening with an average of 90% of the seats, that’s why they took an extra day. We just hope to exceed that.

By Bruno Carmelo