The 22nds International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), which opened in Amsterdam on Thursday 19 November is considered the most important in the world for spotlighting non-fiction film, debuting such movies as Afghan Star and Burma VJ last year before those films screened at Sundance and the North American festival circuit.
This year the festival will be attended by veteran directors Frederic Wiseman, DA Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus among other documentary luminaries.
Close on 1,000 people attended the world premiere at the historic Tuschinski Theatre of Dariusz Jablonski’s War Games and the Man Who Stopped Them which was also the opening film for the festival. The film recounts the last decades of the Cold War and centres on Polish Colonel Ryszard Kuklinski, who provided the CIA with over 40,000 strategic documents from the Warsaw Pact during the Cold War.
To the Colonel’s supporters, he was a hero who defended Poland against the regime in Moscow, while helping to overt World War III in Europe by balancing power that was militarily weighted toward the Eastern Bloc. To his detractors, he was simply a traitor.
“Thanks to Colonel Kuklinski we sit in one Europe today safely,’ Jablonski said following the screening. “I hope you will all remember him and other silent heros who helped create peace here.’
