Doc Talk Podcast At IDFA: Isabel Arrate Fernandez On Leading World’s Biggest Documentary Fest And Petra Costa On Her “Apocalyptic” Oscar Contender

IDFA, the world’s largest documentary film festival, wrapped in Amsterdam over the weekend after presenting a program of more than 250 films, many of them world and international premieres.

The 38th edition of IDFA marked the debut of Isabel Arrate Fernandez as artistic director, a position she assumed in July after the resignation of Orwa Nyrabia, who had led the festival for the previous seven years. This year’s festival attracted some of the greatest talents in documentary including Gianfranco Rosi, Raoul Peck, Laura Poitras, Tia Lessin, Carl Deal, Susana de Sousa Dias, Mstyslav Chernov, Victor Kossakovsky, Stanley Nelson, David France and many others. But the event didn’t pass without controversy.

On the new edition of Deadline’s Doc Talk podcast, Arrate Fernandez addresses the festival’s decision to ban Israeli organizations that receive funding support from the Israeli government (she emphasized that individual Israeli filmmakers were not prohibited from attending). Some have attacked the ban as grossly unfair, but Arrate Fernandez tells us IDFA felt compelled to act in solidarity with Palestinians who have suffered under two years of Israeli bombardment and a ground campaign launched in retaliation for the October 7 terror attack. 

We also visit with Oscar-nominated filmmaker Petra Costa, who pitched a new project at IDFA and who finds herself in the thick of the Oscar race with her award-winning documentary Apocalypse in the Tropics. Her follow-up to The Edge of Democracy charts the rise of Christian nationalism in her native Brazil. Costa tells us the film’s launch on Netflix in July led to dramatic repercussions for her protagonist – firebrand pastor Silas Malafaia, a Christian nationalist and key supporter of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who was convicted of trying to stage a coup after he lost reelection in 2022.

Footage that Costa captured of Malafaia has made him a target of the same investigation that got Bolsonaro a 27-year prison sentence. She spotlights the specific scene in the film that’s creating legal jeopardy for the pastor.

That’s on the latest edition of Doc Talk, hosted by Oscar winner John Ridley (12 Years a Slave, Shirley) and Matt Carey, Deadline’s senior documentary editor. Doc Talk is a production of Deadline and Ridley’s Nō Studios.

Listen to the episode above or on major podcast platforms including Spotify, iHeart and Apple.