Ukraine War Doc ‘A Picture to Remember’ to Open Amsterdam Documentary Festival

The Ukraine war documentary A Picture to Remember by director Olga Chernykh will open the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, it was announced Wednesday.

As IDFA unveiled its full lineup, artistic director Orwa Nyrabia chose Chernykh’s film about three generations of women — the director, her mother and grandmother — confronting Ukraine’s current war and violent history to reflect the role of nonfiction film in responding to devastating global affairs.

“The director does not shy away from trying to build a cinematic world with fragile elements. The courage and originality of the film’s approach opens up to a much larger world view. That’s what places films like A Picture to Remember at the heart of IDFA,” Nyrabia said in a statement about the first night world premiere.

IDFA also unveiled its main competition lineups for its 36th edition in Amsterdam from Nov. 8-19, which includes the Envision and International Competitions, to bring this year’s festival to around 250 titles.

The latest lineup additions include Shoghakat Vardanyan’s 1489, set around the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict; Vita Maria Drygas’ Danger Zone, about conflict tours to world hot spots like Afghanistan and Syria; Elene Asatiani and Soso Dumbadze’s Limitation, about Russia’s hybrid war against Ukraine from Crimea; and In-Soo Radstake’s Selling a Colonial War, a film reexamining how Dutch leaders over history conducted and explained away colonial wars, including in Indonesia.