Filmmaker Tatiana Huezo Named Guest Of Honor For 39th Edition Of International Documentary Festival Amsterdam
IDFA, the world’s largest documentary film festival, has named filmmaker Tatiana Huezo as its 2026 guest of honor, a distinction that puts the Salvadoran Mexican director in the company of previous honorees Laura Poitras, Johan Grimonprez, Wang Bing, and 2025 guest of honor Susana de Sousa Dias.
Huezo’s films include The Tiniest Place (2011), The Echo (2023), and her fiction debut, Prayers for the Stolen (2021). IDFA will present a complete retrospective of her work, including several short films and as part of the honor, Huezo will curate a personal Top 10 film selection, “taking her interest in cinematography as a starting point to explore how the camera shapes our perception of reality.” An extended conversation with Huezo will be the centerpiece Talk of the 2026 edition of IDFA.
“Born in El Salvador and raised in Mexico, Huezo has developed a distinctive body of work that moves between documentary and fiction, exploring how the violent consequences of organized crime and political turmoil shape the intimate lives of local families and communities,” IDFA writes in a release. “Her cinema is rooted in close observation and shaped by a highly attentive visual and sonic language—allowing memories and experience to surface through atmosphere and deeply personal stories.”
On Tuesday, IDFA also announced its 2026 Spotlight will focus on William Greaves, the late American filmmaker who deployed “sharp observation of social and political life” to explore Black history and culture. Earlier this year, the Sundance Film Festival premiered Once Upon a Time in Harlem, a documentary project conceived and filmed by William Greaves in 1972 that was completed more than 50 years later by his son, David Greaves, and granddaughter Liani Greaves. As part of the Spotlight program, IDFA will screen Once Upon a Time in Harlem, and the “cult classic Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One (1971) [where William Greaves] turns a fiction shoot in Central Park into a self-reflexive study of a film crew in revolt.” Also on the bill is The Fight [The William Greaves Director’s Cut] (1973), which captures “the charged atmosphere surrounding the Joe Frazier–Muhammad Ali championship bout.”
The 39th edition of IDFA takes place in Amsterdam from Nov. 12-22, under the artistic direction of Isabel Arrate Fernández.
The festival also shared details on the 20th edition of IDFA DocLab, as well as its Dead Angle program.
“Dead Angle is IDFA’s multi-year focus program that uses documentary cinema to reveal what remains outside our direct field of vision,” the festival writes. “Following Borders (2024) and Institutions (2025), the program closes with the theme Common Ground, exploring the many ways people come together—from extraordinary acts of solidarity and collective resistance to the everyday life of communities and quintessential function of public space.
“Several confirmed titles explore solidarity in times of crisis. Shinsuke Ogawa’s landmark film The Battle Front for the Liberation of Japan – Summer in Sanrizuka (1968) documents farmers and student protestors banding together to resist the expansion of Tokyo’s Narita Airport.
“Barbara Kopple’s Oscar-winning American Dream (1990) poignantly portrays the unequal struggle between labor and capital in a prolonged strike in a meat packing plant in Minnesota.
“Elsewhere, the program highlights everyday forms of connection. The Warsaw sidewalk becomes the stage in Paweł Łoziński’s The Balcony Movie, where his filming of casual encounters with passersby from his balcony becomes an intimate portrait of neighborhood and community. José Luis Guerín’s Work in Progress (2001) shows how gentrification not only reshapes a bustling Barcelona neighbourhood, but fractures the histories and relationships embedded in them. Everybody to Kenmure Street (2026) by Felipe Bustos Sierra captures a captivating account of collective resistance, when hundreds of Glasgow residents protested and prevented the deportation of two of their neighbors.”
IDFA notes, “Together, the [Dead Angle] program invites audiences to reflect on the act of finding common ground—a gesture of humanity and hope in dark times.” The full selection will be confirmed on October 13.
IDFA DocLab: Shared Realities
Celebrating its 20th edition, IDFA DocLab looks back on two decades of pioneering interactive and immersive documentary art, “while decisively turning toward the next 20 years. What began as an experiment in 2007, has grown into a leading platform for the exploration of where digital art and critical reflection on technology meet. Presented under the theme Shared Realities, the anniversary program reflects on DocLab’s history and traces plans to resurface formative archival works, while venturing forward to ask: which realities do we want to experience together in the future?
“The theme echoes this year’s launch of a new, eponymous international consortium, Shared Realities, that brings together artists, researchers, academic partners, venues, and cultural organizations to investigate new ways of creating, presenting, and sustaining immersive art. IDFA DocLab returns with an exhibition in de Brakke Grond, ARTIS-Planetarium, Droog, and Tobacco Theatre, with a diverse lineup of interdisciplinary immersive art and anniversary highlights to be revealed in the coming weeks.”
The full IDFA DocLab selection will be announced in October.
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