Isabel Arrate Fernandez, Artistic Director of the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), has confirmed its decision to become the first major film event to officially exclude Israeli state-backed organizations and films and explained the process and thinking behind the move.
The festival has stoked debate with its rejection of accreditation requests from Israel’s DocAviv Festival, CoPro – The Israeli Content Marketing Foundation and state broadcaster Kan for its upcoming edition, running from November 13 to 23, in a move first reported by Variety on Monday.
There are also no state-backed Israeli feature films or projects, anywhere in this year’s festival or its industry sidebars such as Docs for Sale and the Forum co-production market.
It marks a blow for many in Israel’s mostly left-leaning documentary community, which has traditionally had a strong presence at the event regarded as Europe’s biggest documentary festival, drawing 3,000 professionals and another 160,000 spectators each year.
IDFA, which says the decision is the fruit of months of internal reflection and debate, has been grappling with the implications of the intensification of the Israel-Palestine conflict since its 2023 edition.
It was one of the first film festivals to take place in the aftermath of the Hamas terror attacks on Southern Israel on October 7, 2023, which killed 1,200 people and resulted in another 251 being taken hostage.
The 2023 edition opened a month later as Israel intensified its bombing campaign on Gaza, which has since killed more than 67,000 people, injured another 170,000 and razed the Palestinian territory to the ground, prompting accusations of genocide, which Israel has strongly rejected.
It was a tumultuous edition. Israeli film and TV bodies, including DocAviv and CoPro, published an open letter accusing then Artistic Director Orwa Nyrabia of endorsing the annihilation of the state of Israel after he was seen applauding pro-Palestinian protesters with a banner bearing the slogan “From the river to the sea”, while Palestinian filmmakers withdrew their films when IDFA issued a statement of apology, saying he had not seen the writing.
Two years on, Arrate Fernandez, who is gearing up for her inaugural edition as IDFA’s new Artistic Director, says the decision to exclude Israeli state-backed bodies from the 2025 edition is in keeping with the festival’s new ‘Principles and Guidelines’ which were drawn up in response to the increasingly “polarized times”.
The document, which was first published on the IDFA website in September 22, with an update on October 21 to reformat one entry, lays out the festival’s mission as well as its protocols around how it formulates its political stance and takes decisions on partnerships and invites.
“We’ve been dealing with filmmakers and organizations from countries where there’s a lack of freedom of speech and repression for a long time,” Arrate Fernandez told Deadline.
“This meant we had to develop what was until recently an internal policy on how to offer with a situation, where we show films that filmmakers keep under the radar as long as possible, and at the same time, from the same government, we receive a request to bring a delegation. How do we balance that?” she continued.
“This year we decided we needed to be more transparent about how we’re doing this, and about who we’re refusing and not refusing, so we came up with what we call our ‘Principles and Guidelines’.”
Under a section titled “Does IDFA exclude films of filmmakers?”, the document states that films and film professionals can come from any country, including countries where freedom of expression is under pressure or where governments commit human rights violations.
It adds, however, that if they have demonstrable ties to governments that contribute to serious human rights violations, they will not be welcome.
“For example, if a film or project is funded by such a government, these films are generally not selected. Official government delegations or institutions affiliated with these governments from these countries are not granted IDFA accreditation,” reads the text.
Arrate Fernandez said the festival would continue to offer with Israeli films on a case-by-case basis, noting how it had selected two Israeli state-backed works for its 2024 edition, Danae Elon’s Rule of Stone and Ayelet Heller’s 1957 Transcripts about the murder of 49 residents living in the Palestinian village of Kafr Qasim in 1956 by Israeli soldiers.
“We made an exception because of the films, because we felt they were in line with the mission and philosophy of IDFA, and were also very important and relevant for the time,” she explained.
IDFA’s decision-making process is also informed by Paris-based press freedom NGO Reporters without Borders’ Global Press Freedom Index, which ranks 180 territories, with the festival paying special attention to film submissions and accreditation requests from countries lying in the lowest two categories of “difficult and “very serious”.
Ranking 112 in the 2025 Index, behind territories such as Haiti and Zimbabwe, Israel is in the “very serious” category, with Reporters without Borders pointing to decreasing press freedom, media plurality and editorial independence, alongside disinformation campaigns and the killing of at least 200 journalists in Gaza by the Israeli army.
Arrate Fernandez emphasized that the festival continued to grant accreditations to Israeli documentary professionals on an individual basis, noting that DocAviv Festival Artistic Director and filmmaker Michal Weits, who went public with IDFA’s barring of her organization in the Variety article, was welcome to attend but not as a representative of DocAviv.
“What is crucial is that we’re not refusing individual film professionals or filmmakers. They are all welcome. We know there is a part of Israeli society that is fighting to make change. These people are all welcome,” said the artistic director.
Weits was quoted by Variety as saying IDFA had sent a letter stating “that they are not going to provide us accreditation since we are complicit with the genocide”, which has sparked further reports that the festival is accusing Israeli film professionals of genocide.
Arrate Fernandez categorically denies this.
“It’s not our role to accuse anybody of genocide. The letters we sent out simply explained that unfortunately we could not grant their organization an accreditation because it is not in line with our ‘Principles and Guidelines’, which are on the website and have been there since September,” she said.
“I empathize with the extremely difficult situation of many Israelis who disagree with their government but choose to remain within the official Israeli framework, parts of which they try to change for the better. They truly find themselves between a rock and a hard place. Emotions will understandably run high in such situations. But Michal’s claim that IDFA or I accused her of being complicit in genocide is categorically in error.”
Arrate Fernandez said Israel has not been singled out for special treatment with the festival also cutting ties with Russian and Iranian state-backed bodies in recent years in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Iran’s long-running oppression of freedom of expression, pre-dating its brutal crackdown of the Woman Life Freedom pro-democracy movement, while China and India are also under scrutiny.
IDFA’s stance on Israel follows in the wake of the launch of a pledge in September, signed by more than 1,800 actors and other film professionals, including stars such as Emma Stone, Ava DuVernay, Mark Ruffalo and Javier Bardem, to boycott Israeli-state funded entities, suggesting they were “implicated in genocide and apartheid against the Palestinian people.”
Even before the pledge, many Israeli film professionals anecdotally told Deadline that they felt increasingly snubbed on the festival circuit.
Many also say the boycott is misguided given that many Israeli film professionals are at the forefront of challenging Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government’s actions in Gaza and beyond.
IDFA says the pledge was not the catalyst for its move to bar Israeli state-backed bodies and films.
In the backdrop, Israel’s IDFA ties go back to the early years of the festival’s creation in 1988 by former long-time head Ally Derks, who was feted with a Lifetime Achievement Award by DocAviv in 2007.
Israeli films to have made waves in Amsterdam include Tsipi Reibenbach’s Choice and Destiny, about her Holocaust survivor parents, which won the festival’s audience award in 1994; Yoav Shamir’s Checkpoint, which won Best Documentary at the festival in 2003 and Tamar Yarom’s To See If I’m Smiling, which clinched Best Medium Length work in 2007.
The Oscar-nominated joint Israeli Palestinian film 5 Broken Cameras by Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi received the Special Jury Prize and Audience Award in 2011.
Arrate Fernandez suggested that times have changed and that the festival is dealing with a very different dynamic from that of the early 2000s.
As to why IDFA had decided to clamp down on Israeli state-backed bodies and films “today”, she replied: “The answer is in your ‘today’. I mean, what is that ‘today’? What is the moment where we stand ‘today’? How far has it come?”
She pointed to the Red Line demonstrations in the Netherlands over the last year, spearheaded by human rights groups and pro-Palestinian organizations to oppose Israel’s military action in Gaza.
The public protests also align with a cooling of the political relationship between Israel and the Netherlands, a long-standing ally.
In July, the government called for the EU to suspend its favorable trade arrangements for Israel as well as the country’s involvement in the Horizons research program in response to the violence in Gaza.
It has also banned far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, while Dutch politicians have also suggested the Netherlands should honor an International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrant for Netanyahu if he lands on Dutch soil.
In other developments, national broadcaster AVROTROS announced in September that the Netherlands would not participate in the 2026 Eurovision song contest if Israel was admitted to the competition “given the ongoing and severe human suffering in Gaza.”
Arrate Fernandez stresses that as an independent organization, IDFA is not influenced by government policy.
“Times have changed… We had a protest in this city two weeks ago where 250,000 people went out into the street under the title of ‘Red Line”, and that is very much tied to this ‘today’,” she said. “It’s also looking back after all those years, and all those films, films like Checkpoint and 5 Broken Cameras, and asking where do we stand today? What has changed?”
The artistic director said the decision on the attendance of Israeli state-backed bodies and films would be reappraised for next year’s edition.
“We will have to look at the ‘today’ then and see where we stand and if we want to continue or if we feel there is a reason not to. For today, we’ve taken this decision. We engaged in conversation with DocAviv and other people, and we’ll engage in conversation again.”
Looking to this year’s edition, Arrate Fernandez said the festival wanted to remain a place open to debate, dialogue and even protest, but that it had taken steps to brief staff and guests on what the festival was striving to be.
“This is a space where we can agree to disagree, where people can have different opinions, and where it should be possible to exchange… that’s at the heart of our film program. The whole point of documentary filmmaking is to show the nuances, not to go into the black and white and get stuck in your own opinion, but to learn from each other, even if you don’t agree.”
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