Victor Kossakovsky will present Top 10 at IDFA

Fittingly, all of Kossakovsky’s films have screened at IDFA, and the filmmaker has received financial support from the IDFA Fund for several of his documentaries, including his latest ¡Vivan las antipodas!.

Kossakovsky’s films are characterized by a conceptual approach to reality, and this is also reflected in the filmmaker’s choices for this year’s Top 10. Alongside his personal choices, IDFA will also be screening a retrospective of Kossakovsky’s work, as well as his latest (short) film, made as part of the Focus Forward project. 

The filmmaker himself will be attending IDFA and give a talk about his Top 10 choices and his own work.

Top 10

According to Kossakovsky, the films in his Top 10 are films that challenged him when he first saw them, and again on revisiting them recently. They are films which, instead of trying to tell you something, try to show you something. According to Kossakovsky, if you were to add up all the new elements these films have added to the language of cinema, you would have the perfect documentary alphabet.

Look at the Face by Pavel Kogan (Russia, 1968)
Man of Aran by Robert Flaherty (United Kingdom, 1931)
Man with a Movie Camera by Dziga Vertov (Ukraine, 1929)
Our Mother is a Hero by Nikolai Obukhovich (Russia, 1979)
Position Among the Stars by Leonard Retel Helmrich (the Netherlands, 2010)
Seasons of the Year by Artavazd Pelechian (Armenia, 1975)
Spiritual Voices by Alexander Sokurov (Russia, 1995)
Ten Minutes Older by Herz Frank (Latvia, 1987)
A Tram Runs Through the City by Ludmila Stanukinas (Russia, 1973)
Workingman’s Death by Michael Glawogger (Germany/Austria, 2005)

In compiling his Top 10 for IDFA, Kossakovsky follows in the footsteps of the likes of Werner Herzog, Krzysztof Kieslowski, Ulrich Seidl, Pirjo Honkasalo and Steve James, all of whom have previously programmed this regular IDFA feature.