Wrong Time Wrong Place opens IDFA - documentary as dance with chance

In John Appel's new documentary Wrong Time Wrong Place features survivors of the shooting on the Norwegian island of Utoya and the preceding bombing, which killed 77 people.Reportedly, there was some hesitation at IDFA as to whether such a heavy topic was appropriate to kick off the documentary festival's festive 25th edition. One can rest assured. Festive is Wrong Time Wrong Place perhaps not, but an impressive Dutch opening of a renowned international festival.

Impressive not only for its dramatic subject matter, but also for the simple precision with which Appel soberly yet sensitively draws it out for us. With great presence of mind, he circumvents the quagmire of traditional reconstruction and lifts the film above its apparent subject. Wrong Time Wrong Place is not about Utoya at all. It could, Appel has since explained many times, have been about any disaster. Utoya is just a trigger, the perpetrator Anders Breivik unimportant. His film is about chance or, if you like, fate, about the trivial things that can make the difference between life and death. About the realisation that we are always walking on the brink.

That it became Utoya precisely shows that the film itself is also largely the result of that coincidence, and the same can probably be said of the sublime opening in which we base-jump off a high rock. Because it obviously takes a filmmaker with the vision and intuition of John Appel to properly embrace that coincidence.

The documentary as a dance with chance. There is much to be said for this being the very thing that distinguishes the better non-fiction film from the usually meticulously premeditated feature film. And those who want to take a closer look will have every opportunity to do so at IDFA.

Take Russian Victor Kossakovsky, warmly cherished by IDFA, who gets to present his top ten this year. He, too, may be guided by what comes before him in his own films - the most important ones are on show again. For Tishe! (2002), he spent a year filming the street from the window of his St Petersburg home, and edited it into a poetic tragicomedy. His mesmerising ¡Vivan las antipodas! (2011) consists of situations he encountered in four directly opposite places on earth. Coincidence, of course, must be tamed by an idea or concept that curbs the impending randomness.

Coincidence or not, the new documentary also We by Peter Lataster and Petra Lataster-Czisch, this year's filmmakers in focus, was not conceived beforehand. The Latasters composed this so-called found-footage film from footage they found in the archives of Beeld en Geluid in Hilversum. It will premiere tomorrow.

Another long-running example of a fruitful alliance between strong concept and uncertain content is the famous Up-series that Michael Apted has been involved in since 1964. The series records the life stories of about 14 Britons from different social classes, all born in 1957. There is a new episode every seven years. On Friday, IDFA will screen 56Up. We look forward to it.