Open your eyes, watch and reflect, engage in conversation. Opening IDFA 2019 showcases the sublime extremes of documentary.

The 32nd edition of the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam opened last night at Theater Carré with the screening of Sunless Shadows. This penetrating documentary by Mehrdad Oskouei takes you to a place you would rather not be at first glance. A small juvenile prison in Iran, where young women are locked up for complicity in the murder of their father or another male relative.

Speaking straight into the camera, the outpourings of these women, some still teenagers, are the pointedly chosen anchor points for this unusual group portrait. Gradually, the impressions of this life behind the walls lead to a wry conclusion. Trapped here, these women find more happiness than they ever had in the free outside world. An almost surreal contrast.

Even the grief for their mothers, also incarcerated and sentenced to death, changes little. The murders were acts of desperation. The only way out they saw to escape the abuses of their abusive father or husband. Although the second half of the film briefly runs the risk that new impressions sometimes don't add much, the statement remains squarely in place.

While the camera stays inside the walls almost all the time, it creates an oppressive picture of a male-dominated society outside. That above all is the strength of Sunless Shadows. One of the girls recounts what happened when she finally went to the police after yet another assault with her injuries and a broken leg. She was sent away with the scathing comment that she would have made it there.

Engagement and expression

Sunless Shadows is the official opening film. Opening night itself kicked off with a small but on-point surprise of a very different kind. In the glorious orange morning light, the first trains rushed towards New York to take people to work. Daybreak Express from 1953 (also seen at YouTube) is the first exercise of D.A. Pennebaker. One of the great pioneers of documentary as we know it today. In just five minutes, this editing experiment grows into a feast of rhythm, image and movement. A small-town symphony set to the driving jazz of Duke Ellington. Featuring several more films from his oeuvre, including the Dylan portrait Dont Look Back (1967), IDFA pays tribute to this grand master who died in August.

Together let Sunless Shadows and Daybreak Express showing two sides of the multifaceted documentary genre. Engagement with - and reflection on - reality alongside experimentation and personal expression. Open your eyes, look and reflect, engage. This is how this year's motto 'Reflect on Reality', can be translated.

Reality, society, history, future - these keywords pop up in the festival trailer. We live in worrying times, Orwa Nyrabia, artistic director of IDFA, stated during the opening.

But with an eye on that future, he had had the lucky hunch to award the real opening address to IDFA 2019's youngest filmmaker: 21-year-old Canadian-Vietnamese director Carol Nguyen.

Lucky to be young now

Solid jet lag - just back from her first visit to her parents' country - did not prevent her from connecting her own background to current movements in the media in inspired terms. Among them, the focus on gender equality and diversity. "If you ask me, now is the best time to be a female filmmaker". To conclude with "This generation has definitely put it all on the agenda. That's why I'm optimistic. How lucky I am to be young now."

Completely coincidentally, these words surely were not. In an earlier press release, IDFA had already announced with some pride that 64% of this year's competition films are by female filmmakers. For the entire programme, the figure is 47%.

War and love

This year, IDFA is screening more than 300 films. To reach the widest possible audience, the number of locations in Amsterdam has been expanded. These include the Public Library, the Artis Planetarium and Central Station.

The offering is diverse as ever. From a story about love and war (For Sama) to an insight into the most important world economic conference (The Forum), or experimenting with digital media in the DocLab programme. In addition, also a number of thematic programmes, including It Still Hurts, which looks at the ways in which World War II continues to this day.

Chief guest is Patricio Guzmán, committed filmmaker from Chile, the country whose people have recently rebelled again. As a young filmmaker in the 1960s, he recorded what happened in his country during and after Pinochet's coup. Even when he later defected abroad, Chile remained his subject. In his latest film The Cordillera of Dreams he widens the story of his country. Memories of artists alongside the dreams of the new generation.

Rockies

The opening film Sunless Shadows is part of the international competition for feature-length documentaries. The only Dutch film competing in the international competition is Rockies by Maasja Ooms. A close-up portrait of five unruly adolescents who are given a kind of last chance on a farm in France. If they don't get themselves in line there, the locked institution awaits.

Two years ago, Ooms also impressed with Alicia. A gripping portrait of a girl who, while in danger of derailing, is shuffled from institution to institution by Youth Services. Rockies, at IDFA under the international title Punks, is in a way a kind of sequel to that. With the difference that these adolescents show something of themselves even harder than Alicia did at the time.

That they don't feel like helping to clear up after breakfast is the least that the resolute caregiver Petra runs into. Disconcerting to see is the way they entrench themselves behind a mask of indifference and denial. Even during the most probing conversations with the youth worker. Taking that into account, it is still very special that Ooms was apparently trusted enough to film them at very close range. Almost paradoxically, it makes you see just how difficult it is for those four boys and one girl to leave the door ajar. With Mitchel, who lost his mother and clashes with his father, that happens for the first time when he makes a rap.

Ooms captures it without commentary or interviews. Honest, involved observations that don't sugarcoat it. You keep hoping, and yet you hold your heart. Rather unique to witness it like that.