Paraphrasing the precise formula by American poet Robert Frost regarding his task, documentary films are, today, “a brief pause against confusion”. These are grey days and the nonfictional films help us understand, feel and put up with them.

In times like these, ethics reassures itself as an essencial compass. In the kingdom of documentary even more than in the fiction one. This twelfth edition of It’s All True has put ethics in its core.

Relations between ethics and docu mentary film guide the seventh International Conference, coproduced with São Paulo Cinusp. Ethics is the core of Polish filmmaker Krszystof Kieslowski’s work.

The comprehensive retros pective of his documental films, which preceded and prepared his fiction works that would later dazzle the world, x-rays human relations for beyond the social boundaries of a then “socialist” Poland. It was through self-ques tioning the ethical limits of documentary filmmaking made out of real drama that led him to quit the genre and embrace fiction drama on a definite basis.

It is under the sign of a creator of Brazilian modern documentary film, Linduarte Noronha, celebrated in this year’s national retrospective, that the festival presents the new harvest of the Brazilian production. Not by coincidence, one of its top representatives, “Zé Lins’s Sugar Cane Mills”, is made by Vladimir Carvalho, a master who, together with Noronha in the explosion of “Aruanda”, introduced the Paraíba school.

This edition also brings a prize raise. A total record prize will be given for the Brazilian competition of feature and medium-length films and also a specific distinction for international shorts. We are deeply grateful to filmmakers, both Brazilian and foreign, whether present or not in the final selection, who entrusted us their works.

We immensely thank the trust placed on us once again by the institutions that co-sponsor the festival and our new partners.

On behalf of It’s All True’s invaluable team, I wish you all a superb festival!

AMIR LABAKI
Director-founder of It’s All True – International Documentary Film Festival