Signs of the growing strength of documentary films are everywhere, every day. Just look around you – and I’m not just talking about the increasing number of documentaries being acquired for theatrical distribution or screened at festivals worldwide. Never before has documentary film influenced the global arena of arts and ideas in such a strong way.

In 2007, the vitality of contemporary non-fictional cinema inspired the creation of the cycle “Ten Documentaries That Changed the World” at the British Film Institute in London. The excellence of Mark Cousins’ curatorship compelled us to showcase this series as an international retrospective at this year’s edition of our Festival. The idea was to highlight documentaries that “made a difference” – for good or evil – and mirrored the real changes in the societies depicted by those films.

On the other hand, this year’s Brazilian retrospective represents one of the strongest current trends in documentary filmmaking – the autonomization of documentary as a free authorial discourse. For this programme, we couldn´t do without the curating expertise of one of our most talented experimental documentarians, Carlos Adriano, along with his loyal partner, Bernardo Voborow, and myself.

The contrast between styles emphasizes the plurality deemed essential for the development of documentary film, a genre that moves forward between the wrist camera, the mirror camera and the signature camera, as you will be able to see in the 13th edition of It´s All True thanks to the generosity of our co-sponsors and co-organizers, as well as the filmmakers who contributed their films.

Open the curtains and let the show begin! Welcome everyone!


Amir Labaki
Founder and Director
It´s All True
International Documentary Film Festival