- Sixth annual Indy Film Library festival ends with awards distributed at event at Filmhuis Cavia, Amsterdam
- Family drama L’Audition de Jeanne claims Best Short Narrative Film while cultural preservation piece Zāgbéto: Les Murmures du Masque takes Best Short Documentary Film
- Mira Alkadri wins Best Director for her work on experimental examination of public social interactions Up Close, for which Nanda Mohammad also scoops Best Actor
- Naomi Pacifique triumphs in Best Screenplay category for complex relationship story Looking she said I forget
Since Thursday 17th April 2025, Indy Film Library (IFL) has been showcasing some of the best independent films it has received for review over the last year. The movies were selected on the basis of both their storytelling and the technical skills exhibited by their cast and crew, before being screened digitally and in cinemas over the course of three days.
As is now tradition, the IFLA festival took on a hybrid form, showcasing an expanded programme of global cinematic talent via its digital theatre. However, for a fourth consecutive year, this year’s event was able to return its spiritual home of Amsterdam’s punk-arthouse venue, Filmhuis Cavia. There, a selection of the best films from filmmakers in the Netherlands and Belgium played to a sold-out theatre.
Over the last month, an international jury of experts and friends of IFL has been voting for winning films from the selection. And at the final showcase on the 19th of April, IFL announced the triumphant films from that process.
After announcing the winners at the event, IFL Chief Editor Jack Benjamin said in his closing speech, “As always, I have to give special thanks to all of our filmmakers, because without them there is no show. This selection has been one of our strongest yet, and I can assure you, you gave our jury a total nightmare when it came to choosing between your works. Well done. I also have to thank our jury – some of whom are here tonight – because they have somehow managed to split hairs, and come up with some definitive decisions. So, extra special congratulations to our well-deserved winners.
“One of the things I love most about this final night of each IFL season, is I get to see the grand sweep of the films that have triumphed in the last 12 months. In a world where decades of social progress are being reversed at will by political actors harking back to a dangerous, imagined version of the past, this year many artists were grappling with the fraught, often toxic relationship between the past and present. They produced movies depicting traumatic memories of lost relationships that continue to inflict pain years later; and introduced us to families where the unarticulated anguish of parents had become a millstone around the necks of their captive children. But they also examined the dangers of severing our connections with that past; of forgetting the warmth we once found in our communal spaces, or historic cultures.
“The magic of cinema provides us with a venue to look back, and ahead, in one glance. These films are not only a valuable rebuttal to ideological calls to revert to a reactionary monoculture, they remind us that the eery past being alluded to is a fiction. The Netherlands, Europe, and the world have always been filled with hopes, dreams and stories of every creed and colour – they have coexisted, just as the people telling them have, for thousands of years. That is why the arts, and cinema, are under attack now – from governments slashing subsidies, to corporate interests seeking to replace human creativity with slop regurgitated by machinery. These are people, whose interest it is in to erase any hint of a kinder, gentler world – past or present. So, as was the case last year – and will be the case in every other year to come – I’d like to conclude by saying that wherever you go after tonight, and whatever happens with the extremely uncertain political future we all face, remember this community – and why it is so important that we fight for the future of independent arts, against the onslaught they continue to face.”
Individual Awards
Best Score
Milo Paulus (The Nettle Man)
Special commendation: Alfred Marseille (Lunatic)
Best Sound Design
Alfred Marseille (Lunatic)
Best Editing
Camilla Petralia (De Bomen Houden Grote Droefheid Vast)
Best Cinematography
Xenia Patricia (Looking she said I forget)
Best Actor
Nanda Mohammad (Up Close)
Special commendation: Shauni Goetz (De Bomen Houden Grote Droefheid Vast)
Best Screenplay
Naomi Pacifique (Looking she said I forget)
Best Director
Mira Alkadri (Up Close)
Special commendation: Naomi Pacifique (Looking she said I forget)
Overall
Best International Film
A Mano
Special commendation: Anemoia
Best Music Video
Fong La
Best Experimental
Lunatic
Special commendation: Up Close
Best Feature Documentary
All Politics is Local
Best Feature Narrative
My Dear
Best Short Documentary
Zāgbéto: Les Murmures du Masque
Special commendation: Waarom stop tie niet gewoon?
Best Short Narrative
L’Audition de Jeanne
Special commendations: De Bomen Houden Grote Droefheid Vast & Looking she said I forget
IFL’s 2025 Jury included:
Federico Petrini
Cult Cinema Expert, Netherlands
Marie Lormeau
Filmmaker & Previous IFL Winner, Netherlands
Melle Posthuma de Boer
Sound Design Expert & Previous IFL Winner, Netherlands
Dimitra Alexiou
Film composer and Film Programmer, Netherlands
Kino Lee
Musician and Previous IFL winner, UK
Dr. Vincent M. Gaine
Lancaster University, UK
Jacob Porter
Senior Cancer Researcher, US
Charlie Giggle
Journalist, UK
Tony Moore
IFL critic, UK
John Ranson
IFL critic, UK
Thisen Umagiliya
Filmmaker, Sri Lanka
Charys Schuler
Developmental Editor of Silvergrain Classics, Germany