JOOST DAAMEN - Senior Programmer IDFA, The Netherlands

Joost Daamen, presently senior programmer of International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), has been working for the festival since 2005. Over the past thirty years, IDFA has become one of the world’s leading documentary film festivals, dedicated to the exhibition and promotion of ground-breaking creative documentaries, with a program of 300 films and an audience of more than 285,000. Every year over 2,500 film professionals attend IDFA to meet other filmmakers, producers, buyers and potential financiers and reflect on the documentary genre through master classes, industry talks and extensive Q&A’s. IDFA consists of four industry components: IDFA Forum is Europe's largest co-financing market for international documentary productions; IDFAcademy organizes workshops and training programs for emerging filmmakers; IDFA Bertha Fund offers support to documentary projects in Africa, Asia, Latin America, Middle East and parts of Eastern Europe; IDFA Docs for Sale is an international documentary market.
Joost also oversees the selection of films during the IDFA Competition for Feature Length Documentary, IDFA Paradocs (the experimental film program) and one of the yearly theme programs. He is also a member of the pre-selection team for IDFA Bertha Fund, which is designed to stimulate and empower the creative documentary sector in Africa, Asia, Latin America, Middle East and parts of Eastern Europe by supporting innovative documentary projects by talented filmmakers from these regions.