I’m your man in Amsterdam, or at least I was last week. I was atIDFA, the world’s largest documentary festival. They’re proud of their size, and rightly so – hundreds of films of all lengths and shapes, plus about 2500 visiting delegates. Most impressively, they have substantial public attendances, which is no mean feat for a documentary festival. They’re based in a major world cultural centre which I’m sure helps, but it’s a delight to see the public gorging on documentary.

People repeatedly ask me why I’m in Amsterdam – I think they mean it in a nice way, suggesting I should have been having a rest after Doc/Fest, but I think they also wonder what a festival person does at another festival when they’re not there researching for the programme. IDFA is an unusual one for me, because it’s more of a debrief for the Doc/Fest just gone than a prep for the festival coming, which is what festivals and markets usually mean in my schedule. I gather feedback from people who have gone from Sheffield to Amsterdam, possibly with Copenhagen in between. You tend to get the best feedback from people a couple of weeks after when the dust has settled and the relationships have blossomed. The working ones, I mean.

But enough of festival strategies. I spent a lot of my time at the FORUM which is their pitching forum and the general industry hang-out. You get a lot of talking in corridors and drinking of coffee, and some presenting of ideas too. It’s never possible to see all the projects being pitched because you’d go doolally, but of those I saw (from this list) I especially liked 10% (from a man being feted at the festival, Eyal Sivan – more on him below), Heavy Metal Islam (can’t fail with that name…unless it’s too much like Taqwacore, which is probably isn’t), The Immigration Project, The Pit, and To Marry My Mother. They were originals – that’s what I want when I hear of a new project. I get asked all the time what impresses me, and the concise answer is I want total face-slapping originality.

And I also enjoyed seeing MeetMarket projects from the last couple of years strutting their stuff – Farewell Comrades, Prison Valley, Donor 150, Inventando!, When They Are All Free, The Last black Sea Pirates and Sir Norman Foster, Free The Mind and Give Up Tomorrow. It’s a good plan to do a few of these pitching events, and carry through your connections and ideas. We’re all in this together in your service, us festivals, I hope.

I don’t normally get to see many films at festivals, least not in the cinema, because that’s not my bit of the Doc/Fest universe – sounds strange but I’m in the business of developing films on the up and not programming the finished things. But at IDFA I did watch quite a lot – seemed like a luxury to indulge in. And there were 2 I particularly urge you to look out for if they come near you – first, Jaffa, The Clockwork’s Orange, from Eyal Sivan. The history of Israel and Palestine through the Jaffa Orange, it’s an opinionated essay that informs and conceals its rage to deliver a nuanced and clear-headed account of orchards cultivated, neglected, reclaimed and destroyed. Sivan gave great Q and A, calmly critiquing some dodgy questions coming at him from across the spectrum and celebrating the watching of a documentary as a moment when we are all communally together without prejudice. Documentary is my model for peaceful cultural understanding, and I squirmed with delight as he said the same. Sivan also took part in a strained 2-hour session on the Middle-East and the Media. It’s not that it wasn’t good, it just reaffirmed everyones’ prejudices. Never going to be the communal understanding that Eyal proclaimed in his Q and A when there’s an audience mishearing and a stage of people proclaiming.

Second film I loved, and it has a similar ethos now I think of it, was Enemies of The People, featuring an amazing man whose family were wiped out by the Khmer Rouge, but who has not merely forgiven but also taken to interviewing some of the killers in order to provide a document of how misled people can be. He doesn’t blame or seek revenge, he understands that poverty and external domination creates a sense of powerlessness that leads to a loss of right and wrong. It’s totally pertinent as the UK continues to provoke further outrage across the world, to see a personal story of loss made into a political statement of the injustice caused by stupid and ignorant world leaders.

In both these cases, a superb statement of what documentary does with stunning power.