Short Film News (SFN)- The 20th edition of Amsterdam International Documentary Film Festival is kicked off yesterday by showing a documentary about American soldiers and medias and the festival holding team believed that war is the main theme of the festival this year.

The starting film was Operation Homecoming by Richard Robbins that was on the top list of Oscar 2008 candidates some days ago.

Ally Derk, IDFA director, said to French media that war will be a leitmotif this year, but is it not the only one.

IDFA has five competitive sections; in Joris Ivens Competition 16 feature-length documentaries, in Silver Wolf Competition 14 documentaries shorter than 60 minutes, in Silver Cub Competition 16 documentaries, in First Appearance 15 documentaries, and in IDFA Student Competition 15 student films will compete.

IDFA Top 20, Kids & Docs, Highlights of the Lowlands, IDFA Animation Programme, ParaDocs, Best of the Fests, Jan Vrijman Fund Film Programme, etc. are the sections in non-competitive programmes.

The other section in non-competitive program is Maziar Bahari's Top 10. He is an Iranian documentarist and journalist and The Night it Rained by Kamran Shirdel and Tenancy by Keyvan Kiani and Ebrahim Mokhtari are in his top ten list.

Maziar Bahari who is famous for his social documentaries about Iran and also his documentaries about Iraq war, is going to have a Master class during the festival and his documentaries will be screened in another separate section.
German filmmaker Werner Herzog will present for the first time in this festival with his film: Encounters With The Edge Of The World about Antarctica and will speak about his film.
This festival is going to screen about 320 films and expects to welcome about 130,000 viewers this year.