Swiss documentary festival Visions du Réel (VdR) has revealed the line-up for its 54th edition which opens with Juliette de Marcillac’s Nightwatchers and runs April 21-30.
The festival has programmed 163 films – including 82 world premieres.
Nightwatchers is part of the previously announced Grand Angle competition. Filmed at high-end ski resort Montgenèvre on the French-Italian border, it tells the story of volunteers trying to help migrants, and the authorities trying to catch them.
VdR’s flagship international competition has 14 competing films, including 12 world premieres and two international premieres.
Swiss filmmaker Peter Mettler returns with his personal diary While the Green Grass Grows. Also coming back to the festival are directors Piotr Pawlus and Tomasz Wolski with their documentary In Ukraine which delves into the new normal of a country under siege. Italy’s Mattia Colombo also returns to VdR, teaming up with Valentina Cicognia to tell the story of a doctor’s fight for the rights of migrants to a proper grave in Pure Unknown.
Elsewhere Antier Noche, a Swiss and Spanish co-production from Alberto Martín Menacho, follows young people in the Extremadura region where the population is in decline. There is also a story of migration and resilience from Thai filmmaker Komtouch Napattaloong with Hours of Ours, while ghosts from the past mix with the mists of the Galician coast in Pablo Lago Dantas’s O Auto das Ánimas.
My Father’s Prison by Ivan Andrés Simonovis Pertíñez tells the story of the filmmaker’s father, a former member of the Venezuelan special forces and a prisoner of war. Elsewhere, Grasshopper Republic from US director Daniel McCabe focuses on the ritual hunting of grasshoppers in Uganda.
Argentinian filmmaker Lucrecia Martel is guest of honour at this year’s festival, with her prize presented by French director Céline Sciamma. Martel will also deliver a masterclass at the festival. Director Alice Rohrwacher will also give a masterclass with her editor Nelly Quettier.
The jury for the international competition is made up of Florence Almozini, senior programmer for film at the Lincoln Center, Swiss producer David Epiney and filmmaker Kleber Mendonça Filho.
Artistic director Emilie Bujès said: “Visions du Réel aims to achieve a selection made up of personal and original films that are one of a kind, to go off the beaten track, but also to offer cinematographic colours and vocabularies that are as varied as possible, to embrace the world and filmmaking in all its diversity and complexity.”
The Burning Lights competition is for medium and feature-length innovative films.
Visions du Reel 2023
International Competition
Al Djanat – The Original Paradise (Fr-Burkina Faso-Benin-Ger)
Dir: Chloé Aïcha Boro
Antier Noche (Switz-Sp)
Dir: Alberto Martín Menacho,
Defectors (S Kor-US)
Dir: Hyun kyung Kim
Fauna (Sp)
Dir: Pau Faus
Grasshopper Republic (US)
Dir: Daniel McCabe
Hours of Ours (Thai)
Dir: Komtouch Napattaloong
In Ukraine (Pol-Ger)
Dir: Piotr Pawlus and Tomasz Wolski
Les Oubliés de la Belle Étoile (Fr)
Dir: Clémence Davigo
Machtat (Leb-Tun-Fr-Qatar)
Dir: Sonia Ben Slama
My Father’s Prison (Venezuela)
Dir: Iván Andrés Simonovis Pertíñez
Auto das Ánimas (Sp)
Dir: Pablo Lago Dantas
Pure Unknown (It-Switz-Swe)
Dir: Valentina Cicogna et Mattia Colombo
The Bilbaos (Arg)
Dir: Pedro Speroni
While the Green Grass Grows (Switz-Can)
Dir: Peter Mettler
Burning Lights Competition
An Inhabited Volcano (Sp)
Dir: David Pantaleón and Jose Víctor Fuentes
An Owl, a Garden & the Writer (Iran-Fr)
Dir: Sara Dolatabadi
Apocryphal County (Fr)
Dir: Geoffrey Lachassagne
Astrakan 79 (Port)
Dir: Catarina Mourão
Caiti Blues (Can-Fr)
Dir: Justine Harbonnier
Dreamers (Switz-Ger)
Dir: Stéphanie Barbey and Luc Peter
Filming (Col)
Dir: Samuel Moreno Alvarez
Guián (Costa Rica)
Dir: Nicole Chi Amén
Knit’s Island (Fr)
Dir: Ekiem Barbier, Guilhem Causse and Quentin L’helgoualc’h
Landshaft (Ger/Armenia)
Dir: Daniel Kötter
Má Sài Gòn (Mother Saigon) (Can)
Dir: Khoa Lê
Natalia (US)
Dir: Elizabeth Mirzaei
Still Film (US)
Dir: James N. Kienitz Wilkins
Taxibol (It)
Dir: Tommaso Santambrogio
This Woman (China)
Dir: Alan Zhang
National Competition
Allo la France (Switz-Fr)
Dir: Floriane Devigne
Chagrin Valley (Switz)
Dir: Nathalie Berger
Chienne de Rouge (Switz-Fr)
Dir: Yamina Zoutat
Floating Islands (Switz-Ger)
Dir: Nicolas Humbert and Simone Fürbringer
Follow The Water (Switz-Fr-Chile)
Dir: Pauline Julier and Clément Postec
Full Tank (Switz)
Dir: Benjamin Bucher and Julia Bünter
Hawar, Our Banished Children (Bel-Switz)
Dir: Pascale Bourgaux
La Maison (Switz)
Dir: Sophie Ballmer
Le Fils Du Chasseur (Switz)
Dir: Juliette Riccaboni
Para No Olvidar (Switz-Fr-Uruguay)
Dir: Laura Gabay
Ruäch – A Journey into Yenish Europe (Switz)
Dir: Andreas Müller and Simon Guy Fässler
The Wonder Way (Switz)
Dir: Emmanuelle Antille
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