Between 21 and 30 April, Nyon will be hosting its historic festival which is now at its 54th edition. Always looking to the future and captained by Emilie Bujès, Visions du Réel is continuing to forge a path built upon boundary-breaking documentary film approaches, whether in terms of genre, format or language, advocating a refreshing and modern hybridisation of the form. Between up-and-coming young talent (24 first feature films, overall) and familiar faces at the festival, such as Swiss-Canadian director Peter Mettler, Polish directorial duo Piotr Pawlus and Tomasz Wolski, and Italy’s Mattia Colombo, who have all been selected for the International Competition, the festival is set to shine a light on a vast array of modern documentary productions. The striking number of Swiss (co)productions (37 across the various sections) is also worth a mention and demonstrates the increasing interest we’re seeing in this format.

The special guests at this year’s event are leading figures in the world of contemporary cinema: the different works by Argentine director Lucrecia Martel (Guest of Honour), Italy’s Alice Rohrwacher (Special Guest) and Swiss filmmaker Jean-Stéphane Bron (Workshop) are all prime examples of the various approaches showcased by the festival. Martel and Rohrwacher will also be delivering two hotly anticipated master classes, while the presence of French director Céline Sciamma, who’ll be handing out the Honorary Prize, is also worth highlighting, as is that of editor Nelly Quettler who’s taking part in the Italian filmmaker’s master class.

This 54th edition of the festival is set to be opened by a world premiere of French director Juliette de Marcillac’s Nightwatchers, a militant film confronting us with society’s paradoxes, taking in winter sports and survival, privilege and endless struggles.

As for the International Feature Film Competition, numerous European productions and co-productions have made the final 14 selectees, notably three Swiss co-productions: While the Green Grass Grows [+leggi anche:
recensione
scheda film] by Swiss director Peter Mettler, who was a guest at the 2020 Workshop and who’s set to present the first two parts (out of a total seven) of his film-diary; Pure Unknown [+leggi anche:
recensione
trailer
scheda film] by the Italian directorial duo Mattia Colombo and Valentina Cicognia, which tells the tale of a doctor fighting for the right to a dignified burial for migrants who have died at sea; and Antier noche [+leggi anche:
recensione
trailer
intervista: Alberto Martín Menacho
scheda film], which is the debut feature film by Spanish director Alberto Martín Menacho who trained at Geneva’s HEAD and which paints a sensitive portrait of four youngsters from a small village in Estremadura who find themselves caught between ancestral traditions and a thirst for modernity. The notably high number of Spanish films is also worth a mention this year. In addition to Antier noche, we’ll also be treated to first feature films by Pau Faus and Pablo Lago Dantas: the former, wielding his sophisticated and entertaining movie Fauna [+leggi anche:
recensione
intervista: Pau Faus e Sergi Cameron
scheda film], creates a dialogue between the animal and agricultural world and science and its hi-tech technologies, while the latter, by way of A House for Wandering Souls, takes us to the heart of Lago Dantas’s native Galicia and its ancient traditions.

France will be taking part with two films: The Lost Boys of Mercury [+leggi anche:
recensione
scheda film] by Clémence Davigo, a touching movie lending a voice to the victims of a “correctional” Catholic facility, and Machtat [+leggi anche:
trailer
scheda film], a co-production by French-Tunisian documentary-maker Sonia Ben Slama which homes in on Fatma and her daughters who are traditional Tunisian musicians performing at weddings. Rounding off the European films list is In Ukraine [+leggi anche:
recensione
trailer
intervista: Piotr Pawlus, Tomasz Wolski
scheda film], by the Polish directorial duo Piotr Pawlus and Tomasz Wolski (awarded the Special Jury Prize at the 2021 Visions du Réel Festival for his movie 1970 [+leggi anche:
recensione
trailer
intervista: Tomasz Wolski
scheda film]).

This year’s Burning Lights competition - dedicated to innovative, audacious and adventurous movies, in terms of both content and form - consists of 15 titles (13 in world premieres), of which more than half are European productions or co-productions screening in world premieres. These include no less than four French films: Geoffrey Lachassagne’s intriguing work Apocryphal County, which explores the imaginary geographical zone invented by US writer William Faulkner, Knit’s Island [+leggi anche:
recensione
trailer
scheda film] by Eklem Barbier, Gulhelm Causse and Quentin L’helgoualc’h, a deep dive into a virtual world captained by avatars of the directors themselves who have turned into survivalist heroes, and the two co-productions An An Owl, a Garden & the Writer by Sara Dolatabadi, which paints the portrait of her father, the famous Iranian writer Mahmoud Dowlatabadi, and Justine Harbonnier’s touching tale of a thirty-year-old in crisis Caiti Blues [+leggi anche:
recensione
trailer
scheda film].

Switzerland, for its part, will be attending with Dreamers [+leggi anche:
recensione
scheda film], a respectful and sensitive film by the directorial duo Stéphanie Barbey and Luc Peter about the day-to-day life of Carlos who arrived in the US illegally a good 29 years earlier. Another movie created by four hands and likewise in on the action is An Inhabited Volcano [+leggi anche:
recensione
scheda film] by Spain’s David Pantaleón and Jose Victor Fuentes, who document the fascination and fear provoked by a volcano on the Canary Islands archipelago.

Meanwhile, Astrakan 79 by Portuguese director Catarina Mourão tells us the captivating story of Martim whose parents are militant communists and who dreamed, as a teenager, of building a new society. Equally intriguing and mysterious are Landshaft [+leggi anche:
recensione
intervista: Daniel Kötter
scheda film] by Germany’s Daniel Kötter and Taxibol, a medium-length film by Italy’s Tommaso Santambrogio. The former travels along the mountain-rimmed valley between Armenia and Azerbaijan, highlighting the concerns of its inhabitants who feel helpless in the face of forces who challenge one another with no care for the people’s fate, while the latter starts with a meeting between Filipino filmmaker Lav Diaz and a Cuban taxi driver before opening itself up to more universal discussions, interweaving the past and the present.

Also worth a mention in the National Competition is the world premiere of The Wonder Way [+leggi anche:
recensione
scheda film] by artist and director Emmanuelle Antille who, in 2018, presented her movie A Bright Light – Karen and the Process [+leggi anche:
recensione
trailer
scheda film] in Nyon’s Burning Lights line-up.

Rounding off the rich line-up for this 54th edition of the festival are the National Competition, the International Medium-Length Movies Competition and the Grand Angle line-up.