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Visions du Réel 2021 - VdR-Industry

Industry Report: Film Festival Trends

Visions du Réel welcomes participants to its digital environment

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The leading Swiss documentary festival will host its industry events within WYTH, which will allow participants to fully interact with each other in an easy-to-use environment

Visions du Réel welcomes participants to its digital environment

The 52nd edition of Visions Du Réel will run as an online event from 15 to 25 April. The leading Swiss documentary film festival and market has decided to host the whole set of its Industry activities within WYTH, the technological solution that allows participants to fully experience the festival all in one stable, easy-to-use environment.

This digital experience allows users to work, network and connect with each other in different ways thanks to its customizable design. The team of Visions du Réel has integrated into the framework its logo, slogan and visual identity and created an ad-hoc space that is now ready to host the 400 participants. The integration with Eventival, the leading festival management platform, is one of the platform’s strengths. Soon, the Smart Agenda functionality will allow participants to manage their own agenda, book meetings, join private rooms in which to discuss their projects in developments, with the possibility to exchange documents, pictures, watch movies, without leaving the festival environment.

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Last January, WYTH was used for a film market for the first time during WEMW (read the news), with impressive results as the participants spent over 580 hours on the text and video networking sections. The Visions du Réel Café for this market will aim to replicate a physical situation during such an event. In practice, each participant will be able to check who is attending, and based on each profile, to engage in a conversation or exchange contact details. Thanks to the combination of two match-making algorithms, the participants will be able to automatically display the profiles of those who are more likely to be a good fit for their business and join them in bilateral or multilateral chats or video chat rooms. In addition, through WYTH, it is possible to access high quality screenings, attend workshops and conferences in the same environment.

Samuele Franzini, WYTH CEO and founder, underlined: “This is the most critical period of change in modern history. When thinking about WYTH, my team and I tried to open up new channels for people to come together and foster human connection”. Furthermore, Tomáš Prášek, CEO and founder of Eventival, added: “We believe that, despite much struggle, the festival scene will come out of this stronger and certainly more open to technological possibilities, previously seen mostly as experimental additions. Those novelties have now become indispensable.”

It should be noted that the integration created between WYTH and Eventival means that neither the festival management workflow nor the attendees' access to submissions, accreditations and the virtual event via their Eventival Account needed to change as the platforms communicate with each other. In that sense, the transition between the two completely different formats of the event can be more smooth when moving from a physical location to a virtual space, something that allows organisers to make their digital event more physical or their physical event more digital.

On that aspect, the Visions Du Réel organisers remarked: “WYTH was the only platform that would welcome the whole variety of activities we host for the Industry. From one-to-one to livestreams and meeting rooms, everything will be happening in the same digital environment, so the professionals don’t need to familiarise themselves with new tools depending on their activity. The Eventival integration also allows professionals to login with the same account they already created to join Visions du Réel in the first place.”

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