22/03/2018 - Competitions, special sessions, retrospectives and events on the menu of the 40th Cinéma du Réel Festival in Paris from 23 March to 1 April

The Wandering Soap Opera by the late Raoul Ruiz and Valeria Sarmiento is due to open the 40^th edition of Cinéma du Réel Festival in Paris tomorrow at the Pompidou Centre, which will run until 1 April. Dedicated to documentary films in all their diversity, the festival, now under the guidance of a new artistic director, Andréa Picard (from Toronto Festival), includes a retrospective with the title Qu'est-ce que le réel ? 40 ans de réflexions (What is “real”? 40 years of reflection) which will see numerous individuals (Patricio Guzman, William Klein, Valérie Massadian, Lech Kowalski, Nicolas Klotz and Elisabeth Perceval, John Gianvito, etc) come to present films from the past at the festival.

The international competition of 11 titles (to be decided by a jury including the filmmakers Albert Serra and Alice Diop) has an air of the Berlinale about it, given that six of the films competing in Paris this month were discovered in February at the German festival: The Waldheim Waltz [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Ruth Beckermann
film profile] by the Austrian director Ruth Beckermann (winner of Best Documentary at the Berlinale), Infinite Football [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] by the eclectic Romanian director Corneliu Porumboiu, Kinshasa Makambo [+see also:
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film profile] by the Congolese director Dieudo Hamadi (co-produced by France, Switzerland, Germany, Qatar and Norway), Minatomachi (Inland Sea) by the Japanese director Kazuhiro Soda and two films produced by Germany, THF - Central Airport [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Karim Aïnouz
film profile] by the Brazilian director Karim Aïnouz (co-produced by France and Brazil) and One or Two Questions [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Kristina Konrad (co-produced by Uruguay).

Also in competition is the Belgian production Dreaming Under Capitalism [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] by the French director Sophie Bruneau (nominated for a Magritte in 2011 for Best Documentary with Terre d’usage), Ashore [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] by the Portuguese director Leonor Teles, the French production Antigone by Mexican director Pedro Gonzalez Rubio (most well-known for Alamar, winner at Rotterdam in 2010, and for Inori, winner at Locarno in 2012 in the Filmmakers of the Present section), Anni by the Chinese director Zhu Rikun and the medium-length American film L. Cohen by James Benning.

In terms of French productions (to be judged by a jury including the Greek director Athina-Rachel Tsangari) three titles screened at the Berlinale stand out: In the Realm of Perfection [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] by Julien Faraut, The Son [+see also:
film review
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film profile] by Alexander Abaturov and Djamilia [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Aminatou Echard. Also on show are Western, Famille et Communisme [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Laurent Krief,  National Narrative [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Grégoire Beil, Until the Dawning of the Day [+see also:
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film profile] by Pierre Tonachella and In the Stillness of Sounds [+see also:
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film profile] by the duo Stéphane Manchematin and Serge Steyer, without forgetting the Franco-Canadian film Song of a Seer by Aïda Maigre-Touchet, the Irish-French-American co-production The Image You Missed [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Donal Foreman, and the medium-length features The Preys by Marine de Contes and The Night Readers by Mathieu Kleyebe Abonnenc.

The programme also features an international competition of 10 debut films, including Angkar [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by the French-Cambodian director Neary Adeline Hay, Wild Relatives [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by the Palestinian director Jumana Manna (France-Lebanon-Norway) as well as the medium-length feature films Home of the Resistance by the Croatian director Ivan Ramljak, Beyond the One by the Italian director Anna Marziano and the British film Salarium by the duo Sasha Litvintseva and Daniel Mann. 

A very rich programme, which will be closed by Un film d'Aquaserge by Guillaume Bordier, and also includes a short film competition, a retrospective on Shinsuke Ogawa, a section entitled "Un autre 68," an IR/Réel section of immersive films (including titles by Pedro Costa, Sergei Loznitsa, Ben Russel, Eugène Green, Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel, etc.), performances, a focus on Lucrecia Martel and the festival’s professional element, ParisDOC (read the news here).

(Translated from French)