21/03/2024 - Showcasing an impressive 165 films, 88 of which in world premieres, the Swiss festival will boast a line-up comprising a wealth of forms, approaches, styles and viewpoints

Now at its 55th edition (running 12-21 April), and this year welcoming the new director of VdR-Industry Alice Burgin (read our news) as well as artistic director Emilie Bujès, Visions du Réel is once again getting ready to support new industry talent, many of whom have already enjoyed the opportunity to discuss and develop their projects during the various activities organised by the festival. Within the International Feature Films Competition alone, ten of the fifteen movies selected are first feature films. Emilie Bujès is also thrilled with the progress the event has made in relation to male-female parity, given, among other examples, the seven films made by women which will appear in the International Feature Films Competition. The festival’s opening film will be Danish movie As the Tide Comes In [+see also:
film review
film profile] by Juan Palacios (co-directed by Sofie Husum Johannesen), which is a work imbued with poetry and humour.

The three prestigious guests sets to be welcomed to this year’s festival on the banks of Lake Geneva are Chinese filmmaker Jia Zhang-Ke (Guest of Honour), a key figure in independent Chinese cinema; French director Alice Diop (Atelier) who’ll be giving a hotly anticipated masterclass; and American filmmaker John Wilson, who wrote the series nominated at the Primetime Emmy Awards 2022, How To With John Wilson (Special Guest).

Of the 15 films selected for the International Feature Films Competition, 13 are European productions and co-productions. These include first feature films by directors already known to the festival, such as Fragments of Ice [+see also:
film review
film profile] by Ukraine’s Maria Stoianova, an archive film about her figure skating father, and the co-productions Rising Up at Night [+see also:
film review
interview: Nelson Makengo
film profile] by Nelson Makengo (screened in Berlin’s Panorama section in February) and We Are Inside [+see also:
film review
film profile] by Lebanese director Farah Kassem. Switzerland will also enjoy a presence by way of three films: Nicole Vögele’s second feature film The Landscape and the Fury [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile], which takes us to the delicate border between Bosnia and Croatia; Far West [+see also:
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film profile] by Pierre-François Sauter, who previously competed in the 2016 Visions du Réel Festival with his road movie Calabria [+see also:
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trailer
film profile]; and the personal essay The Song of Others by filmmaker and producer Vadim Jendreyko. The first-hand experience of the Russian invasion of Ukraine is the subject of painter and director Alina Maksimenko’s In Limbo [+see also:
film review
film profile], while other European films include the intriguing Apple Cider Vinegar [+see also:
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film profile] by Sofie Benoot, the Tarkovskian movie Mother Vera [+see also:
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trailer
film profile] by the English filmmaking duo Cécile Embleton and Alys Tomlinson, The Return of the Projectionist by Orkhan Aghazadeh, which follows the revival of a cinema in an Azerbaijani village, and To Our Friends by Adrián Orr, exploring two young Madrid youths’ daily lives. Rounding off the list of European movies are the co-productions Kamay [+see also:
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film profile] by Shahrokh Bikaran and Ilyas Yourish, and Where the Trees Bear Meat by Alexis Franco, a film notably produced by Roberto Minervini.

The audacious Burning Lights competition is scheduled to boast 16 titles, 15 of which will screen in world premières. Three quarters of these films are European productions or co-productions, which include two Swiss movies: Tobias Nölle’s second feature film, which is a lyrical story about the environment and technology, Preparations For a Miracle, and the co-directed project on the thorny matter of the return of wolves in Switzerland, Tamina – Will There Ever Be What Used to Be? by Beat Oswald, Lena Hatebur and Samuel Weniger. Germany is also represented by way of an offbeat and nigh-on documentarian story called La Duna, by Emerson Culurgioni and Stefanie Schroeder, as well as by Iranian director Narges Kalhor’s political comedy Shahid [+see also:
film review
film profile], which was screened in the Berlinale Forum. Burning Lights is also set to showcase Les Miennes [+see also:
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film profile] by Belgian-Moroccan filmmaker Samira El Mouzghibati, Ever Since I Knew Myself by Maka Godaladze, telling a personal story about Georgian society, and the Spanish, medium-length film Cambium by the directorial duo composed of Maddi Barber and Marina Lameiro, which takes us to an ecovillage in the Navarra region. Rounding off the list of European films are the minority co-productions (Revolution, Fulfil Your Promise) Red Love [+see also:
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film profile] by the multi-award-winning Spanish artist Dora García and Riders by acclaimed Argentine director Martin Rejtman, as well as A Fidai Film by Kamal Aljafari, Carropasajero by directorial duo Cesar Alejandro Jaimes and Juan Pablo Polanco Carranza, and The Language of Fire by Tarek Sami.

Other sections completing the rich programme of this 55th edition are the National Competition, the International Medium-Length Films Competition and the Grand Angle line-up.

(Translated from French)