18/03/2025 - 37 films in competition and an array of events will form the backbone of the 47th International Documentary Film Festival, unspooling from 22-29 March

A new chapter is set to be marked in the life of the Cinéma du Réel International Documentary Film Festival (running from 22-29 March in Paris) - which will be pre-opened this Friday by Lesotho director Lemohang Mosese’s Ancestral Visions of the Future [+see also:
film review
film profile] - because the 47th edition of the event is leaving the Beaubourg district for a few years in favour of the Latin Quarter (owing to the partial closure of the Pompidou Centre) where it will set up shop in four cinemas: the Arlequin, the Reflet Médicis, the Saint-André des Arts and the Christine Cinéma Club.

At the heart of the programme concocted by Catherine Bizern is a competition consisting of 37 films (17 feature films, 21 world premieres, one international premiere and 16 French premieres). The feature film jury is composed of French director Lucile Hadžihalilović, fellow French composer Sévérine Ballon, British critic Erika Balsom and Spanish director Carlos Muguiro. The short and first films jury, meanwhile, notably includes the Canadian filmmaker of Colombian descent Pablo Alvarez Mesa, his Japanese peer Kaori Kinoshita, Portuguese producer Luís Urbano and German programmer Ulrich Ziemonds.

Standing especially tall among the feature films gracing the competitive agenda are Balane 3 by Portugal’s Ico Costa and seven European co-productions: French-Ukrainian movie One, Angarskaia Street by Rostislav Kirpicenko, French-Belgian-Nigerian work The Big Everything by Aminatou Echard, French-American title Adnan Being and Time by Marie Valentine Regan, Argentine-British film Collective Monologue [+see also:
film review
interview: Jessica Sarah Rinland
film profile] by Jessica Sarah Rinland, American-British movie In the Manner of Smoke by Armand Vervant Tufenkian, Far From Anger by Joël Akafou (Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso and France) and Monikondee by Lonnie van Brummelen, Siebren de Haan and Tolin Erwin Alexander (Surinam and the Netherlands).

Five French feature films will also be battling it out: I Am Night At Noonday [+see also:
film review
film profile] by Gaspard Hirschi, Yvon [+see also:
film review
film profile] by Marie Tavernier, Lumière de mes yeux by Sophie Bredier, She Boars by Elsa Brès and I Have Already Died Three Times by Maxence Vassilyevitch. They’ll be joined by two American feature films (one courtesy of James Benning), two Canadians (one of which directed by Denis Côté) and one medium-length movie: a 42-minute film by Maureen Fazendeiro.

Catching our eye among the tantalising selection of premieres we’ll find films well-received in Locarno (Bogancloch [+see also:
film review
interview: Ben Rivers
film profile] by Ben Rivers, Green Line [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] by Sylvie Ballyot and Sleep #2 [+see also:
film review
interview: Radu Jude, Christian Ferenc…
film profile] by Radu Jude), Venice (Israel Palestine on Swedish TV 1958-1989 [+see also:
film review
interview: Göran Hugo Olsson
film profile] by Göran Hugo Olsson), Sundance (Gen_ [+see also:
film review
interview: Gianluca Matarrese
film profile] by Gianluca Matarrese) and Leipzig (La Jetée, the Fifth Shot [+see also:
film review
film profile] by Dominique Cabrera), alongside The Thousand and One Days of Hajj Edmond [+see also:
film review
film profile] by Simone Bitton, and Yashaddai Owens’s French-Turkish co-production Jimmy.

Stealing focus in the Four Filmmakers Spurred into Reaction section (attended by the filmmakers themselves) are China’s Wang Bing, Japan’s Ryusuke Hamagichi (with his documentary trilogy dedicated to the survivors of the 2011 tsunami), America’s Julia Loktev and Lebanon’s Ghassan Salhab. We’ll also see a tribute paid to the late experimental French director Lionel Soukaz, a Focus on his Iranian peer Maryam Tafakory, and a Special Screening revolving around Rachid Djaïdani. That’s without forgetting the Popular Front(s) section, notably showcasing Swiss-full-length movie Dom by the duo comprising Svetlana Rodina and Laurent Stoop, the French titles Outside – A Reverse View on Migrant Detention by Annick Redolfi, Our Minds Are As If Occupied by Joana Dos Reis and Country Queer by Antoine Vasquez, and the French-Belgian co-production Just One Night by Emmanuelle Bidou. The future will also slide under the microscope thanks to the first short films gracing the First Window line-up.

In terms of the 12th edition of the festival’s professional sidebar ParisDOC, the Work-in-Progress section will showcase six films in post-production (courtesy of Leonor Noivo, Brydie O’Connor, Alejandro Alonso, Déni Oumar Pitsaev and the duos Manon Ott - Grégory Cohen and Mattia Colombo - Francisco Clerici), the Public Forum’s round tables and the Morning Sessions will examine the current state of independent documentary film and creation, and First Contact will provide producers with an opportunity to discover nine projects in the writing phase. And that’s without forgetting the heritage documentary film meetings likewise gracing the agenda.

(Translated from French)