Almost all of the titles (a 75% of the total, meaning 128 films, half of which are directed by women) originally selected for the 51^st edition of the Visions du Réel Festival (17 April – 2 May) will be available to view online, free of charge, by 500 lucky viewers per film. All of the festival’s competitions have been retained, except for the Zonta and FIPRESCI special awards. The various juries, whose members unanimously declared themselves up for the challenge, will watch the films at home, before subsequently debating and deliberating online.

The larger part of the festival’s Industry activities (including one of the most important film markets in the European film landscape) have also been adapted to an online setting. The conviviality and exchanges which have always characterised Visions du Réel will this year be replaced by short interviews with directors - accessible on the festival website – along with debates (involving members of the selection committee, among others) and masterclasses (read our news). The festival has also had to reinvent its opening and closing ceremonies which, inevitably, will now also adopt an online form.

The films selected for the various competition sections (Feature Films, Burning Lights, Mid-Length and Short Films and Opening Scenes) will be available from 17 April on the Online Visions du Réel website, in collaboration with the Festival Scope platform, over two main periods (17–24 April and 25 April–2 May). All films selected for the National Competition, meanwhile, will be available online, for 24 hours per film, via the RTS website. The Grand Angle line-up, which brings together the very best films from the most recent festivals and offers up works with great potential, this year consists of eight films (instead of the originally scheduled 13), which will be presented on dafilms.com. Here, viewers will also find a handful of films by Petra Costa and Peter Metteler. Last but not least, the independent documentaries platform Tënk will host the various films participating in the non-competitive section Latitudes, as well as a selection of works from this year’s winner of the Maître du Réel award Claire Denis.

In terms of the 14 films selected for the International Feature Film Competition (which will host no less than 13 world premieres), 11 of these are productions or co-productions of European origin, including four Swiss titles screening in a world premiere: Il mio corpo [+lee también:
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entrevista: Michele Pennetta
ficha de la película], the second feature film by the young, Italian though Swiss-at-heart director Michele Pennetta who is once again exploring the conflicts affecting Italian society, not to mention our complicated relationships with others; Kombinat [+lee también:
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ficha de la película] by Gabriel Tejedor (who already won a Special Mention from the Cinéma Suisse jury in 2017 with Mayskaya Street [+lee también:
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ficha de la película]), which focuses, for its part, on living conditions in Russia, a country fraught with contradictions; Nemesis [+lee también:
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ficha de la película] by the director and producer Thomas Imbach, and the Portuguese, Swiss and French co-production Amor Fati [+lee también:
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entrevista: Cláudia Varejão
ficha de la película], which heralds the return of Cláudia Varejão (Ama-San [+lee también:
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ficha de la película]). Italy will be represented by Francesca Mazzoleni who, in Punta sacra [+lee también:
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entrevista: Francesca Mazzoleni
ficha de la película], depicts the daily life of a gang of modern-day Roman warriors. The German film Purple Sea, meanwhile, by Amel Alzakout and Khaled Abdulwahed, quite literally takes us along on the director’s desperate flight from Syria, while Anerca, Breath of Life [+lee también:
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ficha de la película] by Finland’s Johannes and Markku Lehmuskallio plunges us to the very heart of popular local traditions in the Arctic Circle. There’s a whole other atmosphere involved in Davos [+lee también:
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entrevista: Daniel Hoesl y Julia Niemann
ficha de la película], however, by Austrian filmmakers Daniel Hoesl and Julia Niemann. And lastly, we find three European co-productions: El Father Plays Himself [+lee también:
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ficha de la película] by Mo Scarpelli (Venezuela/UK/US), Non Western [+lee también:
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ficha de la película] by Laura Plancarte (UK/US/Mexico) and The Pageant [+lee también:
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entrevista: Eytan Ipeker
ficha de la película] by Eytan Ipeker (Turkey/France/Israel/Germany).

As for the second most important competitive section Burning Lights, 7 out of the 11 works are productions or co-productions of European origin. In the first group we find the Swiss film sòne [+lee también:
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ficha de la película]: by Daniel Kemény, French title Pyrale by Roxanne Gaucherand and German offering An Unusual Summer [+lee también:
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ficha de la película] by the director of Palestinian origin Kamal Aljafari, while the second is composed of two co-productions with the UK (Intimate Distances by Philip Warnell and On a Clear Day You Can See the Revolution From Here [+lee también:
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ficha de la película] by Ben Evans James and Emma Charles), as well as two with France (NA China [+lee también:
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ficha de la película] by Marie Voignier and The Disqualified [+lee también:
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ficha de la película] by Hamza Ouni. All of these films will screen in world premieres.