Nightwatchers, the feature debut of French director Juliette de Marcillac, will open the 54th edition of Visions du Réel on Friday 21 April. The festival runs to April 30.
Additionally, Visions du Réel has revealed the first titles of its 54th edition (21 to 30 April 2023). 12 feature films and a host of film “proposals” – including 3 world premieres – will compete for the Audience Award in the Grand Angle section.
The non-competitive Highlights section will also present an eclectic programme “that testifies to the current vitality of non-fiction film, as well as its formal and narrative freedom,” including films by Claire Simon, Paul B. Preciado and Mehran Tamadon.
The 2023 edition will open with the world premiere of Nightwatchers by Juliette de Marcillac. Filmed at night in an idyllic Alpine resort a stone’s throw from the French-Italian border, Nightwatchers walks the vertiginous peaks alongside volunteers who help migrants.
Grand Angle Competition
The Grand Angle Competition, in which 12 titles will compete for the Audience Award (CHF 10,000), features premieres of films that “are soon to make waves at festivals, as well as those that have already won over international audiences.”
For 2023, this section includes three world premieres: the activist story of Extinction Rebellion in Planet B by Pieter Van Eecke; Behind the Lines by Syrian filmmakers Alisar Hasan and Alaa Amer, which focuses on the city of Idlib’s first female cartoonist, interweaving animation and live action; and the opening film Nightwatchers by Juliette De Marcillac (see below).
The selection also includes the international premiere of The Mountains by Danish director Christian Einshøj, a film that combines autobiography with a story of a superhero in search of redemption; as well as the European premiere of Indian production Against the Tide – fresh from its Sundance premiere – which explores fishing, the techniques and its economic and social issues.
The selection also includes a series of Swiss premieres, such as The Echo by Tatiana Huezo (2021 VdR Atelier) – honoured at the last Berlinale – and the spectacular Franco-Swiss production Paradise by Alexander Abaturov, that tells the story of one heroic village’s struggle against ‘The Dragon’, the nickname given to the fires ravaging the Siberian taiga (boreal forest).
Highlights
In the non-competitive Highlights section presents 11 Swiss premieres. Two films echo contemporary concerns about identity, the festival underlines. Philosopher and activist Paul B. Preciado’s first feature film, Orlando, ma biographie politique – a cinematographic, collective essay invoking the work of Virginia Woolf – foretells a joyful punk revolution that puts an end to binarity. Meanwhile, Notre Corps by the illustrious Claire Simon (2018 Guest of Honour) invites viewers on a sensitive and personal immersion in a political ode to the female body.
Highlights also features films that reflect modern day crises, such as My Worst Enemy by Franco-Iranian Mehran Tamadon, which deploys a chilling cinematic device to unaffectedly expose the violence of the regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran; and When Spring Came to Bucha, co-directed by Ukrainian artist Mila Teshaieva and German filmmaker Marcus Lenz, which captures on-the-ground witness accounts from residents of the city of Bucha after the Russian invasion in February 2022.
