For its 55th edition (12 to 21 April 2024), Visions du Réel (Nyon, Switzerland) will welcome French director Alice Diop to its Atelier, which will entail a Masterclass on 13 April as well as a complete retrospective of her films.
The festival writes how “Diop’s work explores geographical areas that are still largely absent from most cinema screens. Focusing in particular on the department of Seine-Saint-Denis, on the outskirts of the French capital, where the filmmaker grew up, Alice Diop offers “a trace” – a memory of the lives of suburban inhabitants. It deconstructs the collective imagination that clings to these territories, which are often described from an outside perspective, and whose representations are constantly reduced to anxiety-provoking news footage. Recognised with numerous awards, the coherence of her work gives a voice to communities that are often ignored or even silenced, exploring the personal to access the universal. It is a deeply political approach that also documents French institutional violence – both physical and symbolic.”
Emilie Bujès, Artistic Director of the Festival, comments: “Woven with references, Alice Diop’s work brings together a variety of devices that draw on the history of both cinema and literature. Viewed through the prism of the banality of human existence, these observations find expression in diverse settings, from journeys on the RER, to conversations outside betting shops, to preparing meals in the kitchen. Imbued with a faux simplicity (in-camera, real-time, documentary essay), her work transforms the suburbs into a testing ground that is at once cinematographic, semantic and sociological. The political dimension of everyday life is stripped back to an almost excruciating degree, using an artistic approach that is as reflective as it is powerful. “We are extremely honoured to welcome a figure who embodies a new generation of French cinema and who, through her cinematographically ambitious works, manages to spark an essential reflection on contemporary French society.”
Since 2005, Diop has been making documentaries and fiction films that have been screened widely at international festivals. She began her career by returning to the estate where she grew up – the Cité des 3000 in Aulnay-sous-Bois – to make her first medium-length documentary, La Tour du monde (2006). She then set out to explore another intimate territory, filming three women from her extended family in Les Sénégalaises et la Sénégauloise (2007, which was shown at Visions du Réel in 2008). Since then, the bulk of her work has been set in Seine-Saint-Denis: Clichy pour l’exemple (2006), La mort de Danton (2011), RER B (2017) and Vers la tendresse (2016), which won the César Award for Best Short Film in 2017 and the Grand Prix at the Brive Festival of Medium-Length Films.
In 2022, Alice Diop made the successful transition from documentary to fiction with the film Saint Omer. The fruit of extensive documentary research and inspired by the trial of a mother for infanticide in 2013, this feature film shook audiences and critics alike, winning the Silver Lion and the Golden Lion of the Future, as well as a dozen other awards at numerous international festivals, before representing France at the 2023 Oscars.
