Nick Cunningham

The 23rd VdR–Industry programme concluded April 9 with an award ceremony during which CHF 80,000 of prizes were distributed to 13 projects. These included the second presentation of the Eurimages Co-production Development Award, a €20,000 cash prize, as well as the CHF 10,000 prize from visions sud est, Switzerland’s national fund designed to encourage independent film production in countries with low production capacity. All awards…

Given annually during Visions du Réel to a film that highlights current issues shaping the future world, The UN Perception Change Award was presented April 9 to Britta Strampe (Bandenfilm) producer of Daniel Abma’s The Family Approach. The film, which also won the ver.di Prize for Solidarity, Humanity and Fairness at DOK Leipzig 2024, focuses on the lives of five teenagers who live together and the social workers who look after them.

Opening with Andres Veiel’s Riefenstahl, this year's program “delves into the continent's past to consider its present and future with a section dedicated to archive, where documentary filmmakers explore the dark folds of the 20th century with found footage,” organisers write of the festival running March 8 to 18. Elsewhere, the new Visions competition section showcases daring films that explore the limits of non-fiction from unusual angles, and 13 Catalan-produced documentaries reaffirm the festival's commitment to the country's talent.

In Benjamin Bucher’s debut feature, Joyce, a 22-year-old African-Chinese dancer, tries to find her way in Europe – torn between artistic and identity-related self-discovery and the financial dependence on her mother’s TikTok business. “The film deals with universal themes that many of us can relate to, such as the search for independence, migration and globalisation, identity and the attempt to preserve real moments in an increasingly staged world,” producer Olivier Zobrist tells BDE.

Anne-Frédérique Widmann’s Shewit, produced by Luc Peter and Katia Monla, tells a very 21st century tale of migration, exile and perseverance. “We wanted to discover the changes in Shewit, who arrived in 2015 very weakened by her 3-year journey from Eritrea to Switzerland,” Peter tells BDE. “And who, little by little, gains self-confidence and becomes a fighter in the face of the administrative difficulties linked to her refugee status, and finally emancipates herself to become a free woman.”

Producer Louis Mataré tells Business Doc Europe about his work-in-progress Heat, shot in the Persian Gulf and directed by Jacqueline Zünd. “HEAT deals with one of the most pressing global challenges of our time,” he says. “Rather than relying on dystopian visions or didactic messaging, the film explores the sensory and emotional resonance of heat as both a physical state and a social metaphor.”

Director/producer Dea Gjinovci discusses her work-in-progress project, set for a Spring/Summer 2025 release. In the film, the director and her exiled father return to his childhood village to recreate his memories with the help of local villagers. “My film explores universal themes at the heart of many of today’s crises: exile, cultural erasure, intergenerational trauma caused by oppression, the loss of material heritage, impunity, and the search for truth,” Gjinovci tells BDE.

There is more than a touch of the magical realist about the Swiss/Argentinian The World Upside Down, a hybrid doc in which uncertainty ensues after a mysterious light-ball is expelled from the chest of farmer Omar, and as two housekeepers little by little assume permanent residency over the beautiful house that the owners have all but abandoned. “We were always fascinated by these topics - and also by things that are still very unexplainable to us humans,” co-director Leon Schwitter tells Business Doc Europe.

If there is one country that is punching well above its weight in doc terms, it is Norway, which has seen huge recent success with the likes of 2024 Sundance winners Benjamin Ree (Ibelin) and Silje Evensmo Jacobsen (A New Kind of Wilderness) through to this year’s Oscar win for No Other Land (a minority co-production), and much more besides. In Nyon, the Norwegian Film Institute is partnering with VDR-Industry April 8 on a WiP programme of docs ready for launch onto the international circuit. NFI’s Elisabeth Aalmo guides BDE through her selection.

In Grzegorz Piekarski & Natalia Pietsch’s 70-minute doc world-premiering in Nyon, shepherdess Rengin and barber Burak are forced out of their homes in the historic Kurdish town of Hasankeyf as Turkish plans to build a dam go ahead. In the subsequent flooding, millennia-old traditions and ways of life will be eradicated. “These are strong words, but we are talking about cultural genocide,” co-director Natalia Pietsch tells BDE about the devastation suffered by the town’s inhabitants.