Visions du Réel '21

In advance of his 2021 VdR masterclass, Pietro Marcello spoke to Business Doc Europe about why, after his success with the Jack London adaptation Martin Eden, he returned to documentary with his new film, Per Lucio (For Lucio), about the maverick Italian musician and singer-songwriter, Lucio Dalla.

Czech director Pavel Borecký’s eco-documentary Living Water is on quite a run. It is showing in Visions du Réel in National Competition; in the CPH:SCIENCE section of CPH:DOX shortly afterward and then in Movies That Matter in the Netherlands in a screening arranged in co-operation with the Dutch Ministry Of Foreign Affairs.

On the face of it, the distinguished French novelist, biographer, filmmaker and screenwriter doesn’t seem an obvious fit as guest of honour at a doc festival like Nyon. However, as he points out to BDE, he has always been passionate about the documentary form.

A visually stunning, provocative and lyrical essay on modern warfare that raises philosophical and ethical questions about an inevitable future.

Austrian filmmaker Valerie Blankenbyl made her doc The Bubble, about a vast Florida retirement complex, just as her parents were eyeing up their own retirement. The director tells BDE about octogenarian snogging, the political power that such an institution exerts as well as the new lease of life many of the residents feel they have been presented.

This elegant and measured portrait of Zinder’s marginalized and dangerous Kara-Kara district takes all the time necessary in getting to know the area, its people and their social life. Acknowledging the poverty and history of violence, director Aicha Macky finds hope in those striving for a better tomorrow.

US film director Raoul Walsh made close to 150 films, and Argentinean director/film professor Nicolás Zukerfeld has seen a great many of them, he tells BDE. But there was something that Walsh may or may not have said which became an obsession for Zukerfeld, and which he was determined to get to the bottom of…

In Bellum – The Daemon of War, Swedish directors David Herdies and Georg Götmark invite three disparate characters to meditate on their perceptions of war, a US veteran of Afghanistan, a Swedish developer of AI for use in battle, and a US photographer whose latest work chronicles the Afghanistan conflict.

'Sheltered' is a paean to our love for our furry four-legged friends. Set in the Amsterdam Animal Shelter, it is also an indictment of the human species' frequent propensity towards cruelty. Dutch director Saskia Gubbels explains all.

On April 24, the VdR Int’l Feature Film Competition jury comprising filmmaker Thomas Imbach, Savina Neirotti (Artistic Director Torino Film Lab) and Josh Siegel (MoMA) awarded the 2021 Grand Jury Prize to Faya Dayi by Jessica Beshir. Special Jury Awards were given to 1970 by Tomasz Wolski & Les Enfants terribles by Ahmet Necdet Cupur. All awards follow.