Visions du Réel '21

This encounter between a solitary French settler and three First Nation hunters on a remote Canadian island has been stylised as a horror film, including unsettling music, bloody animal carcasses, failing mobile reception and even a chainsaw. The question is: why?

The VdR-Industry Awards 2021 were announced April 20. The ceremony took place as a hybrid event in Nyon and on the VdR-Industry online platform. The top pitch prize of 5,000 CHF in cash for the most promising project was won by the Argentinian project Science Fiction by Ezequiel Yanco.

Aana, the new doc project from Swedish production outfit Film and Tell was pitched this week at Visions du Réel Industry. The film, which will complete in 2023, tells the intimate story of a young woman trying to live a normal life in spite of the late effects of the harsh cancer treatment she went through as a child.

In Tomasz Wolski’s confronting and impressive 1970, realistic puppets of Polish communist officials discuss the violent suppression of an eight-day workers’ strike via actual audio telephone conversations recorded in 1970, thereby placing us, the audience, not in the shoes of the victims, but in those of the ruling executive.

In her CERN-located doc, Swiss Pauline Julier shrewdly avoids dwelling on footage from science meetings, nimbly cutting in archive as well as animation of how the new Collider project will look, also making judicious use of an evocative sound design and score.

Swiss director/producer Charlie Petersmann and producer Stephanie Argerich (mnemosyn films) presented their work-in-progress about the innate lyricism and cultural diversity of the local construction industry. The film follows ‘the lives of men who came from elsewhere to build the Switzerland of tomorrow,’ say the filmmakers.

'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.

Both intriguing and watchable, although the title may perhaps be more provocative than the content, the work is a smart combination of avant-garde experimental art with disturbing reportage of a real life incident that dominated news channels for some time.

An intriguing and lyrical investigation, one which at times feels like a meditation, into German co-pilot Andreas Lubitz's involvement in the mysterious 2015 plane crash in the French Alps which killed 149 people. Review by Nicole Santé.

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.