Visions du Réel 24

Combining documentary and dramatic elements, To Our Friends depicts its young protagonist Sara at a pivotal moment in her life. She likes “raising hell” with her best pal Pedro, having fun and getting into scrapes on the streets, but she is also intrigued by the lives of her new friends who work in theatre. “I always try to avoid that conflict between documentary and fiction. I don’t care too much which genre I am shooting,” director Orr tells BDE.

Mother Vera, which world-premieres in Nyon, follows the eponymous protagonist, a charismatic former heroic addict who had lived in an Orthodox monastery in Belarus for 20 years. “I felt very drawn to her quest,” co-director Embleton reflects on her subject. “She wants to experience all of life, and yet she was in this monastery.”

The official selection includes 165 films from 50 different countries, with gender parity for the second year running, the festival underlines. These include 88 world premieres and 14 international premieres. The 55th edition will open with the Danish film As the Tide Comes In by Juan Palacios (co-directed by Sofie Husum Johannesen). VdR 2024 runs 12-21 April.

In trying to get to the roots of her childhood traumas, filmmaker Maka Gogaladze lays bare the soul of her Georgian nation. What at first appears to be an ego-documentary turns out to be a beautiful portrait of the Georgian mentality and its cultural richness.

A crowd-pleaser about pleasing a crowd, Orkhan Aghazadeh’s The Return of the Projectionist, world-premiering in Visions du Réel’s International Feature Film Competition, celebrates the rekindled love for the communal cinema experience in a small Azeri village, with the doc images themselves begging to be seen on the big screen.

In Apple Cider Vinegar by Sofie Benoot, which world-premiered at VdR 2024, a kidney stone is the unusual prompt for a narrative that reflects on the often imperceptible connections between life and nature. It is a unique and almost unquantifiable film, but also an engaging and intriguing one.

For lonely and troubled Canadian teenager Billy Poulin the video camera became the friend he never had when Lawrence Côté-Collins put him in the frame, inadvertently recording his worries, outbursts of anger and deep-rooted confusion and sadness. Years later, after he has been jailed for murder, the footage she [Lawrence] shot offers a striking insight into the inner turmoils of a young man whose life had taken the darkest of turns.

Marcos Simon Mossello & Elias Ezequiel Gismondi set out to investigate the business of being bald, together with the residents of Tostado, an Argentinian town where hair seems to be largely absent among the men folk. “The idea for the film came to us from baldness itself, we believe that personal experiences are what take you to a place that gives you the possibility of telling something authentic, with substance, whether in a documentary or fiction,” the pair tell BDE.

In Maria Stoianova’s feature doc debut she revisits the Ukraine of her childhood, as well as the world beyond, courtesy of the films that her father, a champion ice skater, shot on his video camera between 1986 and 1994. “I was selecting material for the film, hoping to understand our path from point A to point B. After 2022, it became clear that we were all already at point C, and this, of course, also influenced some of my choices,” she says of her film that world premieres April 13.

In Limbo (W zawieszeniu) is an intimate and insightful look at the war in Ukraine as seen from the viewpoint of a very particular family, and presented in very personal form. Set against other films from Ukraine which focus on frontline battles, the film is a welcome and moving glimpse into the lives of an ordinary family unit at the onset of the conflict.