Visions du Réel 26

My Skin And I, the new project from artists and filmmakers Milton Guillén and Fiona Guy Hall, is generating buzz even before its completion. It won two awards at VDR Industry this week after being presented in the works in progress section, and has already secured funding from both US and European sources. “The project really lives in this space where the political intersects with the personal and [looks at] how these two aspects of our lives are fundamentally intertwined,” Guy Hall tells BDE.

The focus will mark the Swiss premiere of her film Bouchra, co-directed by Orian Barki. On 24 April, the artist will discuss her approach during a public conversation with artist and filmmaker Valentin Noujaïm, alongside a presentation of her films and video works. “The conversation around [Bennani’s] hybrid, pop and political practice will joyfully expand the spectrum of possibilities for this 2026 edition,” comments Emilie Bujès, Artistic Director of Visions du Réel.

“It’s always good to tell sad stories with a glimpse of burlesque humour,” Italian-Swiss director Davide Tisato reflects on his new project Two Donkeys and a Saint (Il Nostro Miracolo, presented this week in Visions du Réel’s ‘Swiss Films Previews’ strand). In the film, a motley crew of inhabitants from rural Tuscany set out on a 200km walk to the Vatican in Rome to petition the Pope to intervene on behalf of their struggling community. They’re accompanied by two donkeys and a statue of a local saint, ‘Santa Caterina.’

Nông Nhật Quang’s debut feature brings us into his family’s turbulent dealings both with his queerness and his sister’s mental health issues. The film embraces the free-flowing and lively vitality of social media aesthetics – but also, unfortunately, some of its questionable ethics. The film won the Special Jury Award of the Société des Hôteliers de la Côte.

This truly eye-opening film observes the proceedings in India’s first women-led Islamic court, highlighting the (still) astonishingly unequal status of women in India, but also the powerful and unstoppable way in which women are striving to secure justice. The film dismantles clichés about Muslim women as defenceless victims and Islam as a misogynistic religion. For these women are, in fact, taking religious law into their own hands as a powerful weapon against male dominance.

When Dutch filmmaker Jona Honer first visited China, he soon worked out that the easiest way to connect with the young and extremely affluent sub-strata of Chinese society was through their favourite nightclubs. He was also fascinated by the rituals of capitalism, which resembled more a religion in terms of its structure and the social support it offered. “They [the club goers] create their own symbols, maybe without knowing it consciously,” Honer tells BDE. “Every religion has its own symbols. They create their own value system…it’s more than a night out.”

Tin Castle may have been presented as a Work-in-Progress in Nyon this week but audiences won’t have long to wait for the completed feature. The French-Irish co-production (previously titled A Road Less Travelled) will have its world premiere in Critics’ Week in Cannes next month. In the doc, director Alexander Murphy follows the O’Reillys, an Irish traveller family living in a fixed caravan. French producer Cosme Bongrain explains more…

Ghost Town (screening in official selection in Vision Du Réel) joins the growing ranks of documentaries and docudramas set in taxis. The setting is Kamaishi, a small Japanese town where the locals haven’t been able to exorcise memories of the devastating 2011 tsunami. As we discover, the catastrophe still dominates the conversations and even the dreams of the local people. Director Katharine Round discusses her new work with BDE.

In his new documentary, set in Morocco, Belgian Jérôme le Maire investigates how a massive renewable energy complex will affect the life of a small Berber tribe. “It was from my own window that I first saw enormous machines raising clouds of dust on the horizon. My research revealed that the world’s largest renewable energy plant was to be built on this collective land - land that until then had belonged to no-one in particular, and yet to everyone,” the director tells Business Doc Europe.

How can you overcome the desperate fear of losing your loved ones? Filmmaker Rafael Palacio Illingworth tries to find a way which, while raising serious questions about ethics and morality, at the same time immerses the viewer in an enchanting experience where the boundaries between fiction and reality completely dissolve.