Visions du Réel

In Trio, selected for Medium/Short Competition we are reminded of what long school trips were really like, as well as the tough business of being an adolescent.

The Soviet Union is not dead – it’s alive and kicking in Magnitogorsk, an unsightly town that resembles a fake film set, but one populated by some very real people.

“The festival is also going to take place in a human way, not just in a click-on-a-link way,” says Emilie Bujès of the online edition of Visions du Réel 2020. “It will still be an exchange among people.”

On May 4 Swiss Films presents an overview of five promising Swiss docs in production, which are about to be launched onto the festival circuit and for worldwide distribution.

Not the first documentary by a bi-cultural director searching for her roots. But Their Algeria manages to deal with the matter in a light yet profound way, leaving you moved and informed.

On 26 April leading festival personnel, including Vision du Réel’s Emilie Bujès and IDFA’s Orwa Nyrabia, gathered to talk online about how festivals may/should/could respond to the new reality under COVID-19.

Czech producer Alice Tabery discusses her Traces of a Landscape (Int’l Medium and Short Comp), about an artist and the place he returns to again and again for inspiration.

Best feature to Punta Sacra (Italy), Jury prize to Finnish doc Anerca, Breath of Life.

In Le grand viveur, a film that proves that cinema is first and foremost a visual medium, Perla Sardella delivers a beautiful and elegiac (and ostensibly silent) portrait of a mysterious filmmaker from the past.

Selections include Pripyat Piano (Czech Republic, Medium/Short Comp) and Wolves at the Border (Czech Republic, Grand Angle)