Fire of Love, filmmaker Sara Dosa’s epic and spectacular portrait of the volcanologists Katia and Maurice Krafft, will kick off the 53rd edition of Swiss docfest Visions du Réel (7-17 April) on Thursday 7 April. The American-Canadian feature will be presented as a Swiss premiere.
Following a digital edition in 2020 and a hybrid edition in 2021, the VdR team “is thrilled to return to cinemas, while also providing an online selection of the official program and the masterclasses,” writes the festival.
Fire of Love tells the extraordinary love story of Katia and Maurice Krafft, the two intrepid French scientists who died in a volcanic explosion doing the very thing that brought them together: seeking to understand the mystery of volcanoes by capturing the most spectacular imagery ever recorded. Director Sara Dosa affectionately and playfully interprets the Kraffts’ story and images they left behind. Associating them with animations, book excerpts, media appearances and the narrating voice of artist-filmmaker Miranda July, she embarks on a collaged archival exploration.
“Visions du Réel thus opens with an astounding film of adventure and love, revolving around the themes of time, the implacable unknown and the meaning of human existence amid the vastness of our planet’s most awesome force,” writes the festival.
Emilie Bujès, Artistic Director of Visions du Réel, says: “It is a pleasure to open the 53rd edition of Visions du Réel with a film that sends out such a strong signal. Indeed, we are working on a shimmering and sparkling festival, with a line-up that encompasses human existences and forms that are in tune with our audience’s expectations.”
“Following two online and hybrid editions, we wish to reassert the Festival as a space of cinematographic discovery, encounters and discussions, where the films are introduced in theatres and in the presence of the filmmakers,” she adds. “However, after two pioneering digital years, we will also uphold the hard-won positive aspects and will provide an online selection of films from the programming, as well as the masterclasses, while offering professionals the possibility to participate in certain activities remotely.”
Sara Dosa is an Independent Spirit Award-nominated doc director and Peabody award-winning producer “whose interests lay in telling unexpected character-driven stories about ecology, economy and community,” writes the festival. Her first feature as director The Last Season won a Golden Gate Award at the San Francisco International Film Festival in 2014, and was nominated for the Truer than Fiction Award at the Independent Spirit Awards. She co-directed an Emmy Award-nominated episode, about Johnny Cash’s concert for Richard Nixon in 1970, for the Netflix musical documentary series Remastered.
Her third feature-length film as a director, The Seer & The Unseen (2019), picked up awards at many festivals. She produced Audrie & Daisy (2016 Sundance/Netflix Originals), which won a Peabody Award, and Survivors(2018 IDFA/POV), which was nominated for the Peabody and Emmy Awards.
The director also co-produced the Oscar-nominated film The Edge of Democracy (2019 Sundance/Netflix Originals) by Petra Costa (to whom an Atelier was dedicated at Visions du Réel in 2020), as well as An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power (2017 Sundance/Paramount) by Al Gore.
The full programme of the 53rd edition of Visions du Réel will be announced during the press conference on 15 March 2022.
The President of the Swiss Confederation, Ignazio Cassis, Member of the Cantonal Council of Vaud, Cesla Amarelle, and Mayor of Nyon, Daniel Rossellat, will be among the speakers during the opening ceremony of April 7.
