Visions du Réel will celebrate Argentinian filmmaker and screenwriter Lucrecia Martel by presenting her an Honorary Award during its 54th edition (April 21–30, 2023). A major figure in contemporary film and a leading name in the New Argentine Cinema, Lucrecia Martel will give a masterclass during the event, “which will explore her body of work and her relationship with reality.”
A retrospective of Martel’s films will also be presented during the edition. According to tradition, this tribute is designed with the collaboration of La Cinémathèque Suisse and ECAL (Lausanne University of Art and Design).
“Lucrecia Martel gained international fame with her first feature length film La ciénaga (2001), shot in her home region, and has since embodied the resurgence of Argentinian film, both nationally and internationally,” the festival writes. “The director’s filmography, which consists of 4 feature length films and 25 titles in total (including different kinds of projects), has constantly made a mark on her country in a post-dictatorial context, as well as at the most prestigious festivals.”
“Lucrecia Martel’s films use a highly sensual cinematographical grammar to examine the existential crisis of the Argentinian middle classes, the inner workings of society and the country’s suffocating social mechanism, as well as post-colonial issues,” the festival continues.
“She achieves all this while relentlessly evoking, implicitly, the history of her country and the ghosts that inhabit it. Her attention to detail – particularly to sound, noise and dialogues – and the kaleidoscopic approach of her work are in keeping with a dual tradition that is both oral and adventurous in cinematographical terms, steeped in a joyous cinephilia. Rooted in the filmmaker’s very familiar territories and experiences, Lucrecia Martel’s body of work borrows from a multitude of genres and offers a rich and fascinating hybridisation of fiction and reality. After Terminal Norte in 2021, she is currently working on new non-fiction feature length film that should be released in 2023.”
“Visions du Réel is particularly proud and honoured to welcome such a vital, rare and extraordinary figure in contemporary film to the Festival, a filmmaker who, with each of her films, succeeds in translating universes with audacity, in composing an adventurous, troubling and singular body of work, one that constantly challenges global cinema,” organisers end.
