The 52nd edition of Visions du Réel drew to a close on Tuesday April 27 with 46’600 admissions and viewings. At the end of voting for the Grand Angle Competition, the festival public chosen to award the 2021 Audience Award to Fleeby Jonas Poher Rasmussen (Denmark, France, Sweden, Norway, 2020).
One of the first festivals to be presented in a hybrid form, VdR 2021 totalled 46,600 admissions and viewings after the organisers took the decision to limit its online screenings to 500, over 72 hours and geo-blocked to Swiss national territory.
“By relying on our innovative power, we rose to the challenge of producing a hybrid edition”, said Raymond Loretan, President of the Festival. “While last year’s online edition enabled us to reach new audiences, we can see today that we have successfully retained and increased them, particularly in German-speaking Switzerland. The Festival’s return to cinemas is also an important signal for a new cultural springtime in our country.”
Emilie Bujès, Artistic Director of Visions du Réel, said: “This year, we have organised three Festivals in one and joyously begun a return to the new normality. The hybrid nature of the 52nd edition enabled us to affirm the new prospects discovered last year, while restoring our qualities and the very essence of the Festival. All the guests, professionals and audience who were able to participate in the Festival were delighted to finally find again the screening rooms, the discussions, and the atmosphere of the Festival, even if it was inevitably different. We are particularly delighted, moreover, that the quality of the programming has been widely praised in the press, which closely followed the Festival.”
“The line-up this year was very balanced and eclectic,” she added. “We had big films which were very ambitious in terms of their production scale and we had smaller, more modest films that were still very powerful. And of course some that were intellectually more demanding. The balance was good and fertile. It is always about pushing things as far as possible in all directions and showing how exciting non-fiction cinema can be.”
“It was all so magical. I feel really proud that we made it,” Bujès continued. “And of course we were very lucky with the timing, but also prepared. When the cinemas re-opened we were ready to adapt to it all, though it was of course quite hard to make it happen in such a short timeframe (the announcement of the reopening of cinemas came the day before the festival opened).”
The 52nd edition of Visions du Réel began on 15 April with online screenings and encounters. After the first few days, the Festival adopted a hybrid form, first with screenings for schools and professionals, then by re-opening the screening rooms to the general public.
“We are extremely happy that more than 750 pupils and students were able to watch films in movie theaters, while over 950 pupils followed us online”, said Martine Chalverat, Administrative and Operational Director. “The Festival issued more than 2,150 accreditations and registered 46,600 tickets and viewings, which is very gratifying. The opening film, which was broadcast on RTS2, had an audience of 23,000 people.” As for the Festival website, it had more than 64,600 unique visitors in 10 days, 45% of which came from abroad.
During the Awards ceremony on Saturday 24 April, the Grand Jury Prize of Visions du Réel 2021 was awarded to the American, Ethiopian and Qatari co-production Faya Dayi, directed by Jessica Beshir. In addition to the Grand Prix, Faya Dayi won the FIPRESCI Award, presented for the first time at Visions du Réel. The Burning Lights Competition awarded Looking for Horses by Stefan Pavlović. Fisnik Maxville won the National Competition with Nostromo.
Between 14-22 April Visions du Réel Industry offered “an intense and fruitful week of meetings, pitches, showcases, talks, labs and awards,” welcoming 703 directors, producers, decision makers and other professionals with 44 projects from 35 countries attending the hybrid event.
“More than ever, this year’s VdR-Industry activities aimed at supporting independent documentary filmmaking in all its diversity, allowing its stakeholders to work, network and connect to each other despite the current restrictions and the difficulties for many film professionals to travel,” Madeline Robert, Head of Industry and Artistic Advisor of Visions du Réel said at the end of the professional programme. “We accredited more than 1670 international industry and film professionals, following us both online and in person.”
The Vanishing, Yoga Village, Science Fiction and Transfariana were among the winning projects of the Visions du Réel Industry awards. The 17 VdR–Pitching and VdR–Work in Progress awards, which included three new cash prizes, went to 16 projects.
