Playlist
Visions du Réel 2021 was the 52nd edition of Switzerland’s leading international documentary film festival held in Nyon, running April 15 to 25, 2021 .
Larry Krasner is elected Philadelphia District Attorney in 2018. A powerful and progressive prosecutor, a leading civil rights advocate, he fights a relentless battle to reform a discriminating and violent system. A gripping politico-legal thriller in eight episodes, revealing the divides in a country that is tearing itself apart.
Brescia, March 2020. The Spedali Civili, the town's public hospital, suddenly finds itself overwhelmed with ill people. In the finest direct cinema tradition, Michele Aiello succeeds in documenting a moving slice of life and in filming, at the worse moments of this collective tragedy, the unprecedented relationships that unite the patients and healthcare staff in the face of the unknown
Les Enfants terribles plunges us into the daily life of a Turkish family, that of the director, in which young adults fight every day to assert their freedom and their independence in the face of a paternal authority anchored in traditional values. Here, Ahmet Necdet Cupur gives us an intimate portrait of a young generation ready to bring real change.
Director Natalia Garayalde was 12 years old when the Río Tercero munitions factory in Argentina exploded in 1995. Equipped with her father's camcorder, along with her younger brother, she documents the scale of the disaster in their town. 20 years later, she digs out these archives and uses new ones to retrace this attack by the State, the smell of ammonia of which still fills the air.
We are all prisoners of a nationality, a social condition, a gender, a skin color, to which the police and state repression force us to resign ourselves. This film tells how the bodies suffer, under the blows, the constraint and the humiliation.
Zombies return due to pending matters yet to be settled: in this case, issues related to land exploitation and family relationships through time. Set in Negaunee, Michigan, filmed outdoors with a great sense of playfulness, the movie is narrated in the present while questioning the past and thinking about the potential for a different future.
Despite a war close by, mud treatments and electro-therapies continue at Kuyalnik Sanatorium near Odesa in southern Ukraine, where a small group searches for love, healing & happiness.
Between 2018 and 2023, Polish filmmaker Ewelina Rosinska travelled through Portugal with Nuno Barroso, her Bolex, and, occasionally, a group of artists and environmental activists. Intuitively edited, following the rhythm of the seasons, Unstable Rocks is a sensitive reflection on the ambivalent nature of human presence in natural environments.
A pile of blankets filmed at bed height appears in a room with faded colors. Fragmented views follow one another, suggesting the fragile living conditions of people living in the rubble of a suburb. A prayer in Romanian signals their origin. A plane passes in the sky and we are transported to a parade of shimmering colors in the streets of Okinawa, before landing at a beekeeper's in Ariège. The Franco-Japanese artist Amie Barouh brings together in a form of filmed diary fragments of biography and snippets of conversations collected over the years and during her travels, mainly from Roma friends with whom she has lived. Through frenetic editing, Shuruuk , which literally means "rising in the east", weaves a dreamlike journey that follows the movement of the sun, from Japan to Tunisia, from Palestine to the four corners of France. The camera rummages through the folds of reality to capture the faces of those with whom the artist navigates, to bear witness to the struggle for their daily survival as well as more specific manifestations in the face of state oppression. Amie Barouh intertwines the impressionist bursts with bursts of another gravity: violent and sudden police interventions, which take shape in the movement of the film, carried by a manifest vital impulse. The fragmentation of Shuruuk reflects the perpetual reconfiguration to which the lives of all these beings are subjected, humans, animals, like these bees that swarm while the tender words of Pierre Barouh resonate: "Today I am what I am, we are who we are, and all that is the sum of the pollen we have fed on."
Inspired by Virginie Despentes, who describes an island inhabited by genderless creatures offering the possibility of a polymorphous and hyper-powerful form of sexuality, the filmmakers portray an island composed of several interior landscapes. Between silence and intimacy, new islands are this shaped, in a possible encounter between life and death.
Archival images of a bride are interwoven with dialogue from Manoel de Oliveira's film Vale Abraão (1993), in which Pedro warns Ema about the role that will be assigned to her in this patriarchal society, in which she must learn the "art of illusion". Unless she manages to find her inner Emma Bovary, embracing disobedience and defying the path that has been laid out for her.
Morning Light circles the distance between three generations – a mother, a daughter and a granddaughter. In a dense river that unites them, for no apparent reason other than exhaustion, a fissure emerges. In the setting of an idyllic countryside's scorching summer, Cláudia Varejão masterfully captures the silences and leaky eyes at play in this family disruption.
In "Flophouse America," 12-year-old Mikal navigates a life of hardship as he grows up in a cheap American hotel, or "flophouse", where his parents struggle with alcohol abuse and poverty. Despite their love for him, their chaotic existence threatens to pull him down. Set against the backdrop of radical economic inequality in the U.S., the film captures Mikal's resilience as he finds glimmers of hope amid an unexpected tragedy. The documentary follows three years of Mikal's life, chronicling his fight for a better future. Director Monica Strømdahl, a photographer by profession, spent 15 years documenting marginalized communities in the U.S. before meeting Mikal and his family. She put down her camera and picked up a film camera, capturing their journey in intimate and unflinching detail.
Amid landscapes of confused memories, Doctor L, a missionary in southern Africa, recounts his journeys and adventures in the bush, intensive evangelisation efforts and surgical operations at the end of the 19th century. 150 years later, four inhabitants of the region send him a letter in the form of sound capsules, evoking a past whose traces can still be keenly felt.
In September 2020, after a spurious trial, six refugees are convicted of starting the fire which destroyed the Moria camp on Lesbos. The filmmaker begins a correspondence with one of the "Moria Six", Hassan, as the new camp is being built. Highly secure, it symbolises the dehumanising stance that our so-called civilised Europe adopts towards migration.
When the world is engulfed by the COVID-19 pandemic, three scientists who long predicted its arrival must battle not only the virus but also a wave of misinformation, conspiracy theories, and political blame that threatens to eclipse the truth. This is their story. Part investigation, part thriller, Blame investigates the relationship between science, politics and the media.
On a clear night in Belfast, two workmen and their apprentice work methodically to change the city's streetlights from orange sodium to white LED. Northern Ireland lags behind the rest of the UK on this transformation, reflecting the city's complicated relationship to change. As the night progresses, a city searching for clarity starts to come into focus.
At Stellenbosch University in South Africa, within the walls of a prestigious student residence called Eendrag, young men from all walks of life are confronted with colonial structures and traditions. 30 years after the end of apartheid, the free-born generation attempts to navigate between personal growth, cultural differences and a past still fresh in their collective memory.
On the heights of a mountain in North Macedonia, in the midst of a flock of 600 sheep being watched over by huge dogs, stands a refuge. Children's laughter escapes from the precarious shelter. They are a brotherhood, ranging from ages eight to twenty. When they are not hard at work, they are playing and discussing the meaning of life. Is their future really here?
Daniel – the filmmaker – and Samuel are brothers: one is European, the other is Cuban. They share the same father: a man who fled Germany and the collective memory of Nazism, first to Italy, then to Cuba. Together, with the help of cinema and their poetic sensibilities, the three of them will weather stormy family ties and confront a fundamental chapter of life: death.
The`sea women' of Japan's Shima Peninsula maintain an ancient tradition of diving for pearls, urchins and abalone, without the benefit of modern gear or protection. For over 2000 years, the Ama-San have been diving in this way.
In the wake of a dream, João Vieira Torres sets off to find the children that his grandmother Aurora, a midwife, helped deliver. Through encounters with the living and the dead, he uncovers tragic destinies which reflect a structural history of violence against women. A curse dispelled by the means of cinema, resulting in a film of exceptionally rare beauty.
In south-eastern Spain, there is a wall separating two worlds: a healthy world, and a sick world, once deemed contagious. The sanatorium of Les Fontilles used to be a sanctuary for people suffering from leprosy. Callisto Mc Nulty criss-crosses this border seeking out witnesses from the past and present, who through their stories become the keepers of a disappearing world.
On the border between Morocco and Spain, a group of travelers is eagerly waiting to cross over to Europe. One failed attempt after another, they survive, while the "director" must keep the flame of hope alive for the whole group. Les Voyageurs, woven together with a camera and a couple of songs, echoes as a powerful gesture of resilience.
Boca Chica, Texas. Hemmed in by the Gulf of Mexico and the Rio Grande, the village is defined by the rhythmic sound of the waves. But this wild country is in the midst of irreversible change. For the swamps have been drained, the beaches closed and the homes bought out: the shadow looming over the beach is that of a 50-story rocket, being readied for launch into space.
As the first elected councilwoman of her Iranian village, Sara Shahverdi aims to break long-held patriarchal traditions by training teenage girls to ride motorcycles and stopping child marriages. When accusations arise questioning Sara's intentions to empower the girls, her identity is put in turmoil.
Against the backdrop of sunbaked parking lots, deserted courthouses, and empty suburban homes — the familiar spaces of true crime, stripped of all action and spectacle — a filmmaker describes his abandoned Zodiac Killer documentary and probes the inner workings of a genre at saturation point.
At the foot of Tepozteco, a sacred hill that governs the winds and fertility, lies the small town of Tepoztlán. Against this backdrop, fifteen-year-old Karla's body and mind are undergoing a revolution. While Karla navigates her transition, Kani shapes eight years of footage into a joyful film, as they handle the vagaries of a rural trans adolescence together.
Ten years after its Cannes premiere, Amy has lost none of its relevance. Assembled from a remarkable personal archive, the film chronicles the meteoric rise and dizzying fall of an incomparable artist. Using Senna's successful formula, Kapadia delves into the psychology of his subject without succumbing to the iniquity of the tabloids.
David, aka "Mister Raw", is part of a growing scene of self-proclaimed "healers" with links to the far right. As for Timo, who works for this raw vegan influencer, he is attempting to cure his psychotic delusions with food supplements and fasting. A stark dive into the reasons that drive some individuals to turn towards a world full of threats and dark forces.
The hypnotic purr of a bus engine resonates, accompanied by the rumble of the vehicle's interior. A voice leads us into an inner monologue. We are on our way to Prijedor in Bosnia, the director's hometown, and the place of his perpetual departures. But before arriving, we must learn to inhabit departure as a space in which we can grow and be reborn.
To fill in the gaps and inconsistencies in her father's biography, filmmaker Evi Stamou begins a correspondence with an artificial intelligence. From this conspiratorial and often impertinent exchange, possible and probable stories emerge, painting the portrait of a young dreamer, at a time when the Greek military junta was gaining power.
Oscar-nominated filmmaker Raoul Peck (I Am Not Your Negro) chronicles the way real estate developers work in blatant and subtle ways to divest Black families from inherited property. He focuses on the case of the Reels family in North Carolina who resisted intimidation tactics and dubious legal maneuvers over several decades. The film draws upon the in-depth reporting of Lizzie Presser, published by ProPublica and The New Yorker.
Comedian Noam Shuster Eliassi creates a personal and political one-woman show about the struggle for equality in Israel/Palestine. When the elusive coexistence she's spent her life working toward starts sounding like a bad joke, she challenges her audiences with hard truths that are no laughing matter.
Young father Costi agrees to help his neighbour, Adrian, who persuades him that there is treasure buried in his grandparents' garden. Joined by the prospector Cornel and a metal detector, they set out to unearth the loot. With formal precision and a cutting sense of irony, Porumboiu composes a delicious fable which echoes the past and present reality of his country.
What if we could transfer the heart of the human brain to artificial intelligence? Empathy, imagination, feelings… and the ability to cooperate? Wider Than the Sky brings us closer to the world-renowned artists, dancers and scientists exploring the different paths that artificial intelligence is taking. Is a collective use of AI to shape a positive future for humanity even possible?
Enrico Naso is an undertaker in Lampedusa. Constantly confronted with the death that lurks everywhere on this remote rock in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, Enrico has chosen life, immersing us in what it means to be human. Against the grain of images and media coverage, he turns to everyday gestures, faith, songs, and the waves to preserve his humanity.
The historic village of Hasankeyf, a Kurdish majority settlement, is ordered to relocate after plans are made to build a dam. The stark beauty of the Anatolian landscape frames the devastated buildings, the site of a political game requiring obedience and submission. When all has disappeared, only a bitter and unsettling sense of dignity will remain.
"What white people have to do, is try to find out in their hearts why it was necessary for them to have a n***** in the first place." Through James Baldwin's feverish prose, Raoul Peck revisits the African-American struggles of recent decades. A stunning reflection on American identity and its false pretenses, strikingly sharp and disturbingly topical. Nominated for an Oscar in 2017.
The high rises on the outskirts of Geneva are his kingdom. Chouaib makes ends meet as a street trader, and nurtures his passion for rap. Both of which draw on his gift for language to win over customers and create poetry. A portrait emerges between moments of work and play, between the daily grind and the need to make it big, as a means of escape.
In the suffocating heat of a remote salt mine, six elderly women work seasonally, their hands and faces weathered by years of labour, their resolve unshaken. Within the Sun is a collective portrait of resilience and quiet strength, offering a glimpse into the rhythm of these women's daily lives, and how the harsh environment shapes their existence and soul.
In a place of their choosing, Ambre, Méline and Chiara each recount a moment in their lives. It is personal and singular, yet part of a wider phenomenon: the persistence of rape culture, which robs women of their bodies. Through this simple yet powerful device, Laura Dauvin speaks to all the women – the titular "elles" – whose voices are yet to be heard.
In Mumbai, once an island city linked by the sea, modern bridges and land reclamation have reshaped the landscape, disrupting the lives of its original communities. An old man, an enigmatic woman and a child take turns narrating how their world, once bound by tradition and the sea, is now dissolving amidst rapid transformation and urbanisation.
In 1982, six rural communities across the United States were notified that all of the nation's nuclear waste might be buried beneath them forever. Each candidate site was studied in detail by the Department of Energy's scientists and bureaucrats, in a process met with distress and resistance. A compelling indictment that interweaves physics, geology and democracy.
Strong winds shake the leaves of drought-stricken trees in an ancient olive grove near Delphi, reminding us of the wildfires that are engulfing the country. Here, a family of farmers attempts to restore its land. Poetic and sensitive, Elysian Fields explores landscapes of devastation and hope alike, where solidarity and community constitute the last resort.
In a village in the Argentinian countryside, the inhabitants lead a life characterised by nature and routine. When a light appears to the elderly farmer Omar one night, he sets off with his grandson Noah on a journey in search of meaning. In a holiday villa whose owners are never there, the two housekeepers Rosana and Lily make a strange discovery, as magic and reality intertwine.
Drawing on the fantasy genre, Arcturus evokes the disappearance of the filmmaker's mother in the unexpected guise of a bear. Through a mixture of image modes, the film conveys a poetic reflection on the mourning process, which it entwines with a history of the presence of bears in Finland...
Scientists mapping the universe have recently observed baryon acoustic oscillations fossilised within the cosmos. These are the scars of what happened 380,000 years after the Big Bang, before the galaxies were born; remains of a far-distant past that make up the very matter that forms both you and me, and the humble coffee pot.
Sleeping disorders are omnipresent in this day and age. In this desktop diary, a resident of Amsterdam cannot sleep, absorbed by the genocides and atrocities being broadcast in real time. They are looking for solutions to cut down their screen time. But then, a particular anxiety takes hold: What in the world will happen while they are offline?
Standing on a beach in the Philippines, teenage Sita confesses to her mother that she almost drowned in these waters when she was a child. In turn, her mother admits that though she grew up by the sea, she never learned how to swim. Turning into half-fish, half-human creatures, Sita and her mother swim through their turbulent past.
A wetland archaeologist tracks groundwater levels in a drained swamp. In a quiet village, the emergency call center receives reports of a drifting island. This kaleidoscopic tale takes us on a journey across time and place, exploring the tense relationship between humans and wetlands from surprising perspectives that blend science and oral folklore.
The film is divided into three volumes of about 40 minutes, each dealing with a single subject: animals, plants, stones. In this tripartite vision, each of its segment is a tribute to a specific genre of documentary filmmaking.
Through the three volumes, a single dramaturgical body emerges, that stages a process of admission of responsibility, a process of maintenance and protection, and finally a process of rediscovery of a common and fundamental value: care.
A family of wild owls experiences the springtime: hunting, feeding, raising their young. A camera in their nest captures their every move. While a community of online viewers monitor the owls 24/7 via livestream, a strange story begins to unfold, calling into question the paradigm of control that underpins our human interventions into the non-human realm.
Starting from the trail of a bullet captured on CCTV, Soixante-sept millisecondes follows the trajectory of the shot and those of its key protagonists. Through a reconstruction combining computer-generated images with surveillance footage and the story of a victim, the film forcefully questions the legitimacy and excesses of law enforcement in France.
After a 20-year long fruitless search in the Cameroonian forest, Frenchman Michel Ballot is on the verge of giving up his lifelong quest to find the mysterious creature known as the Mokélé-Mbembé. Turning to local initiates for help, and torn between ancestral wisdom and scientific evidence, he embarks on a final journey into powers, knowledge and the unseen.
High up in the breathtaking landscapes of the Swiss Alps, Pascal runs the family farm. The days go by to the rhythm of the milking of his 30-odd cows, which he cherishes with love. When Solène, a city-dweller, volunteers on his farm, she discovers the harshness of Pascal's farming life, in contact with the land and the animals. A beautiful tale of intertwined lives.
With a stunning array of archival images and sounds, renowned filmmakers Courtney Stephens and Michael Almereyda explore the life and ideas of intrepid mid-century utopian neuroscientist, John C. Lilly, whose unorthodox experimentations into human and animal consciousness were controversial in methodology but far-reaching in intent.
High in the majestic French Pyrenees, a conflict is provoked by the reintroduction of brown bears amid a traditional shepherding community. The film follows an aging shepherd struggling to find a successor as bears prey on his flock, and a teenage boy obsessed with tracking them down. A modern folktale examining humanity's relationship with a vanishing natural world.
While going through a period of limbo, filmmaker Sophie Bédard Marcotte (L.A. Tea Time, VdR 2019) turns her camera on her playwright neighbour. Together, they dissect the various stages of artistic creation in irresistibly funny chapters. From Canada to Iceland, an intimate and universal exploration of the uncontrollable nature of human existence.
A poetic exploration of three subterranean telescopes in remote regions of Canada, Japan, and Antarctica that reveal a new way of perceiving the universe from within. Underground, we are dreaming into the earth.
'Messengers' was shot in cooperation with the groundbreaking particle physics collaborations SNO+ (Canada), Super Kamiokande (Japan), and IceCube (Antarctica). As each surreal subterranean facility is explored in order of physical size, the film gradually reveals how these environments not only intersect with the natural world, but can also be seen as extensions of the unconscious mind – monuments to our questions about the universe. Following the journey of neutrinos from a black hole, 'Messengers' serves as a tactile meditation on human scientific endeavour, the vastness of geologic time, and the shadowy depths of the unconscious.
During his time as Haiti's Minister of Culture, the filmmaker investigates the limits of power. The result is this striking video-letter, a bitter assessment of a country battered by "300 years of resistance", and a reminiscence of his youth in Berlin. With Raoul Peck, the biographical always leads to the collective, and the universal never ceases to haunt private experience.
Ronald Reagan's visit to Berlin in 1982 provoked violent demonstrations by pacifists, feminists and other protesters. In his first short film, in the form of a political pamphlet, Raoul Peck uses skilful editing to paint a portrait of the lies embodied by the American president, and denounces the degradation of the meaning of words in the public sphere.
Landi and Mercedes live in Cuba's Zapata swamp, a biosphere reserve. To feed their sick child, Landi must secretly hunt crocodiles, leaving his wife and son behind for days on end. Amid social unrest and a global pandemic, To the West, in Zapata follows this loving family as they go to extreme lengths to survive, in a constant cycle of reunion and separation.
In Georgia, Ushguli mountain customs dictate that in the absence of a son, a family's land must be handed down to the next male relative who will perpetuate the family name. The Men's Land follows the journey of an aspiring singer as she fights for her property in the face of dated local rules and traditions, her song becoming a bulwark against humiliation.
Two twin sisters, a master and his dog, lovers who look like each other… All these combinations are possible in the simultaneously poetic and hyper-realistic world of Cláudia Varejão. Here, love comes in all shapes and sizes, orchestrating a choreography of visual resemblances, while also calling into question the concept of the couple in today's society.
2010: a terrible earthquake hits Haiti, leaving 230,000 people dead and 1.5 million homeless. For 24 months, Raoul Peck filmed the process of rebuilding his country, led by a gigantic humanitarian noria. He reveals the carelessness, opulence and deeply political nature of the international solidarity it claims to implement in the name of the right to intervene.
The search for La Flor de Irupé, a lost film by Guillermo Zúñiga, a Spanish pioneer of scientific filmmaking who was exiled in Argentina after the Spanish Civil War, triggers a journey into family histories and national archives. As we witness the slow growth of the yrupé plant, images and silences emerge, revealing layers of historical concealment and censorship.
Young detective Cristi is surveilling a teenager suspected of drug trafficking. Convinced that the law is unjust, he hesitates to make the arrest, afraid of ruining the boy's life. Porumboiu targets the bureaucratic inertia of post-communist society in this striking film noir, poised between philosophical reflection and caustic black humour, in which every word carries weight.
Five children sit around a dining table. Instead of "mum" and "dad", they say "Mrs. Wagner" and "Mr. Gerecke". In this ephemeral semblance of a family, between parental love and the bureaucracy of youth welfare services, social workers do everything they can to create a home for children. A film about the superpower that is raising a child, and family in all its forms.
The tornado is both a destructive event and a uniquely American icon, one often fraught with collective tragedy. With wit and humour, this film unfolds like an episodic road movie, raising questions of memory, inequality, colonisation, climate change, and disaster capitalism as it examines legacies of weather within this area of the United States dubbed "tornado alley".
Under the imposing snow-capped mountains of Utah, a Mexican family lives with the uncertainty of a loved one's disappearance. Through carefully crafted shots, Say Goodbye reveals the loneliness and silence tainting the daily routine of Rosa, Sol, and Javier, as the void becomes a constant presence. An achingly powerful and relevant film.
In the high Himalayas, the village of Lohari is submerged below the waters of a hydroelectric dam. The last member of the Jaunsari tribe, living in the remnants of his flooded village, recalls a time when the land was pulsating with magic. Through letters to a girl long since gone, the boy's tale unfolds, blurring the lines between reality and myth.
When he learns that one of his brother's childhood friends has invented a new sport by adapting the rules of football, creating a faster, more spectacular game, Porumboiu decides to film it. Between utopia and resilience, one local government employee has found in this reinvented game a lifeline, while the filmmaker uncovers a parable for post-Soviet Romania.
Through his personal voyage, Raoul Peck deconstructs the making and masking of history, digging deep into the exploitative and genocidal aspects of European colonialism—from America to Africa—and its impact on society today.
Halfway between a cinema documentary and an electroacoustic composition, this nearly imageless film —designed for cinema screening—plunges the audience into the harrowing experience of a young woman isolated for several months in a sterile hospital room. Clara Alloing and Noémie Ruben offer an intense yet tender exploration of the long road to recovery.
We recommend watching the online screener in a dark room with headphones for a cinema-like experience.
Consumed by boredom on a luxury yacht in the middle of the Aegean Sea, six men decide to play a game. A game of comparisons, in which each man is measured, weighed and evaluated in the hope of walking away with the title of Chevalier. Tsangari's dark, absurdist comedy explores the obsessive competitiveness that defines the male experience.
Sixteen years after the fateful day, the host of a local television station invites two witnesses to debate the role of their town in the overthrowing of Ceaușescu. From foggy memories to contradictory accounts, things take a farcical turn, revealing the difficulty of distinguishing history from myth. A brilliant first film that swings between hilarity and indignation.