Visions du Réel - Festival Coverage
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Episode 01: Visions du Rèel Program Review with Emilie Bujès
[April 6, 2022] In this episode, we focus on Visions du Réel, the international documentary film festival held in April in Nyon, Switzerland. Visions du Réel has a strong reputation for championing creative, contemporary non-fiction cinema and has played a vital role for independent documentary filmmakers for decades. It has also been a significant source of inspiration for this podcast, as we have made several film discoveries, including El Father Plays Himself, Looking For Horses, My Mexican Bretzel, and Faya Dayi.
This year, the 2022 selection is full of promise, with more than 160 films on display and a broad spectrum of forms, including many hybrid works. Before traveling to Nyon for the festival, Docs in Orbit had the great pleasure of speaking with Emilie Bujès, the festival's artistic director. The conversation turned into a masterclass on programming, with insight into her journey into film curation and influences along the way. Emilie also walks us through the International Feature Film Competition that holds 16 films - most of which are world premieres and over half from first-time feature filmmakers.
Emile Bujès, © Sébastien Agnetti
Emile Bujès, Programmer and Film Curator
Artistic director of Visions du Réel as well as program advisor for the Director's Fortnight in Cannes. Previously, she was deputy artistic director at the Festival International du Film de La Roche-sur-Yon, commissioner at CNAP (Paris) and has taught at HEAD (Geneva) and HKB (Bern). She has served as curator at the Centre d'Art Contemporain Genève (2010-2014) and collaborated on programming for the Center for Contemporary Art Vilnius, LUFF, Transmediale, and Forum (Berlinale), among others.
Episode 02: Children of the Mist with Diem Ha Le
[April 12, 2022] Featuring a conversation with Diem Ha Le about her debut feature film, CHILDREN OF THE MIST, which premiered at IDFA and had its Swiss premiere in the Grand Angle section of Visions du Réel. The film follows Dzi, a 12-year-old girl from the Hmong ethnic group in Northern Vietnam. During the Lunar new year, girls as young as Dzi become part of the customary practice of "bride kidnapping," where young girls are abducted by a boy who wishes to marry them and held for ransom while the families negotiate the price of the bride. Dzi finds herself in a situation where she is forced to grow up and find her way of navigating between the Hmong culture and her own desires.
In this conversation, filmmaker Diễm Hà Lệ speaks about keeping a childhood memory alive through film and shares insight into her relationship with Dzi and how she navigated opposing opinions as she bore witness to Dzi's abduction and bridal negotiations. Diem also speaks of the personal and practical challenges she faced while filming and how she was able to translate the complicated relationships and situations that were unfolding in front of her into cinema.
Moderating the conversation is Venice Atienza, whose film, LAST DAYS AT SEA, also shares an inquiry into the fragility of childhood and was invited to screen at Visions du Rèel last year in the Grande Angle section.
photo courtesy of the filmmaker
HÀ Lệ Diễm, Filmmaker
HÀ Lệ Diễm was born in 1991 in the Tay community, an ethnic group in Northeast Vietnam. She studied Journalism at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities in Hanoi. Her debut short documentary MY SON GOES TO SCHOOL was awarded by the Vietnamese Cinema Association.
Episode 03: Festival Recap with Inge Coolsaet and Jordan Cronk
[April 28, 2022] The festival may have come to a close, but many of the films have continued to stay with us. In this episode, Christina Zachariades is joined by two international film critics, Inge Coolsaet and Jordan Cronk, who were present at this year's swiss festival, Visions du Réel.
Inge Coolsaet is a film critic based in Brussels. She writes for several international publications, including Point of View magazine, Filmmagie, Photogenie, and Cineuropa. She is co-editor-in-chief of the new Dutch-language, Belgian-based film quarterly Fantômas. This year, Inge was invited to Visions du Reel to serve as a Jury Member to award the FIPRESCI Prize for this year's best first feature film.
Jordan Cronk is a film critic and founder of the Acropolis Cinema screening series in Los Angeles. His writing has appeared in Artforum, Cinema Scope, Sight & Sound, and many others. He is a Los Angeles Film Critics Association member and was invited to Visions du Reel to host a discussion on casting for non-fiction films.
Last week, we regrouped to exchange thoughts on some of the films that stayed with us, including: FORAGERS by Jumana Manna / ROJEK by Zaynê Akyol / L’ÎLOT by Tizian Büchi / INNER LINES by Pierre-Yves Vandeweerd / 143 RUE DU DÉSERT by Hassen Ferhani / VACATION IN VAL TREBBIA by Marco Bellocchio / MARX CAN WAIT by Marco Bellocchio / EUROPE by Philip Scheffner
Inge Coolsaet - Brussels
Inge Coolsaet is a freelance film critic. Her writing has been published in Point of View magazine, Filmmagie, photogenie and Cineuropa for which she has covered several international documentary film festivals. She is co-editor-in-chief of the new Dutch-language, Belgian-based film quarterly Fantômas and also works at the argos centre for audiovisual arts in Brussels.
Jordan Cronk - Los Angelas
Jordan Cronk is a film critic and founder of the Acropolis Cinema screening series in Los Angeles. His writing has appeared in Artforum, Cinema Scope, frieze, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Sight & Sound, and more. He is a member of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association.
Christina Zachariades - New York
Christina Zachariades is a researcher and filmmaker based in Brooklyn with a background in consumer ethnography. She is the founder of Docs in Orbit and holds a Master of Arts from the University of Texas in Austin, and Master of Arts in Documentary Film Directing from DocNomads.