Visions du Réel 2025: First Dispatch
Reviews from the first few days of the 56th edition of Visions du Réel.
Visions du Réel, one of the foremost documentary film festivals in the world, is back for its 56th edition, running April 4-13. I was physically in Nyon for the first few days, once again taking in the springtime atmosphere of the lovely city on the shores of Lake Geneva, and will continue to watch films remotely (even before the pandemic, VdR was very online-friendly with Press and Industry representatives). This first batch of reviews encompasses everything I saw in cinemas during my in-person attendance (plus one film I saw the week before at another event), except the retrospectives. As with my Berlinale coverage, this dispatch is freely available, while subsequent ones will be paywalled.
Blame (Grand Angle, opening film of the festival)
Covid-19 is no longer as big a part of the lineup as it was 2-3 years ago, but some interesting angles on the topic do still pop up from time to time. One such example is the latest film by Swiss documentarian Christian Frei, who looks back on the origins of the outbreak and spends a considerable amount of time with the three scientists who have studied bats’ penchant for carrying viruses and endeavored to set up measures preventing another 2020-level pandemic. Thoroughly researched, the film also ponders its own nature, as the geo-political implications – already evoked in the opening credits – lead to on-set tensions and some of the interviewees questioning their participation in the project. And given the current situation in the US vis-à-vis health in general, it’s even timelier now than it was when Frei started filming.
****1/2
Flophouse America (Highlights)
Poverty viewed through the eyes of a young boy who has never known much else: as captured by Monica Strømdahl, the everyday life of Mikal is equal parts harrowing and compelling, as he was born and raised in a so-called flophouse (a cheap motel where families sometimes stay indefinitely because it’s more affordable than a traditional apartment) and has to deal with the daily hardship of coping with his mother’s severe drinking problem. An illuminating, mesmerizing and at times oddly entertaining portrait of a broken childhood, which doubles as an indictment of a certain systemic failure in America.
****1/2
Fitting In (National Competition)
Apartheid may be officially over in South Africa, but it lingers in the memories of the hallways of Stellenbosch University, where the prestigious student residence Eendrag strives for a harmonious coexistence between all students. Swiss director Fabienne Steiner follows these young men and deftly conveys the contrast between their progressive ideals and the colonial mindset that is inescapably part of their surroundings three decades after the country’s more racist practices were abolished. A compelling picture of youth.
****
Sons of Icarus (I figli di Icaro, National Competition)
Daniel Jonas Kemény, the director of the film, was born in Europe, his younger brother Samuel in Cuba: they’re both the product of a constant drive to be on the run, as their German father chose to leave the motherland because of his hometown’s complicated history with Nazism (which the family opposed). Different generations come together to discuss their shared history and any resentments connected with the father’s errant lifestyle and associated uneven relationship with his sons. The nuances of life and death are explored with poetical tenderness, in a touching mixture of Italian, Spanish and German.
****
Aurora (International Feature Film Competition)
Rooted in South American culture’s depiction of ghosts, this profoundly moving meditation on life and death by Brazilian filmmaker João Vieira Torres is an achingly personal piece of work, made over a period of ten years. Torres, now a French resident, reconnects with his family history and decides to go even further by locating the people his beloved grandmother, a midwife, helped bring into the world. Different layers of reality collide as the director brings together all the elements – autobiographical, spiritual, historical – to craft a tribute to his late relative which is also a powerful examination of destinies ruled by instances of violence against women.
*****
Shifting Baselines (International Feature Film Competition)
As mentioned during the introduction of the premiere screening I attended, it’s unusual for a documentary to be made in under a year, as was the case of this project which was at VdR in 2024 during the pitching stage. Of course, elements of the creative process predated that moment, and there’s no indication the shortened production timeframe impacted the quality of Julien Elie’s vision, captured in stark black and white to highlight the shades of gray in a world where the perception of reality itself is changing every day (the title refers to how societal and environmental transformations may color newer generations’ idea of what used to be real or not). It’s particularly amusing to discover this film at a time when Elon Musk and SpaceX – which is part of the subject – are pretty much the butt of a very unfunny joke.
****1/2
Zodiac Killer Project (Highlights)
UK filmmaker Charlie Shackleton tried to make a documentary based on a book about the Zodiac case, but negotiations for the rights fell apart as he had already started scouting locations and selecting interviewees. So instead of the more conventional project he had in mind, he decided to do a feature-length breakdown of what the film would have been like, providing an analysis of the thematic and visual tropes of the true crime genre. A fascinating example of a director having his cake and eating it too, as Shackleton, with endearingly self-deprecating wit (“How many people are going to watch this?”, he wonders at one point), gets to tell an amazingly true story while (sometimes literally) lampshading the clichés that would have contributed to its cinematic language. You’ll never watch Netflix’s serial killer documentaries the same way again after seeing this.
****
Little, Big and Far (International Feature Film Competition)
Having previously staged a dramatized story of human interactions inside the foremost art history museum in Vienna in his film Museum Hours, Afghan-born American director Jem Cohen reconnects with Austria in a very different way this time around, with the portrait of an astronomer who, after a conference in Greece, decides to stay there and find a sky dark enough to allow him to reconnect with the stars. An increasingly poetic meditation on the universe we live in, as time slows down to enable us to properly take in the existential qualities of Karl’s journey. (viewed at the Diagonale in Graz, Austria)
****