Visions du Réel artistic director Emilie Bujès insists that the Swiss documentary festival hasn’t set out to programme a bigger than usual selection of feature docs from first-time directors. The films, she says, are chosen as always on the basis of their excellence.
It’s clear, though, that the event is brimful of new talent. Whether in the international feature film competition, the Burning Lights competition or the industry sections, there is an abundance of work from debut filmmakers.
Below, Screen profiles a dozen of the first-time directors who will be presenting their work at Visions du Réel, which runs in Nyon from April 12-21.
Farah Kassem, director, We Are Inside - International competition
Lebanese director Kassem’s film is about how her relationship with her father, 52 years her senior, is strengthened yet further when she discovers that he is a devoted member of a Monday afternoon poetry club. “It’s in an attorney’s office where 11 or 12 men meet every Monday at 5pm. They’re all about 70. They all have packs of sweets and they’re all diabetic,” says Kassem. ”They sit together in that room and start reading poetry about beauty and the reflection of light on a flower. I was very touched by their presence and their endurance. I saw it [the poetry] as an act of resistance to everything that was happening around them.” Kassem studied at the Danish National Film School and at Doc Nomads. She has directed several award-winning shorts and is currently taking a PhD in the arts in Belgium. We Are Inside is produced by Cynthia Choucair through Road2Films. It has backing from the Doha Film Institute and the Sundance Institute among other funders.
Laurence Levesque, director, Okurimono – International competition
Canadian director Levesque’s debut Okurimono follows Noriko Oi, a Japanese Canadian woman (the director’s stepmum) as she returns to Japan to clear out the family home. Her mother was a survivor of the Nagasaki bomb and Noriko discovers letters and documents that cast new light on the family’s history. “I like films that follow a very intimate quest and answer a more global question,” says Levesque. She has previously directed several shorts but says that she realised this “story was very complex. It couldn’t be a short film. I had too much material. I wanted to take the time to tell the story correctly.” The film, produced by Rosalie Chicoine-Perreault and Catherine Boily, is screening at Hot Docs following its premiere in Nyon.
Maria Stoianova, director, Fragments of Ice - International competition
Ukrainian director Stoianova draws on archive footage shot by her father, a Soviet skater, in her debut feature, Fragments Of Ice. It has been a long road to bring the film to fruition. “I started I would say five years ago,” the director tells Screen. Her father began shooting his footage in the mid 80s, not long before the collapse of the Soviet Union. Inevitably, the perspective of the doc, produced through Ukrainian outfit Tabor, changed after the full scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia in February 2022. She contemplated abandoning it. “It took me almost half a year just to persuade myself that it was something I had to do.” Her original editor Viktor Onysko died in battle in the Donetsk region. “I felt the duty to finish this and to have a commemoration of him and his work.”
Cecile Embleton and Alys Tomlinson, directors, Mother Vera - International competition
Mother Vera is exquisitely shot in black and white - little surprise given that the project sprang out of a photography project and that British photographer Alys Tomlinson won the Photographer of the Year award at the 2018 Sony World Photography Award. The subject is a young nun in a monastery in Belarus. Vera is a surprising character, “charismatic and enigmatic” but with a dark past. “We were very struck by her captivating character,” Tomlinson says. “There was so much to explore there, meeting this woman who was of a similar age to us and obviously had so much to share about her life even before the monastery,” Embleton agrees. British-Canadian director Embleton’s short The Watchmaker screened at Hot Docs and SSXW. The film is produced by Laura Shacham through She Makes Productions. Mother Vera has backing from Sundance. It was winner of Locarno First Look 2023 and was also recognised at the Hotdocs Forum 2021.
Anas Zawahri, director, My Memory is Full of Ghosts - International competition
Syrian director Anas Zawahri’s debut feature doc is set in his beloved and stricken home town, Homs, which suffered extensive destruction during the Syrian Civil War. “It is like the city is sinking in the post-war situation,” he says. The film shows the citizens of the city trying to re-invent their lives. It is produced by Kamel Awad through Wind Cinema. “There is no cinema in Syria generally except for cinema propaganda by the dictator,” the director says of the struggle to fund the doc. Some support, though, came from local organisation Harmony Cultural Forum.
Samira El Mouzghibati, director, Les Miennes/Mine - Burning Lights competition
Belgian-Moroccan director Samira El Mouzghibati explores family dynamics and the legacy of a forced marriage in her debut feature, Les Miennes. “When I got pregnant six years ago, having my daughter brought up a lot of feelings and emotions but also questions,” she says of the doc. “It obliged me to dig more into my family history and into the story of the women in my family.” The director is the youngest of five sisters who formed a close bond from which their mother was excluded. International sales on the doc are handled by Hors Du Bocal. The film is produced by Sébastien Andres and Alice Lemaire of Michigan Films.
Ado Hasanovic, director, My Father’s Diaries - Highlights
Rome-based Bosnian-Italian Ado Hasanović is a programmer and film festival director as well as a documentary maker. His debut feature revisits one of the most traumatic events in recent Bosnian history, the Srebrenica massacre. He draws on footage of daily life his father shot in Srebrenica during the Bosnian war in the 1990s and on his father’s diaries from the period. “For me, it was an amazing experience, really emotional,” he says of making the film. “I discovered better my father through his diaries and footage…I had the possibility not only to understand his life and thoughts about that period but also to meet other people around him.” My Father’s Diaries has impressive backers: Italy’s Palomar and France’s Mediawan.
Marcos Simon Mossello and Elias Ezequiel, directors, The Bald - Big Angle
Some men feel high anxiety when they lose their hair. Argentine fiilmmakers Marcos Simon Mossello and Elias Ezequiel comb through their neuroses in their debut feature doc, The Bald. Both know each other from the National Film University of Villa María in their hometown of Córdoba, and share a love for cinema, music and humour, in addition to their common baldness. The directors tell Screen: “The idea for the film came to us from baldness itself. We believe that personal experiences are what take you to a place that gives you the possibility of telling something authentic, with substance, whether in a documentary or fiction. Since we met, the urge to do something about a topic that seemed original/taboo to us was running through our heads (depopulated with hair follicles). Something that we believed had not been shown in the cinema or at least in the way we intended to do it.” The film is produced by Julian Palacios through La Fundación Cine,
Natalia Dolgowska, director, On The Way - VdR Pitching
Polish director Dolgowska is known for her visual art work and hybrid documentary shorts. Her debut feature doc On The Way is a work in progress. She characterises it as a natural history documentary with a difference - one in which the humans, not the animals, are the subjects. Billed as “an opera about tourists,” it offers “micro-stories” about the behaviour of people visiting a beautiful lake resort in the Tatra mountains. The project is produced by Anna Gawlita and Marta Szymanowska through Kijora Film.
Elisa Gómez Alvarez, director, To the Moon and Back - VdR Pitching
Swiss director Alvarez’s debut feature doc, currently “between development and production” and with around 50% of the financing already secured, is about three friends in their 20s who share the dream of becoming astronauts. They’re part of a Swiss student association of space enthusiasts who organise simulations of lunar space trips. The producer is Palmyre Badinier. “I am really interested in ambiguity. In my work, I [try to] reconcile paradoxical elements. I can identify with them [the young would-be astronauts]. For me, it’s a film about a generation - about prodigy scientists from Gen Z who are looking for solutions and for dreams. This is the matching point between the space community and me.” The director describes herself as “an interdisciplinary artist.” She works in theatre and opera as well as film. Her short films have screened at several international festivals.
Ross McClean, director, Beyond the Fold - VdR Work in Progress
The subject of Northern Irish director McClean’s debut feature is a prisoner who, on his release from jail, becomes a sheep farmer. ”I came across my young protagonist in 2018. I was invited to play a football match in a young offender’s prison in Belfast,” the director recalls. One of the members of staff told McClean he needed to “meet the shepherd,” an “intimidating 6ft 2in tattoo covered individual” who was allowed to tend sheep even in the prison. The project is supported by BFI Doc Society, ARTE, LEF Foundation, Screen Ireland and Northern Ireland Screen. The director has already made a short, Hydebank (2019), dealing with aspects of Ryan’s story. McClean continued to follow him as he was released from prison, broke his curfew and was put back behind bars. He describes his feature as “a coming-of-age story.” Alongside his filmmaking, McClean teaches in Queens University Film Department. He is committed to making films in Northern Ireland “but I would like to make one in a better climate!”
Katy Scoggin, director, Flood: VdR Work in Progress
Katy Scoggin is in post-production on Flood. This may be her debut feature but she already has some illustrious credits: she was co-producer and cinematographer on Laura Poitras’s Oscar winner, Citizenfour (2014). Scoggin trained in fiction at the NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. She became an intern for Poitras and worked with her on three features and two shorts. Flood deals with Scoggin’s tense relationship with, and attempts to reconnect to, her missionary father. She grew up as “a young earth creationist,” believing in the Genesis account of how the world came into being in six days. “It wasn’t till college, when I took human evolution class, that the blinders fell off my eyes.” Her father was a scientist but his religious faith took him in a very different direction. At Nyon, she and her producer Will Lennon screen a 10 minute section of the film.
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