Nino Kirtadze's Durakovo: Village Of Fools, winner of the World Cinema Directing Award: Documentary at this year's Sundance Film Festival, will open the Nyon International Documentary Film Festival 'Visions du Reel' held from April 17-23.

An international jury of US producer Claire Aguilar, Swiss cinematographer Severine Barde, Tunisian filmmaker Nourid Bouzid and Russian director Victor Kossakovsky will deliberate on the prize-winners from an International Competition lineup which, apart from Kirtadze's film, includes Patric Jean's D'un Mur à l'Autre - de Berlin à Ceuta, Denis Sneguirev's Entre Ours et Loup - 24h Dans la Ville de N., Susan Mogul's Driving Men, Steven Sebring's Patti Smith: Dream of Life, Yves Scagliola's The Beast Within and François Kohler's Bonjour Monsieur, Bonjour Papa.

The sidebar Regards neufs, which spotlights the major talents of tomorrow, has selected Delphine Deloget's No London Today, Juan Lozano's Temoin Indesirable, Sebastian Hediger's Drifter, Antoine Cattin and Pavel Kostomarov's La Mère, and Demon by the young Russian filmmaker Alexander Malinin, who recently died unexpectedly.

The Tendances section will be showing new works by such established documentary filmmakers as Jonathan Demme (Jimmy Carter: Man from Plains), Julian Schnabel (Lou Reed's Berlin), Alain Cavalier (Les Braves 1 and 3), Georg Misch (Der Weg Nach Mekka - Die Reise des Muhammad Asad) and Thomas Grube (Trip to Asia - The Quest For Harmony).

Among other highlights at the 2008 edition are two workshops to be led by the veteran German film-maker Volker Koepp, who won the 'Visions du Reel' Grand Prix last year for his film Sons, and the French critic-theorist-cineaste Jean-Louis Comolli, as well as the presentation of the Doc Alliance cooperative venture between 'Vision du Reel' and four other leading documentary festivals - Dok Leipzig, Warsaw's Planete Doc Review, International Documentary Film Festival Jihlava, and CPH: Dox Copenhagen - where each festival will select a particularly outstanding and unique film for showcasing at the other events.

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