Until a couple of years ago, Emilie Bujès – who has been the artistic director of Visions du Réel in Nyon since 2018, after previously serving on the selection committee under Luciano Barisone – had her own little way of unwinding after completing the selection for the festival: she would rewatch Marvel’s Iron Man trilogy. “That didn’t happen this year,” she says with a smile as we speak on the eve of the 2024 edition. “I think I watched the final season of The Crown instead.”
Such forms of entertainment are a necessity after viewing 3,240 submissions from which a program of 128 films (not including retrospectives) has been assembled, on a somewhat tight schedule. Bujès explains: “In a festival landscape which is very competitive, we need to work on the selection as late as possible, in order to consider all the most recent films we can receive.”
The festival’s concern with topicality also means quite a few entries can be emotionally overwhelming, with ties to subjects such as the pandemic, the ongoing conflict in Ukraine (a country with a remarkable roster of titles in the program this year) and the recent escalation of the Israel-Palestine conflict. It was fitting that No Other Land, which had already made waves in Berlin and was codirected by four directors belonging to a mixed Palestinian and Israeli film collective, ended up winning the Audience Award.
Of the 128 new releases in the lineup, 88 are world premieres and 14 international premieres. They are, for the most part, to be found in the various competitive sections: International Feature Film Competition (won this year by The Landscape and the Fury by Swiss filmmaker Nicole Vögele), Burning Lights (feature films that are particularly bold in terms of cinematic language), National Competition (Swiss productions and co-productions), and the International Medium Length and Short Film Competition. The last, according to Bujès, is the main provider of levity outside of the festival’s John Wilson retrospective.
On the non-competitive side, the main showcase is Grand Angle, where feature length documentaries with wide appeal compete for the Audience Award. Highlights and Special Screenings also offer viewers the chance to see high-profile titles, primarily as European or Swiss premieres. The 2024 lineup includes Cannes veterans such as Kleber Mendonça Filho’s Pictures of Ghosts and Steve McQueen’s Occupied City. Opening Scenes, devoted to student work and first shorts, is the ideal platform for young filmmakers.
The Doc Alliance Selection sidebar reflects the festival’s status as one of eight members of the European organization devoted to documentary filmmaking (the other seven are CPH: DOX from Denmark, Doclisboa from Portugal, DOK Leipzig from Germany, Millennium Docs Against Gravity from Poland, Docudays UA from Ukraine, FID Marseille from France and Jihlava IDFF from the Czech Republic). It’s yet another badge of honor for one of Switzerland’s longest running festivals, which takes place in Nyon every April and has recently expanded its reach with select screenings also happening in the neighboring municipality of Gland.
First established in 1969, the event – then known as the Nyon International Documentary Film Festival – was founded by Moritz de Hadeln, who went on to serve as the artistic director of Locarno, Berlin and Venice. It was initially conceived as a showcase for Swiss productions, given the country’s prolific documentary output, as well as titles originating on the other side of the Iron Curtain, and thus very hard to see in the West.
Visions du Réel, the festival’s current moniker, first appeared in 1995 under the stewardship of Jean Perret, and it highlights an element Bujès is also keen on emphasizing when it comes to the program: the artistic vision. “It is all about the filmmaking,” she notes. “The subject does matter to some extent, of course, but not as much as the filmmaker actually having a vision and executing it in an original manner. Documentaries are first and foremost cinema.”
This is perhaps best reflected in the event’s lifetime achievement award, formerly known as Maître du Réel and now as Guest of Honour, which goes to a filmmaker who has redefined reality on screen, through documentaries as well as fiction films. The prize, introduced by Luciano Barisone in 2014, has gone to film luminaries Richard Dindo, Barbet Schroeder, Peter Greenaway, Alain Cavalier, Claire Simon, Werner Herzog, Claire Denis, Emmanuel Carrère, Marco Bellocchio and Lucrecia Martel.
Joining their ranks in 2024 is Jia Zhang-ke, who embarked on his first international trip in over four years to be in Nyon, a month before he will unveil his new film in Cannes. Such is the allure of a festival that welcomes professionals and film enthusiasts from all over the world, who arrive on the shores of Lake Geneva to see the latest in documentary filmmaking trends, partake in the rich VdR-Industry activities, or listen to the likes of Jia, Alice Diop or John Wilson as they talk about the past, present and future of reality captured on camera.
