[Visions du Réel '24] French director Jean-Baptiste Bonnet filmed for six weeks aboard the ship Ocean Viking, which was chartered by the humanitarian organization SOS Méditerranée to rescue migrants crossing the Mediterranean from Libya. Facing confiscations, illegal boardings and rejection from certain European political sectors, despite everything Ocean Viking has rescued more than 40,000 people since 2016. The film shows from within the work of the crew, who end up becoming recipients of the stories that immigrants want to tell, the scenes of violence they have witnessed and the absences they have experienced throughout their lives. It doesn't need to elaborate a narrative too complex to show reality through a traditional structure that creates a clear and unadorned story about a rescue that is part of the Ocean Viking's daily solidarity.
[Visions du Réel '24] The B/W cinematography and the absence of external elements such as a soundtrack, reinforce the condition of the film's internal journey, a confessional approach towards the protagonist that functions as a reflection of her past from her own narration, while showing the structured monastic life, giving it a certain timeless air, like a time stopped between the snowy paths outside and the chiaroscuros of the interior of the convent. The film contrasts a spiritual perspective with the reflection of the most earthly reality, the world of crime and poverty with the search for redemption, which is expressed in the repetitive nature of the images and the slow pace of their development. But somehow it manages to convey that inner journey of Vera who, however, doesn't seem to have a very deep religious conviction.
[Visions du Réel '24] From the first images that show footsteps in the snow, the film adopts a dreamy cadence, a melancholic tone that is sustained in Lo Yi-Shan's reflections on the words of her friend Chun, or in her attempt to get Yueh to come out of his state of emotional denial. The director creates a journey that begins in the trauma of loss to build a story of growth in which she assumes the responsibility of the survivor who must share their story. There is an omnipresence to that mountainous environment of the Himalayas that despite its beauty cannot help but convey a feeling of isolation. But the journey that the director has built ends in a silent encounter that at the same time gives way to the slow process of healing the trauma of loss and reconciliation with memory.
[Visions du Réel '24] Through the stories of seven Homs residents, the film reflects how difficult it has been to return and how complicated it is to survive in a place full of ghosts from the past, "as if it didn't want to change," says one of them. The camera stops at daily life between shops and businesses that resist as best they can in a place that seems suspended in time. The static images reflect this immobility although it may be too sober, leaving space for the stories told to take on greater relevance, providing some pauses that allow some of the reflections to be emotionally absorbed. In the final route along an avenue flanked by destroyed buildings, the uncertain path that lies ahead is reflected.
[Visions du Réel '24] The structure consists of counteracting the human factor, focusing on some of the inhabitants of Brunaupark, with general plans that show the urban structure of the area, adding the circumstance that it is headed by the Uetlihof building, occupied by offices of Credit Suisse, so that it looks like a kind of vigilant threat over the inhabitants it wants to evict. Connecting the different human stories with the exterior of the residential complex, the film establishes a relationship between points of view that underlines the difference between humanity, with its aspirations and its uncertainties, against the coldness of the buildings, or the posts that indicate the height at which the new complex will be built.
The cinematographic language of the Berlin-based Palestinian director is recognizable in his treatment of the footage that appear in this film. Using sound effects that accompany some images, he performs an act of sabotage that consists of manipulating and re-editing them to give them a different meaning, sometimes including the same sequences at different times but modifying their context. Using the images looted by the Israeli army in the Palestinian Research Center in Beirut, later hidden, the director returns memory to Palestine by making them public, and undoes what he calls "cinematic occupation", reflecting that the act of looting is also a form of denial of History.
[CPH:DOX '24] For better and worse, the film offers a perspective that is limited to the workers' point of view. But, although there are some hidden camera sequences inside the company that show the pressure exerted on workers not to unionize, the purpose of the film is not to show an unscrupulous corporate enemy. Although it could be seen as a traditional David versus Goliath fight, the directors are more interested in reflecting the difficulties within the union organization. A significant scene in which the small tent in which they meet outside the Amazon warehouse is about to fall apart due to the strong wind, reflects how unionism can be vulnerable in the face of a corporation that is based on labor exploitation.
[Visions du Réel '24] The film observes from a distance the comings and goings of the motorcycles and bicycles driven by food delivery workers. A single static shot of a street in the center of Buenos Aires reflects the continuous passage of these delivery workers who, during the time of the pandemic, experienced a notable increase in their level of work. An observational documentary that has certain difficulties in specifying its focus, perhaps due to the fact that it offers a too general image of the work of these delivery workers, the largest Venezuelan emigrants in Argentina. Going from the most general representation to the most particular vision of a family in Venezuela, it offers a sample of job insecurity through the eyes of the young people who occupy these jobs.
[Visions du Réel '24] This family portrait, which fortunately moves away from the usual documentaries that use the description of personal issues to explain the collective and political events, somehow becomes an attempt to use the cinematographic tool to find answers and reconcile personal approaches. It is an exciting journey about the disaffection between a mother and her daughters, but it is also a moving story about the recovery of the maternal bond, the moment when a daughter stops using the second person to refer to her. Narrated from a family meeting in which the mother seems frustrated for not having managed to ensure that her daughters lead a complete religious life, the film conveys the lack of intergenerational communication that underlines this complicated mother-child relationship.
[Visions du Réel '24] The film finds its greatest strength in its deep political militancy, so that it functions equally as a reflection of current protest demonstrations and as a representation of the feminist intellectuality of the 1920s. Establishing in this parallelism a cinematographic language that acts as a link between the past and the present, with a narrative that benefits from an edition that also uses radicality through the superimposition of the ideas of the 1920s on the proclamations of today. Although it is not clear how the ideas of the Soviet politician Alexandra Kollontai have resonance in current Mexico and specifically in the queer and intersectional perspective, so the connection seems more generated from a general idea of love as the basis of a female revolution.
[Visions du Réel '24] As a kind of extension of the short film Paraíso (Maddi Barber, Marina Lameiro, 2021) we witness the process of felling a pine forest to recover the cultivation area in the Valle de Arce (Navarra). Cambium is the cellular stratum of trees, a changing membrane that runs through the trunk and roots, producing growth, and that forms the structure that is used to measure time. This audiovisual diptych by Maddi Barber and Marina Lameiro establishes a hypnotic relationship between the spiritual, the playful and the return to nature of an aspect that had been taken away from it.
[Visions du Réel '24] Despite a traditional structure divided into blocks, with monitoring and interviews with each of the members of this group of friends, it is an interesting incursion into the effects of emigration, but transmitting camaraderie and an affection that doesn't seem to have erased the pass of the time. After living in Switzerland during their childhood, they were forced to leave Switzerland by their families' decision to return to a country they didn't even know. There is constant recrimination about the way their lives changed to turn them into permanent emigrants.
[Visions du Réel '24] Through chiaroscuro cinematography, the film reflects the weight of the past in the Wayuú identity, using words to honor the oral tradition of a people subjected to acts of violence and oppression. It is a poetic road-movie in which the borders between life and death, reality and dreams, past and present remain blurred. With an excellent sound design by Antonio Ponce, the constant presence of the wind and a certain distant sound from the sea takes over the images to create a dreamlike atmosphere. Although it takes too long to begin to explain itself, the directors manage to maintain an ethereal look that ends up elevating the film to an allegorical and hypnotic visual conception, a pacing that recreates the aesthetics of shots at the same time that it builds a structurally complex narrative.
[Visions du Réel '24] Kai Landre decided at the age of 18 to implant technology inside his body, the so-called Cosmic Sense that converts atmospheric muons produced by cosmic rays into sounds. The most interesting thing is the personal approach to the musician, who has turned his intention to become a cyborg into a kind of reckoning with a childhood marked by religion and the harassment suffered at school due to his homosexuality. The director has followed Kai Landre for five years, on a path that has taken him from the first conversations with Neil Harbisson and Moon Ribas in Barcelona to giving a conference at Princeton University in New Jersey, through the preparation of Cyborg (2022, Lexa), the last of the three EPs he has released to date. Proposing reflections on the possibilities of human beings to transcend their own limits to have access to new senses, the documentary finds a perspective that is, however, much more attractive when it approaches the human condition and the personal journey of Kai Landre.
[Visions du Réel '24] Focusing on his own family, which survives in the middle of the pampas the persistent drought that ends up causing the death of numerous cattle, the director shows a reality that seems oppressed by the consequences of climate change, but that his uncle Omar Bello receives with resignation. Alexis Franco places the camera in observation mode, accompanying his uncle's work on the farm, which basically consists of preventing everything from collapsing around him, repairing the old water mill, taking care of the sick cows and supporting the weight of a lifestyle that seems doomed to disappear. The film avoids the aesthetic gaze to accompany the protagonists, creating a direct and humanistic documentary that observes the family relationship and absorbs the emotion transmitted by a dance or a hug. Despite transmitting that constant melancholy, with the mooing of the cows that seem like continuous laments, it is also a film that speaks of permanent resistance against the threat of disappearance.
[Visions du Réel '24] Over four years, the director has accompanied Sara in a moment of transformation between carefree youth and adulthood, placing in a hybrid perspective in which the metanarrative emerges showing the the rehearsals of a project in which Sara plays herself. What the film does well is convey that feeling of anxiety of a youth that has to give up carefreeness to face adulthood, a coming-of-age in which Sara is swept away by a profound transformation almost without realizing it, and that adopts the concept of social class change from authors like Annie Ernaux. Although Sara's journey is sometimes too noisy, the film manages to maintain the balance between fiction and documentary, even when the protagonist herself questions the naturalness of certain scenes, but above all it leaves a trace of melancholy around the inevitable loss of youth.
[Visions du Réel '24] This imaginative film uses creativity in staging to trace a personal narrative, introducing complex ideas within a meta-narrative that reflects on identity, but also questions itself regarding the different levels of privilege within the Iranian community in abroad. Constantly alive, changing the staging from theatrical performance to musical, with some touches of comedy, the film questions itself and its own reason for being. But despite this mix between the fictional story and the reflective essay, it maintains a coherence as a cinematographic narrative, it never feels disjointed or too ambitious, and it also introduces a twist in the script that ends up transforming the point of view of the director-protagonist and the perspective of the rest of the characters. So it becomes one of the most original proposals we have seen this year.
[Visions du Réel '24] In this powerful chronicle about the constant resistance of women in Iran, director Farahnaz Sharifi remembers her childhood divided into two planets, the one outside with the impositions of the Khomeini regime and the one inside her home, represented by the image of her herself at the age of seven with the hijab in her hand: "My planet was full of dancing, even with Khomeini on the wall," she comments as the narrator of her own story. The dance, prohibited in Iran, becomes one of those daily acts of resistance against the culture of hate imposed in the country. It is an exciting and visceral film at times, which vindicates filming as an act of protest, especially when the popularity of cell phones made it possible to "record the story that they did not want to be recorded." And in this powerful account, Farahnaz Sharifi uses personal experience as a tool of resistance that reflects the collective experiences of Iranian women.
The Williams brothers have achieved a remarkable narrative game that could seem to have too many elements in the air but that end up connecting with efficiency, wit and a good sense of humor. More playful than "The Tourist" (2022-), it is more interested in the way the story is told than in the plot itself, which can become too stagnant as it develops. But it always manages to maintain the surprise by using the parody of different narrative styles in each episode, and questioning the outcome through possibly surreptitious references to the criticism they have received for certain endings.
[Visions du Réel '24] The camera generally maintains its distance, with a sense of rhythm that is marked by nature itself, the environment that becomes the absolute protagonist and therefore the one that sustains a gaze that does not rush. Getting used to the rhythm of a film that is structured through the seasons of the year therefore requires some commitment on the part of the viewer, but once we accept the cadence of the film we also manage to surround ourselves with a certain atmosphere that is also marked by the subtle sound creation by Alva Noto and the often nocturnal photography of Stefan Sick. The director uses a border space to reflect the contrasts between the past and the present, between those who have a home and those who are looking for a home, forming a human landscape wrapped in the pacing of the natural landscape.
[Visions du Réel '24] The film captures in many ways the pain of a family over the suicide of their daughter, motivated by humiliation and harassment at Kabul University, surrounding her sister Freshta from that majestic surrounding of the mountains, using silence and shots of details that provide a heavy and quiet atmosphere, and alternating the spaciousness of the exterior with close-ups of the faces inside the house. Through this specific story, however, the director knows how to show the consequences of constant pressure on the Hazara population, what he calls "a slow genocide" in which the objective is to erase its traces. Despite its exploration of pain and loss, it is nevertheless a film that conveys the hope of resilience and the strength of dignity.
[tv+] Apple tries to be HBO without succeeding, although it aligns itself with solvent professionals from the old HBO such as Timothy Van Patten and Kirk Ellis. This is one of those productions with great appearances but little depth, with negotiations within the French court dragged on unnecessarily. And so little confidence in the main plot (despite the fact that Michael Douglas performs a very funny libertine Franklin), that they create a fictional subplot about his grandson whose narrative arc is absurd and boring, but which ends up taking over the series.
[Visions du Réel '24] The question: What is Europe? It remains constantly throughout this journey that tries to find the links between the mythological reality of the princess who was kidnapped by Zeus and the current reality of a territory that, despite its efforts, does not find the necessary balance to maintain peace. The title refers to a phrase from a musician who is part of the Pontanima Choir of Sarajevo, an interreligious group in which Muslims, Christians, Serbs and Croats sing together: "After the war it was impossible for some to sing each other's songs". But this hope for peaceful coexistence seems easier to find in the representations of the past and nature itself, such as the remains of the Minoan civilization in Greece, among which no weapons or border traces have been found, a peaceful culture such as the one reflected in paintings discovered in a cave in Lofoten (Norway). Archaeologist Ingrid Sommerseth explains that these are drawings that do not show men hunting, but only figures dancing. This memory frozen in representations of the past shows that man has managed to coexist peacefully, and that only through knowledge of history can answers be found to the questions of current civilization. The film thus manifests itself as an exciting journey that sustains a constant search for that home that persists in being separated by borders.
[Visions du Réel '24] A look at the astonishing nature of the French High Alps through the lonely journey made by Felix, a young shepherd who leads a flock through rugged landscapes on foot for 200 kilometers through the Ubaye valley, pressed for time to be able to reach their destination within the deadline but also due to the continuous attacks of wolves that can kill more than twenty sheep some nights. It is a silent and contemplative film that increases the presence of humans in the second half in which the protagonist takes care of the family flock in the French Prealps. The disturbing presence of the wolves is shown in night shots in which we see their shadows lurking, a presence that not only threatens the flock but also the very survival of a traditional work that has already been transformed by urban traces. Edited with special delicacy by Agathe Hervieu and Tania Goldenberg, who let the images breathe in long takes filmed by the director himself, the film introduces us to a life that has a timeless character, a solitary choice that is nevertheless surrounded by a poetry that It is not only drawn from the books of poems by Fernando Pessoa that Felix reads but also from the living and changing nature itself that surrounds the shepherds.
[Visions du Réel '24] For the director's father, an ice skater, leaving the Soviet Union meant a liberation that he wanted to record through home videos that the director uses to tell the recent history of Ukraine wrapped in a family story that takes place between 1986 and 1994. This seemingly unattainable dream of embracing the market economy ends up permeating much of Mykhail's recordings abroad, but they also reflect a certain disbelief towards the possibility of the Soviet Union dissolving. The construction of this collective memory through her personal perspective manages to subtly introduce us to a state of mind that is transmitted in family celebrations. Maria Stoianova's voice-over directs us through her own memories, sometimes with a density between what we hear and what we see, constantly fighting to maintain the interest of the viewer, too overwhelmed by the successive collection of information. With some difficulties in emotionally focusing this journey through a family history in a complicated sociopolitical context, the film uses memory to define the need to understand itself as a nation before trying to understand its environment.
[HBO Max] A documentary that offers disturbing content that is shown in the most conventional way possible, constantly using archive images to underline the statements of the interviewees. But the story of protagonists whose career as child television stars has caused psychological traumas that remain in their adulthood is terrifying, and that is the strength of the series. With an added episode that is not really a continuation but a boring interview show, the series says a lot about the silent complicity of an entertainment industry populated by predators.
[Visions du Réel '24] An exciting documentary about the underground environment of the so-called baloeiros, groups of young people who dedicate themselves to making large balloons and releasing them into the sky in cities like São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. But it is an activity prohibited by the Brazilian authorities, arguing that they can cause forest fires and are polluting, so it has become a clandestine work, surrounded by secrecy. Although it is never made clear what kind of relationship they may have with crime or how they get the money to manufacture hot air balloons, the film reflects with outstanding force the way in which this artistic passion becomes the only way to isolate oneself from the environment. social of the favelas in Brazil. The meetings to "hunt balloons", when one has been detected launched days before or from another city that is about to fall, are tense, and the sense of community that these groups share is transmitted with closeness. While the drawings of Rocky Balboa or Luciano Pavarotti rise towards the sky, the clandestine work becomes a spectacle that reflects a singular art form, ephemeral but charged with a social and community feeling that is shared by all.
[Visions du Réel '24] An entertaining exercise in autofiction in which the director describes a dream that has become a way of life, but which also poses an intelligent reflection on maturity and trying to recover our own space through decisions that can seem unusual. The film is narrated by the director himself as if it were a kind of story, referring to himself in the third person, which offers some touches of irony and sense of humor that make the story closer. Certainly, at times the documentary conveys the feeling that everything is more coincidental than it surely has been, but it is a film as simple as it is charming, which transmits that positive message about trying to achieve one's dreams despite the obstacles or, as his father tells him in one of their many telephone conversations: "If you really believe in it, you have to overcome all adversity."
[CPH:DOX '24] At one point in the documentary, Simone Zimmerman states that "when many American politicians are asked about anti-Semitism, they express support for Israel. Israel is currently replacing what it means to be Jewish. These people have decided that support for Israel is more important than defending Judaism." Through the experience of two young Jews, the film describes the construction of a Zionist indoctrination that uses educational institutions such as North American universities to spread a unilateral vision closed to debate. But when raising this question, it ends up falling into a one-dimensional point of view, when it refers to historical facts, or when some interviews with people like Abe Foxman, director of the Anti-Defamation League until 2015, seem to reflect that he did not really know the nature of the documentary, offering general answers easily countered. Perhaps it is not the most appropriate thing for a film that denounces the one-way reporting of the Jewish community in the United States to avoid establishing a real debate with interviewees who also offer arguments from the other point of view.
The film takes as its structure a relationship of addresses and events, narrated in a monotone tone by the actress Melanie Hyams, but contrasting the story of the past with the images of the present in the streets of Amsterdam, provoking a questioning look that questions the need not to forget. Most of the images were recorded during the coronavirus pandemic, which gives it a unique perspective. One of the announcements from local authorities heard on the radio establishes a curfew, remembering that the last time an exceptional measure like that was ordered was during World War II. The decision not to artificially provoke emotions establishes a cadence and structure that may feel monotonous at first, but that absorbs the viewer as it develops, capturing everyday images shot over three years in 35mm. with a 4:3 format that refers to the British documentary films of the sixties. It is remembered that 75% of the Jewish population of Amsterdam did not survive the occupation, losing about 60,000 Jews of the 80,000 who lived there, cold numerical data that nevertheless reminds us of the magnitude of the horror. By choosing a cinematographic format and an immovable narrative structure, there is a clear invitation to get caught up in the images and the voice-over, within their uniform tone, which reveal two different Amsterdams: one that remembers and another that seems to forget.
