Off the Road
Visions du Réel, the Swiss international documentary film festival rethinks itself in the face of the challenges imposed by the current pandemic crisis, and its 2020 edition will now be held online, with content available as of yesterday, Friday, April 17.
The festival will have a broad offer of Latin American films, as it will include productions from the region in almost all of its categories: El Father Plays Itself from Venezuela, Off the Road from Mexico, and the British film Non Western by Mexican director Laura Plancarte will be part of the International Feature Length Film Competition; the Burning Lights International Competition will include the Argentine Las Ranas, the Colombian The Calm After the Storm, and the Chilean The Other One.
The International Medium Length and Short Film Competition will showcase the premieres of Lazarus’ Hunger by Brazilian director Diego Benevides, Obāchan by Mexican director Nicolasa Ruiz, Rubicón by Honduren director Manuel Muñoz, The Eyes in the Woods and the Taste in the Water by Brazilian directors Luciana Mazeto and Vinícius Lopes; and acclaimed Brazilian director Karim Aïnouz will present his recent Nardjes A.in the Latitudes section.
Additionally, the Grand Angle section will premiere the Brazilian feature length film My Darling Supermarket by Tali Yankelevich, and the Cuban short film The Wolf Kids by Otávio Almeida will be featured in the Opening Scenes section.
As previously reported by TropicalFRONT, Visions du Réel will also host a virtual film retrospective of Brazilian director Petra Costa. In addition to the streaming her films as a director Undertow Eyes (2009), Elena (2012), Olmo and the Seagull (co-directed with Lea Glob, 2014), and The Edge of Democracy (2019), the festival will also stream the two films she has produced: Babenco: Tell Me When I Die (Bárbara Paz, 2019) and Ecstasy (Moara Passoni, 2020). Costa will also conduct a virtual masterclass on April 30.
In conversation about the need to reconsider the format of this year’s edition, artistic director, Émilie Bujès, commented: “Visions du Réel 2020 will not take place at the Place du Réel, in the cinemas, in the tent and in the bar, in Nyon. But it will resolutely be held on the Internet, in almost all its generous diversity, and will visit the spectators at home, further expanding the possible territories.”
On the Road, the debut feature by José Permar, is set in Baja California and follows Rigo, Davis and Paco, three fans of the Baja1000, the world’s biggest off-road motorsport, as they seek to escape the monotony. Borrowing from both the western and the musical genres, the movie depicts the trio with empathy and places the beat of “corridos” over their images.
El Father Plays Himself
Directed by by Italian American filmmaker and cinematographer Mo Scarpelli, El Father Plays Itself is a portrait of a complex filial relationship and shifting power balance, centered on Venezuelan filmmaker Jorge Thielen Armand (La Soledad) who left Venezuela as a child, but his father remained there. In a country that he struggles to recognize, the son is now directing a fictional film (La Fortaleza) about the troubled past of this genitor in the illegal goldmines of the Amazonian jungle.
Plancarte’s Non Western is set in a small community of Montana, between green valleys and wild mountains, where Thaddeus, a Cheyenne native, and Nanci, a non-native woman, prepare their wedding. While we get to know them, we realize that what seems to be an everyday affair appears as a difficult path of reconciliation and cultural confrontations deeply rooted in the history of the United States of America.
The Burning Lights International Competition will feature the premiere of Edgardo Castro’s new movie, Las Ranas. In Argentine jail slang ‘rana’ (which in Spanish means frog) is the term used to name the women who come to visit those who are locked up. The film follows one of these women, as she struggles to provide her incarcerated boyfriend with food, drugs, and love. Described by Elena López Riera as “an exercise of visceral realism, the impossible diary of an anti-heroine” Las Ranas is an unusual love story.
In The Calm After the Storm director Mercedes Gaviria returns to Colombia to work on the next film by her father, the famous Víctor Gaviria. She takes this opportunity to construct a private diary that fluctuates between admiration and reproach to her father. As Elena Lopez Riera explains, Mercedes’ film “goes beyond familial conflicts to question the place of women in the film world, which is still strongly ingrained with a patriarchal mindset.”
In Francisco Bermejo’s The Other One, somewhere at the end of the world, where ocean and rocks play their endless games of hide and seek, lives a man. In his mysterious solitude, he is not alone. One day, remains of a white whale are washed by a storm on a beach. In this stranded portrait inspired by H. Melville’s masterpiece Moby Dick the director questions our inner reality and our own gaze on it.
Nardjes A.
Nardjes A. the most recent film by Brazilian director Aïnuz (Invisible Life). Shot on March 8, 2019 in Algeria, during the International Women’s Rights Day, the film portrays Nardjes, a young woman as she marches bravely to let her voice be heard. Aïnuz films her as she joins a spontaneous manifestation against president Bouteflika’s announcement to run for a fifth term. In words of Giona A. Nazzaro, the “film is a moving homage to the hopes of an entire country.”
In My Darling Supermarket, the employees of a banal supermarket seem seized by the repetitive tasks and their routine working to the rhythm of the aisles. But this does not take the roaming spirit of the workers into account: humor, drama, mystery and romance thus populate this confined space. The aisles loaded with victuals become a small theatre in which their doubts and their improbable dreams are expressed.
Visions du Réel 2020 started on April 17, and some of the movies will be available online through June 2020.
