Powerful personalities dominate Swiss document projects at Visions du Reel

A female miner in Germany’s last coal mine undergoes a gender change, a prima ballerina fights to preserve her status after becoming a mother, a penitent troublemaker turned kickboxing champion, a father who escaped from the former Uruguayan dictatorship, rejected refugees waiting to be deported, and a woman ploy to hit. After its success in the film industry: to say that the fifth screening of Swiss films at the Documentary Festival Visions du Réel presented us with strong personalities is an understatement.

Six promising films that will soon be released on the festival circuit have been selected for the international market for this event and shown at VdR-Industry. Five of them (co-directed for “Red”) were directed by women. Four of them are the first features. With the quality of the excerpts and the originality of the themes befitting the era, it all demanded that it be seen as a definitive film.

Here is an overview of what will happen in the high-end Swiss documentaries market.

“Stuntwomen” (“Cascadeuses”)
“Today, I was injured,” Petra sums up when her mother asks her about her day at work: a daily occurrence for the Swiss girl, who has been working in Los Angeles with the world’s biggest stars for more than 20 years. She is one of three characters in “Stuntwomen”, director Elena Avdija’s debut film.

Tired of getting hurt at work and living in the shadows, Petra is now trying to become an actress in Hollywood. Meanwhile, in France, Virginie is also in transition: After two decades of dying on screen, she aims to become Europe’s first female stunt coordinator. In one of the excerpts shown in Neon, we see her thrown from a moving carriage and rising impressively as if nothing had happened, ready to repeat the scene.

How much pain can the body bear? Young Estelle, who is training to become a stunt woman, still lacks an answer and dreams of strong female roles. But she will soon discover that the reality may be very different. “As audiences, we are accustomed from a young age to see women in cinema being kidnapped, raped, murdered and beaten. It is at the heart of our industry,” says Elena Avdega. “My documentary questions the unease of this issue.”

Produced by Bande à Part Films and Alter Ego Production, and expected this fall, Stuntwomen puts these women in the spotlight once and looks like a future standout.

“Based on a true story”
As a member of a solidarity group visiting refugees awaiting deportation at Zurich airport, director Lisa Gehrig has been able to gather years of information for her first feature film. She chose to tell the story for a long time without telling it: What are the criteria, not only in Switzerland, but throughout Europe, for granting asylum? Every refugee has to tell his life story before the authorities. Through my film, I want to highlight this action based on storytelling,” she said in her speech.

To have a greater chance, candidates must be good at speaking in the most persuasive manner, as emotionally as possible, and without conflicting with themselves.

Lisa Gehrig’s film depicts three rejected asylum seekers reenacting their hearing and talking about their traumas again. Interviews are repeated under the specific conditions conducted by those at the Swiss State Secretariat for Migration, with three real interviewees conducting the sessions according to the official rules. It gives the spectator an inside look at what the complete black box has been so far.

Producers Eva Vitija (Ensemble Film) and Lisa Gerig hope to make a real impact with the film and create dialogue on the topic. It bodes well for the future: groups of lawyers and immigrant organizations have already expressed keen interest in the film, which is expected to premiere at the beginning of 2023.

“Becoming Julia”
Director Laura Kahr, a former dancer at the Zurich Opera, doesn’t hide that she has struggled in the highly competitive, male-ruled world of high-profile dance where, in her words, “at the age of 25, you’re done.” However, she did not hesitate to return there, for three years of filming, for her first film “Becoming Julia”, a subtle critique of the inequality experienced by women in the world of ballet.

“When Julia Tonelli, the ballerina, told me she was pregnant and scared, I knew right away I had to tell her story,” Kaher recalls in previews.

Filmed in a highly cinematic fashion, without any interviews, her film offers an unprecedented behind-the-scenes immersion in a great opera house, tracing the protagonist as she faces her biggest challenge: not letting herself be pushed aside upon returning from maternity leave.

“Every day is intense for dancers at this level, and it was like that for me,” Kaher told Variety. “Every day, I had to find the courage to go back to this place where I had a number of unpleasant experiences, where it would have been so beautiful if women were treated differently. Perhaps the hardest thing for a documentary director who comes from the same background as a hero The novel, is to never interfere and let reality unfold. Sometimes I would film while crying.”

The Point Prod film is expected to be completed this summer. It appears to be destined for strong international attention due to the fame of its protagonists, the strong themes it deals with, the beauty of its surroundings, the dance scenes, and the mastery of the subject matter by the director. “I want to find a distributor who loves the movie as much as we do and who understands how movies are made that start not from something intellectual, but from a deep need to tell a story with tremendous passion,” Kaher told Variety.

“I may remember” (“Para no olvidar”)
When director Laura Gabay’s father passed away three years ago, she found dozens of Super 8 reels and audio recordings he had exchanged with his sister who lives in Brazil. Recordings showing and telling the story of her father and aunt after they fled Uruguay, following the 1973 military coup. Missing parts of her family history that Geneva-born Gabbay did not discuss with her father. “Finding these recordings was the starting point for my film,” she explained in Visions du Réel.

“Looking at them, many memories came back and many questions that will remain unanswered. Through this work, I wanted to reconstruct my family’s history and question the silence caused by exile. This silence can grip entire families and be passed down from generation to generation.”

The highly poignant anthology revealed the extensive writing and editing work that Gabay did to bring back her father’s voice, combining his silent images with his unrelated audio recordings and voiceover in Spanish.

This first feature also shows how political issues affect families, their identities, and their legacy.

Produced by Ecran Mobile and Les Sœurs Jaouen, it is expected in the spring of 2023.

“red”
The sport saved his life, says former European boxing champion, Francesco Lacoal. Somehow, training allowed him to control his violent inner being. But his past as a naughty man still haunts him and is reflected in everything he does.

London-based director Mara Manzolini came up with the idea for a documentary with a focus on it: “I knew Francesco from Lugano where we grew up,” she told the audience. I haven’t seen him in years. When I found out about his past, I was shocked. How could our lives be different? ”

In constant search for self-control, with the constant support of his girlfriend, Francesco’s story is one of redemption. We see him grow through the film, becoming a coach, the inspiration to a group of guys and a young girl, who dreamed of doing kickboxing herself.

To talk about his past, which Lacoal still struggles to put into words, Manzolini and coding directors Andrea Bellrani and Elodie Dermange chose to include three moving parts, in black, white and blood red. “Animation also allows us to push the boundaries of reality, to go inside its head and confront it with its fears in an imaginative way,” they explain.

Produced by Amka Films Productions and Nadasdy Film, the ani-doc is expected to be released in the fall of 2022.

“Once Upon a Time We Were Bitmain” (“Ware Warren Comple”)
A man’s world in the Ruhr, Germany, made of dust, hard physical labor and deep mining. A world that doesn’t exist anymore: The country’s last underground coal mine closed its doors in December 2018. Before that happened, Swiss director Christian Johannes Koch and German director Jonas Matuschek spent two years researching and photographing the daily lives of clients.

“Six years ago, I read an article about closing this position, and wanted to see it for myself. I felt like I was in a manufacturing museum, time seemed to stand still and found it strange to see a professional environment that was still male-dominated,” Koch told Variety. With lockdown approaching, we started shooting before we finished our research.”

As a result, the script developed during the months of immersion and unearthed the personal stories of the five main protagonists. The directors followed them until late 2021, while trying to reinvent themselves after their career simply disappeared.

The film is based on different timelines, and deals with change on several levels: environmental transformation, the loss of identity when an individual’s professional environment collapses, but also gender change, through the protagonist Martina.

“It was interesting to follow because she struggled for 40 years, completely alone, to be the person she really was, and eventually transformed while working in this coal mine. Today, among the main characters, she is the only one still working in a mine, but she A salt mine this time.”
Presented at the 2020 Venice Gap Finance Market and winner of the Kompagnon Fellowship for Berlinale talent in 2021, “Once We Were Pitmen” has received strong international attention. Produced by Catpics and elemag Pictures, it will be ready for its premiere at the end of 2022 – early 2023.