Visions du Réel 2022

Contrasting visions and perspectives of modern-day Armenia are played out in 5 Dreamers and a Horse with the film focussing on four protagonists as they aspire to fulfil their very different dreams. There is also – as the enigmatic title suggests - a horse…but in truth it plays a minor role in proceedings.

More than anything Inner Lines, selected for International Competition, sends out a message of displacement and of disorientation - both geographically and mentally. It is an important and artful film, but dealing with the Yazidi genocide it is far from an easy watch.

The short film Aralkum by Munich-based filmmakers Daniel Asadi Faezi and Mila Zhluktenko looks to reverse, at least cinematically, the desertification of the Aral Sea between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Commissioned by the Tashkent International Film Festival, who provided the pair with a full crew, the film is lyrical, tragic and inventive in equal measure. The filmmakers talk to Business Doc Europe.

Filmmaker Frederique De Montblanc talks to Business Doc Europe about her study of high-powered women in industry, the dilemmas they face and the hurdles De Montblanc herself had to overcome to make her film. “It was hard to tell [the banks] that I wanted to do a series of intimate portraits of women. They don’t get that. In some cases, I had to cancel shootings because in some cases the banks weren’t helping at all. Actually, they were working against us.”

The VdR-Industry Awards 2022 were announced April 13. With more than 2100 accredited professionals from over 80 countries, the Festival says it has broken the Industry attendance record of last year's hybrid edition (+27%). “With its numerous prizes and grants, VdR-Industry and its partners reaffirm their determination to support independent documentary filmmaking in all its diversity,” say organisers. Festival Awards will be presented on Saturday April 16.

Edited from countless home movies, Marusya Syroechkovskaya’s How to Save a Dead Friend not only shows her best friend Kimi’s descent into drug-induced depression and death, but indirectly portrays a whole generation growing up – but often not growing old – in Putin’s Russia.

A Holy Family offers an engaging, at times very moving, examination of a family that has struggled to find its balance, but which opens up to eventually appreciate and even understand each other. Review by Mark Adams.

As unlikely it sounds, Dogwatch is a delight to watch, an aesthetically pleasing and almost poetic observation of three men working as armed guards on ships traversing pirate-infested waters.

Chaylla is a powerful portrait of a woman fighting her addiction to an abusive relationship as well as a substantiated plea for a more empathic judicial system. A rewarding, inspiring and sometimes uncomfortable journey, and one totally worth taking.

An elegant and insightful blend of childlike art, music and observation helps elevate Vida Dena’s documentary My Paper Life (Ma vie en papier) to something rather special, and helps deliver a thoughtful and warm immersion into the thoughts, memories and present-day realities for a Syrian family who have escaped the war and are now living in Belgium.