From Thomas Imbach’s “Nemesis” and Michele Pennetta’s “Il Mio Corpo” to a 13-title National Competition – featuring Nick Brandestini’s section winner “Sapelo,” celebrated French screenwriter Antoine Jaccoud’s directorial debut “Back to Visegrad” and Tribeca world premiere “Wake Up on Mars – ” this year’s Visions du Réel festival proved, as ever, a notable launchpad for Swiss documentaries.
Held online on May 4, a Swiss Films presentation of five upcoming doc features added to this impact, and suggested much about the nature of Switzerland documentary scene.
A power in movie production – in 2018 only Europe’s “big five” territories and Russia produced more features – Switzerland is also a European doc talent hub. The five docs presented Monday were all produced by Swiss companies. Only one, Roland Colla’s “W. What Remains of the Lie” was directed by a Swiss director, though at least there of the other helmers have either studied in Switzerland or are based there.
Colombia’s Felipe Monroy, for example, has a B.A. from Geneva School of Art and Design (HEAD-Genève). His “Children of the Wind” rolls off Colombia’s scandal of “false positives”: the kidnapping, torture and murder of thousands of young people from its slums whose corpses were passed of as fallen FARC-EP guerrilla insurgents, to suggest Álvaro Uribe’s government was winning the war. Monroe tells the story from the POV of three mothers of victims, still fighting for justice a decade after the murders.
The still-unsolved army killings are “probably the most striking example of cruel injustice in Colombia,” says Monroy. That he said is “an intimate and universal way to talk about violence,” distinct from TV reportage on the subject.
German-born, but co-founder of Geneva-based production house Les Films du Chalet, director Marion Neumann’s “The Mushroom Speaks” is a film essay which comes in at fungi from a myriad angles, and is intended as part of a larger franchise, including a book and exhibition, she said at Monday’s online presentation.
The Bubble
Swiss Films
Three of the five features talk about identity, a theme which runs through many doc-features at Visions du Réel as they cling to a sense of belonging to a world in danger of extinction (Visions du Réel winner “Puntasacra”), or attempt to build new lives (“Reas,” a Pitching du Réel winner). in the Swiss Films’ Previews, this cut three ways.
Directed by Mexico’s Laura Elena Cordero, a Swiss resident, “Shaping Dancers in the Manner of Béjart” follows young dancers’ transformation during the demanding two-year apprenticeship at revered Swiss-French choreographer Maurice Béart’s Lausanne ballet troupe. From excerpts shown at Visions du Réel, it features stunning dance stage performances, where Corder attempts to capture body movement. But its essence is an attempt to nail what Cordero calls Béjart’s “ADN,” through the legacy of his teaching.
The third doc feature from Austrian-Swiss filmmaker Valerie Blankenbyl, “The Bubble” depicts the world’s largest retirement community, “The Villages,” in Florida, with over 135,000 residents, making it the fastest-growing town in the U.S., Dario Schoch at Cognito Films said in a presentation.
Living in an all-senior community allows its members to not feel their age, the extrovert Tony, a 17-year resident explains in the film. But as The Villages residents forge a new sense of self, the ever increasingly encroachment of The Villages threatens to displace local communities in Sumter County. “This to me really is home, this earth, this greenery, you cannot replace it,” one local says.
Identity lies at the heart of “W. – What Remains of the Lie,” an update to the exatraordinary case of Bruno Wilkomirski. In 1995, Wilkomirski published his autobiography, as the youngest inmate of the Maidanek concentration camp victim. It was hailed as a milestone description of Nazi hell. Three years later, Jewish journalist Daniel Ganzfried exposes it as fraud: Wilkomirski had in fact been adopted and brought up by a well-to-do Swiss family. Wilkomirski disappeared from the scene. Director Rolando Colla spent seven years attempting to catch up with the writer. The result bears testimony, if Colla’s explanation is anything to go by, to the extraordinary complexity of the human heart.
Shaping Dancers
Swiss Films
