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Documentary Festival Visions du Réel Expands Global Reach With Record-Breaking Lineup


The 56th edition of Visions du Réel unveils its most international lineup yet, with 154 films from a record 57 countries.

VdR veterans return to competition, including Marie Voignier (who was at the festival in 2020 with “Na China”) with “Anamocot,” an enigmatic journey into a zoologist’s quest for the legendary Mokélé-Mbembé; and Julien Elie (“Dark Suns”) with “Shifting Baselines” (which was a work-in-progress at VdR–Industry in 2024), a dramatic black and white doc set in the village of Boca Chica, home to Elon Musk’s SpaceX rocket launch base. Other influential figures whose works have been selected include U.S. director Jem Cohen (“Museum Hours”) with “Little, Big and Far,” a poetic meditation on astronomy, and Brazil’s João Vieira Torres (“The Birds Are Busy”) with “Aurora,” a surrealist diary with a queer political manifesto that explores the structural history of violence against women. Geopolitical themes run through the selection, with films like Mamadou Khouma Gueye’s “The Attachment,” which scrutinizes the gentrification of a Dakar neighborhood, and Casey Carter’s “To Use a Mountain,” a deep dive into the impact of nuclear waste disposal on Indigenous communities.

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