Back to selection
Visions du Réel 2026: Utopian Futures
For Life Crisp powder blue shirting, the shock of red wool, and a puff of a curly bob—Visions du Réel Artistic Director Emilie Bujès was everywhere at this year’s festival, whether on stage at Place du Réel, smiling as she greeted friends old and new, or grasping a karaoke mic with her staff.
Just two weeks before the opening of the annual creative nonfiction festival in Nyon, Switzerland, Bujès announced that she was leaving her role to join the Geneva International Film Festival in August. Her final edition in charge leaves an indelible fingerprint on the landscape—this year, VdR felt more international than ever, burrowing deeper into the global languages of nonfiction.
From films about sperm smuggling in Palestine, to Kelly Reichardt’s wild open west, to Meriem Bennani’s surrealist animated worlds, cinema here was weighted with the challenges of how geography, and those who control its formalized borders, shape what we see and how we experience it—collectively and alone. Every few hours, I met someone who had been personally impacted by the wars of the world—a juror who was stranded in the UAE as bombs hit, filmmakers trying to get their teams safely out of Gaza, freelancers with family in Iran blocked from accessing the internet—with many unable to return to the places they love and call home. Still, they were here, screening their films and watching them too.
Two projects in dialogue with the ongoing genocide in Gaza were American Doctor by Poh Si Teng, which premiered at Sundance this year, and the equally bracing short Muddy Currents by Palestinian artist and filmmaker Shadi Habib Allah. Another film that spoke to current geopolitics was In Between, a Place. Faezeh Nikoozad’s prescient and emotionally exploratory feature depicts the evolving contours of the lifelong relationship between three Iranian childhood friends—themselves filmmakers—now scattered across different parts of the world due to conflict and repression.
A winner of the Special Youth Jury Award, Tiziano Locci and Tito Puglielli’s The Building Site offers a journey through the windows and apertures of a decaying palazzo in Palermo, Italy. A medium-length film—a particular focus, and strength, of the festival’s programming—it portrays the decline and rebirth of a home to many distinctive Palermo locals. We watch as affordable housing and its histories are chipped away at by tourism and its capitalist demands. (Spoiler: the building does not relent.) Even as tenants begin to pack up and the prospective investors and buyers come in, sofas fight against narrow apertures to remain in situ, and darkened, winding stairwells withhold the promise of the interiors within, drawing raised eyebrows and skepticism over the area’s future financial potential.
Textural in form, Alea Jacarandas, directed by Hassen Ferhani, is verdant and moving as it explores interpersonal relationships through space and time. Here, memories are evoked and clustered around Algiers’s jacaranda trees. Whether one is familiar with the plant or not, audiences will reflect on their own personal language of symbology as they drift through the world afterwards, colored by the tenderness of the father-son dynamic the film centers on.
Attendees were charmed by the numerous penguin scenes in Nikolaus Geyrhalter’s Melt. Set betwixt the haunting inevitabilities of doctors’ offices that physically slip towards melting borders, vast images of ice-workers battling with the futility of a nature that only grows more volatile, and heinous party-skiers in the Alps, every image is a reminder that what we’re seeing is already history—landscapes archived before their time due to human folly.
Given the themes of landscapes present here, it was no surprise when Bujès stated on stage that G. Anthony Svatek’s Humboldt, USA—a world premiere and first feature—won over the selection committee within its first minute. This is a rare, experientially potent film about legacy and interconnectedness. Together with editor Kaija Siirala (a major talent), Svatek braids contemporary American life and its relationship to its lived environment through the legacy of 19th-century scientist Alexander von Humboldt, a man after whom countless institutions, animals, places and plant species have been named. Through a selection of characters—including a youthful museum educator, East Buffalo community activists, weary herds of bighorn sheep, and AI-optimist Silicon Valley tech enthusiasts—emerges a playful narrative poetry that meditates on contemporary environmentalism through a beautifully rendered lens.
What Comes From Sitting in Silence finds Swiss-Indian filmmaker Sophie Schrago stationed in a corner of the first female Islamic court in Mumbai, watching while arguments are presented by couples and families in distress and Judge Khatoon mediates based on interpretations of the Quran. What follows is an almost Claire Simon–esque insight into a place through people, until the bond between herself and Khatoon is broken open and Schrago’s almost static lens takes on an entirely new dimension. Schrago shares an intimate confession about a past relationship mid-way through the film, and suddenly the restraint of her camera is seen no longer as a formal necessity, but as resilience, reframing viewers’ perspective of the couples that revisit the court as verdicts are issued.
Across the board were whispers that few present would return to International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, a rumor that hinted at VdR’s shifting status as the leading European documentary market despite IDFA’s longstanding reign. This year’s Visions was an active and attentive marketplace, this time put together by former Chicken & Egg VP Sabine Fayoux Cantillo. Highlights included the multi-award winning Trade by Todd Chandler, an atmospheric insight into the cultural representation of capitalism and human nature; the bewitching Crane-oriented Hello?! by Sofie Benoot (director of the 2024 VdR selection Apple Cider Vinegar); and To My Dearest by Grace Hsia, a tender 8mm feature about the intersection of fertility, family and friendship. Points also go to Ljubomir Stefanov’s The Vortex of Extinction, a film that interprets toxic masculinity through the story of Macedonian turtles. No, really.
Several American industry attendees new to the festival texted me as they arrived: “Why do we even bother?” Upon climbing to the castle that looks over Lake Geneva, they couldn’t help but reflect on the robust list of filmmakers screening—most of whom rarely see play on our side of the Atlantic—and what they do with budgets so much smaller than the US standard. The creative ambition on display at every programming point, paired with a host of venues less than a ten minute walk from one another, does make Nyon feel utopic—despite the insanity of a meal never costing less than 22 CHF (roughly $27). There is always one central bar/café where festivalgoers can ditch their industry badges to hang out and end the night. Even though the town is small, you can retreat into myriad enclaves to sit with a film after the fact, a vital part of a festival that many take for granted when engaging with formally and emotionally challenging work.
I felt especially grateful for this after For Life by Ömür Boyu, a vérité film which portrays Hind, a woman in Palestine attempting to get pregnant under impossible circumstances. At times, the film feels like a thriller, with Hind actively fighting against the genocidal apparatus at every turn. This is a time-based struggle in every sense. Faced with issues that range from closed border crossings to heavy traffic to the wavering success of fertility medications, Hind races to liberate her husband’s sperm to conceive a child while he is held prisoner in an Israeli jail. It is a portrait of humanity, and an antidote to films in which it is often withheld. For Life leaves audiences tender and quiet, which is how the Theatre de Marens received it.
Even as the festival expands and bigger names come in (Laura Poitras and John Wilson were among this year’s guests), audiences retain a curiosity for the more obscure films, seeking the formally and narratively challenging offerings here. Creatively, Visions du Réel remains deeply nourishing, pushing back against complaints of a dying documentary industry and contracting budgets in the US. The festival’s programming presents a parallel reality, one where enviable state funding strengthens the global nonfiction landscape and showcases the value in pushback against algorithmic audience impulses. I take comfort in the curiosity integral to Visions du Réel. Rather than the shrug and a sigh that most US festivals leave me with, here I leave hungry for more.
