Swiss director wins at Visions du Réel documentary film festival

Tizian Büchi accepting the Grand Prix for his film L’Îlot (Like an Island) © Keystone / Jean-christophe Bott

Lausanne director Tizian Büchi has won the Grand Prix at the Visions du Réel international film festival for his film L’Îlot (Like an Island). It is the first time a Swiss film has won the main prize in the International Competition since 2013.

Büchi’s debut feature filmExternal link, in which two security guards are charged with securing access to the river in a Lausanne neighbourhood populated by retirees and immigrant families, won over the jury with its “brilliant observation that rewrites the coordinates of geographical spaces in universal terms”, said the organisers of the festivalExternal link in Nyon, western Switzerland.

The Audience Award went to US director Sara Dosa for her film Fire of Love, an epic and spectacular portrait of volcanologists Katia and Maurice Krafft.

A Long Journey Home, the first feature film by Chinese director Wenqian Zhang, was awarded best film in the Burning Lights competition, which is dedicated to “new vocabularies and expressions, to narrative and formal freedom”.

The Swiss-Japanese filmmaker Julie Sando won the Jury Prize in the National Competition as well as the Zonta Prize for female fimmakers with her film Fuku Nashi.

Diversity

“This year’s list of winners includes seven first features. New voices rub shoulders with the work of established filmmakers,” said Emilie Bujès, the festival’s artistic director, on Saturday evening. “We are particularly pleased that the diversity of film genres, generations, approaches and geographies that guide us has been rewarded and welcomed by the public and the juries.”

This 53rd edition presented 160 documentary films from 68 countries. Of the 124 films in the official selection, 85 films had their world premiere.