non-fiction cinema

[April 20, 2023] Docs in Orbit Podcast - Episode #55 - Visions du Réel 2023 with Emilie Bujès (moderated by Christina Zachariades)

In preparation for the 54th Edition of Visions du Réel, we sat (virtually) with Emilie Bujès, the festival's artistic director, to hear about how this year’s program came together. 

Visions du Réel has a strong reputation for championing creative, contemporary non-fiction cinema and has played a vital role for independent documentary filmmakers for decades. The festival has also been a significant source of inspiration for this podcast, where we have discovered many filmmakers and invited them onto the podcast.   

This year will be the 54th edition, and the collection of films has us fully energized, with more than 160 films, 82 of which are world premieres on display from April 21st to the 30th.

Episode Transcript
Docs in Orbit Podcast -  Episode #39 A conversation with Emilie Bujès  

For show notes, visit docsinorbit.com and be sure to follow us on social media @docsinorbit

With such an overwhelming number of films on offer at IDFA, we invited Wouter Jansen to help curate a watch list of films that will be on display. Wouter is the founder of Square Eyes, a sales and distribution company based in Vienna specializing in bold, author driven features and shorts. This year, he will be at IDFA with two titles, ANHEIL 69 by Theo Montoya and EUROPE by Philip Scheffner.  In this episode, we go through each section of the program at IDFA and take turns selecting titles of interest to help navigate our festival experience. 

Films discussed include PARADISE by Alexander Abaturov, NON-ALIGNED: SCENES FROM THE LABUDOVIĆ REELS, HOW DARE YOU HAVE SUCH A RUBBISH WISH by Mania Akbari, and A ROBUST HEART by Martin Benchimol, among many others. For our full Docs in Orbit x Square Eyes x IDFA 2022 watch list, please visit here . 

EPISODE TIMECODES: 
00:00 - Intro / About Square Eyes |  10:30 - Best of Fests  |  16:30 - Paradocs  |  23:25 - International Shorts Competition  |  32:10 - Competition DocLab Immersive Non-Fiction  |  35:35 - IDFA on Stage   |  40:28 - Envision Competition  |  45:35  - International Competition  |  52:30  - Laura Poitras Top 10

SPECIAL GUEST BIO:
Wouter Jansen is the founder of the sales and festival distribution company Square Eyes. He worked as the head of programming at the Go Short - International Film Festival during the first 10 editions. In 2013 he started Some Shorts, which changed to Square Eyes in 2019, which specializes in having outstanding non-mainstream films find the audience and recognition they deserve. With Square Eyes, Wouter represents bold, author-driven features and shorts, and collaborates closely with the filmmakers to devise bespoke festival distribution and sales strategies. This has resulted in a small catalogue of films premiering at prestigious festivals and winning multiple awards over the last few years like main prizes at Cannes, TIFF, Berlin, Locarno and Clermont-Ferrand. 

Wouter has been giving lectures at schools like Le Fresnoy, HEAD Geneva and Netherlands Film Academy and is an expert for Locarno Open Doors and First Cut Lab. He has moderated as well as lead workshops at festivals like IDFA, True/False, Winterthur, VIS Vienna Shorts and others. He is a Berlinale Talents alumni.

For show notes, visit docsinorbit.com and be sure to follow us on social media @docsinorbit

In this episode, we recap some of the films we encountered at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival with special guest Milton Guillén - an award-winning filmmaker, faculty member at CalArts, and a programmer at the Camden International Film Festival.

Films we discussed include:

• 4:58 FIRE OF LOVE by Sara Dosa  
• 9:12 ALL THAT BREATHES by Shaunak Sen
• 15:53 WE MET IN VIRTUAL REALITY by Joe Hunting
• 25:38 DOS ESTACIONES by Juan Pablo Gonzalez
• 29:58  I DIDN’T SEE YOU THERE by Reid Davenport

For show notes, visit docsinorbit.com and be sure to follow us on social media @docsinorbit