Berlin Silver Bear Winner Manuel Abramovich Pitches ‘Monsters’ at Visions du Réel

Elsa Keslassy International CorrespondentKino Lorber has acquired all North American distribution rights to Elie Grappe’s Ukrainian gymnast drama “Olga,” which world premiered at Cannes Critics’ Week last year and won a prize. Kino Lorber is planning a theatrical release on June 24, with 10% of proceeds to be donated to Direct Relief in Ukraine.Grappe’s debut feature, “Olga” stars former Ukrainian National Team gymnast Anastasia Budiashkina in her first film role.

Christopher Vourlias Wolfe Releasing has acquired all North American rights for director Magnus Gertten’s feature documentary “Nelly & Nadine” ahead of its North American premiere at the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival on April 30. Wolfe Releasing has slated the documentary for a theatrical and streaming release in late 2022.Produced by Ove Rishøj Jensen from Auto Images, “Nelly & Nadine” had its world premiere at the Berlin Film Festival earlier this year, where it won the Teddy Jury Award, the highest honor for an LGBTQ+ film.“Nelly & Nadine” is the story of two women who fall in love on Christmas Eve 1944 in the Ravensbrück concentration camp.

Trinidad Barleycorn A miner in Germany’s last coal mine undergoing a gender change, a prima ballerina fighting to keep her status after becoming a mother, a repentant hooligan turned kickboxing champion, a father who fled the former Uruguayan dictatorship, rejected refugees awaiting deportation, and stuntwomen taking hit after hit for the film industry: to say that the 5th Swiss Films Previews at doc film fest Visions du Réel introduced us to strong characters is an understatement. Six promising films soon to be launched on the festival circuit and the international market were selected for the event and pitched at VdR-Industry. Five of them were directed (co-directed for “Red”) by women.

Lise Pedersen “Like an Island” (“L’îlot”), a hybrid documentary fable tinged with magical realism by Swiss director Tizian Büchi, has won the Grand Jury Prize at international documentary film festival Visions du Réel in Nyon, Switzerland. The debut feature had its world premiere at the festival, bearing testimony to the event’s reputation as a launchpad for new talent and its tradition for hybrid fiction-reality films.

Lise Pedersen Opening her masterclass at doc film festival Visions du Réel in Switzerland, cinematographer and filmmaker Kirsten Johnson – an Emmy and Sundance award winner for “Dick Johnson Is Dead” – started by naming each and every member of the technical crew on set. “What I often find upsetting with cinema is that we forget to acknowledge all the people it takes to make these moments together.

Lise Pedersen Top industry awards at the 53rd edition of the international documentary film festival Visions du Réel have gone to “La Bonga,” “Anatomy of the Night,” “The Other Profile,” “Noor” and “Becoming Roosi.” A total of 27 projects were invited to participate in three key forums – VdR-Pitching, VdR-Work in Progress and VdR-Rough Cut Lab – that ran as part of the festival’s industry activities in Nyon from April 10-14.Seventeen awards were handed out to 16 docs-in-the-making, two of which won a double award: “La Bonga,” by Sebastián Pinzón Silva and Canela Reyes, took the Visions Sud Est and Raggioverde Subtitling trophies, and “Mailin” by Maria Silvia Esteve won both the TËNK Post-Production and Party Film Sales awards. Considered to be the festival’s top industry prize, the Vision Sud Est award comes with a 10,000 CHF ($10,700) cash prize handed out to the best project from the Southern or Eastern Europe, and is the only award that takes in titles in both of the festival’s main industry sections: the VdR-Pitching and the VdR-Work in Progress segment.Handing out the prize, jury member Delphine Jeanneret, programmer and curator at the Internationale Kurzfilmtage Winterhur in Switzerland, said: “We decided to award a highly promising collective work that will have a broad impact on a community that took an active part in a portrait empowering them to reclaim their community through filmmaking.”Pinzón Silva and Reyes’ debut feature, “La Bonga” is about a displaced Afro-Colombian community that embarks on a symbolic journey through the jungles of the Caribbean to resurrect a home that exists only in their memories.

Lise Pedersen The French duo behind “The Last Hillbilly,” which received a Special Mention in the First Appearance category at IDFA, have been pitching their new project at Swiss documentary festival Visions du Réel. “A Dog’s Life” will follow the journey of six teenage girls from the juvenile detention center in Bakersfield as they embark on a rehabilitation program: for three months, the girls will attempt to mend their own lives by taking care of a rescued dog. Diane Sara Bouzgarrou told Variety how she and partner Thomas Jenkoe were inspired to pick up where they had left off with their first feature collaboration.

Today show wearing a matching slime green , , and by Marcell von Berlin. In any other color, her suit might not make waves—but the retina-burning hue is impossible to ignore.

Lise Pedersen Swiss sales agent Lightdox has added competition titles “Kapr Code” by Lucie Králová and “Garçonnières” by Céline Pernet to its lineup at international doc festival Visions du Réel, which runs April 7-17 in Nyon, Switzerland.Competing in the Burning Lights category, “Kapr Code” is described as a “documentary opera” that traces the life of controversial avant-garde Czech composer Jan Kapr (1914-1988), a Stalin Award laureate who was later banned in communist Czechoslovakia and erased from public memory. Director Lucie Králová transfers the composer’s life into musical composition, playfully mixing modern opera songs with Kapr’s never-before-seen private archive, revealing his humor, inner struggles and desire to be remembered.

Leo Barraclough International Features EditorSwiss documentary film festival Visions du Réel has opened in Nyon with a homage to Lithuanian director Mantas Kvedaravicius, who was killed while filming in Ukraine last week. The 45 year old, best known for his conflict-zone documentary “Mariupolis,” which was screened at the 2016 edition of the fest and has been added to this year’s lineup, was a festival regular.

A+E Networks Global Content Sales has hired Sony Pictures Television exec Kerstin Gühne as its Vice President for EMEA.

Manori Ravindran International EditorGlobal streaming service MUBI has snapped up Carla Simón’s Berlin Golden Bear winner “Alcarràs” for the U.S., U.K. and a raft of other markets.Spanish director Simón’s “Alcarràs” premiered in Competition at the 2022 Berlinale, where it won the Golden Bear for best film.

Elon Musk had quite the weekend!