Our contributor Claire Lim reviews her three favorite short films presented at the 52nd edition of Visions du Réel: The Communion of my Cousin Andrea, Future Foods and The City of the Sun.
We were delighted to spend the last 11 days enjoying the rich program of the 52nd Visions du Réel (International Film Festival Nyon, Switzerland), which took place in a hybrid format, from April 15th to 25th 2021. Our contributor Claire Lim has delved into the festival program with hunger and curiosity: in the end, she watched the entire international short film program. And since she is a generous indie film lover, she used her experience as a festival programmer to flag and reflect on her three favorite short films presented this year at Visions du Réel. Those three films do not deal with a common theme but all play with different cinematographic codes, and with the meaning of documentaries.
The Communion of my Cousin Andrea (Dir. Brandán Cerviño)
Families recording their children growing, through everyday life and important events seems a common and shared human activity. They seem to look all the same : the camera is shaky, lots of brouhaha and people are not always comfortable with the camera’s presence. In The Communion of my Cousin Andrea, director Brandán Cerviño and his cousin Andrea reflect on her communion and the footage that came out of it.
Taking place in a Galician church, Andrea’s communion follows ancient traditions. Not particularly shaky, the footage looks like most of the family films, we see the most important family members, the priest, the church and obviously the celebrated member of the family: Andrea. The ceremony seems really solemn and has no space for the girl to really express herself. One year after the celebration, Andrea’s cousin asks her how she remembers her communion and what she would like her footage to look like.
With her vivid humor and straightforward honesty, Andrea has a conversation with her cousin in voice-over, that allows her to share her communion souvenirs and thoughts, one year later. Director Brandán Cerviño gives her the choice to edit the footage with special effects and music of her choosing. Reminding me of the 2000 internet humor and aesthetics, the “ugly” special effects adds a distance to the seriousness of the communion but give a better sense of Andrea’s personality. Swapping between classical music and Reggaeton, the chosen music is an expression of her state of mind.
The Communion of my Cousin Andrea is a sweet and surprising short documentary in which we discover Andrea’s personality and humor. Director Brandán Cerviño succeeds in giving the space for younger people to truly express themselves, and an original and funny family film.
Future Foods (Dir. Gerard Ortín Castellví)
As people are more aware of meat consumption leading to pollution, food industry players are creating more and more meat substitutes to satisfy in-transition vegetarians or eco-curious meat consumers. Future Foods, as you can expect from the title, will talk about future possibilities of nourishing people. The voice over of the film is taken from a telephone interview with Pasi Vainikka, CEO of Solar Foods, who tells us about a new protein called “Solein” and explains its potential of reducing the carbon footprint of food production. As we hear about this new protein, images show weird and unusual colored textures being mixed together by people in gloves. The images are actually footage from Workshops of Replica LTD, a workshop that makes plastic food for cinema.
With irony and disgust, director Gerard Ortín Castellví criticizes the production of this kind of alternative, food that looks like food but is not. The idea behind the combination of the voice and the footage reminds me of Soylent Green (Richard Fleischer, 1973), a science fiction feature film about a dystopia where the population eat “soylent green”, a new kind of food. Whether we consume meat or not, Future Foods is an unconventional short documentary that reminds us to pay attention to the food we eat during our over-industrialized capitalist lifetimes.
The City of the Sun (Dir. Maria Semenova)
Starting like a fiction film, a father tells his son a story on a night train. The story is about Vissarion, a self-proclaimed reincarnation of Jesus. Himself and his followers live in Siberia. The father has believed in Vissarion for twenty five years and feels the urge to leave the city in order to join Vissarion and his followers. The day after the night shift, the boy and the father arrive in Siberia, in a peaceful dark and snowy place. Director Maria Semenova follows the young boy during his journey into this cult.
Before sleeping, the boy shares his fears in voice-over. The beauty here lies in the fact that the boy’s comments feel like a written diary, or letters he would like to send to his mother. After he does so, we are shown old footage of his mother being happy. Warm and cheerful, the footage feels like a dream. In contrast, the visuals of Siberia are cold and dehumanizing, people are mostly filmed in groups, we do not know any names. Director Maria Semenova succeeds in giving her point of view through the use of a relevant mise en scene, and the use of a continuous music that gives a worrying atmosphere to the whole documentary.
As I mentioned before, the film feels like a fiction film, as I felt like the cult was not part of real life. The choice of highlighting this topic in a documentary this way places a big distance from the cult and the spectator. Without harsh and straightforward judgement, The City of the Sun is a touching documentary that alarms us of sectarianism.
We were delighted to cover the 52nd edition of Visions du Réel. Among the titles we were thrilled to discover, we were proud to flag The Bubble, Searchers and Don’t Hesitate to Come for a Visit, Mom, on top of the three short films reviewed in this article.
