After the Covid-19 outbreak, we took the hard but necessary decision to postpone the 4th edition of Visionär. Now, accordingly to new measures, cinemas can reopen and we can finally announce the new dates!

From the 21st to the 28th of September at ACUDkino, Visionär Film Festival – Encounters With New Talents will host a special edition of the festival. In the respect of all the hygienic measures taken to protect all of you, the cinema will offer a limited amount of seats. For this reason, we will screen each film and block of short film twice, to guarantee each work a decent visibility. 

And now an insight of what this edition will offer you!

The program offers an international selection of 9 first or second feature films in competition for the Audience and Jury Awards (all Berlin or German premieres) and the Short Berlin Encounters, a selection of 19 Short Films made by Berlin filmmakers for the Audience Award. Chile, Colombia (in co-production with Belgium), Brazil, Canada, USA (in co-production with France and China), Austria, Spain and Latvia are the countries of this year’s edition. This year Latin America, with the political gaze of their directors, has caught – and well deserves – our attention. The social turmoil following the state of repression needs voices of denunciation that will never be silenced. Now more than ever they need to be heard. Not only political but also social, intimate, sexual and artistic is the revolution undertaken by our new international talents. Sometimes it can even be funny!

Films tell stories but they are also a territory to reflect, investigate and rethink their language – both aesthetically and formally. The boundaries between documentary and fiction are now blurred. Arthouse and genre films don’t necessarily exclude each other. As Visionär’s mission is to discover and support new visions and talents, the selected films will also reflect a daring and unusual way of developing a discourse.

The section Short Berlin Encounters will be presented in four blocks under a common topic:

• Of Human and Beyond – An exploration of the relationship between human beings and what is beyond them.
  
• ¡Viva La Revolución! – As we never stop fighting for our rights.
  
• Heimat(en) – There is no place like home.
• Death&Desire – They can walk dangerously together, sometimes it can be fun, other times not.

Visionär believes and respects gender equality and gender inclusivity in its selection. In an industry that doesn’t always make it so easy for women*, in a world in which it’s still necessary to impose the “pro film quote” in order to assure their presence, Visionär is very proud to contribute support to women. We’ll have 6 men directors and 6 women directors in the feature films competition, and 8 male filmmakers and 13 female filmmakers in the Berlin Short Encounters.  

A section of short films made by women* directors from Northern Europe under the name of Panorama Nordic | Female* Voices will be the special focus of this upcoming edition. This is a curated section which changes every year and intends to draw attention on specific topics, regions and concepts. Countries in focus will be: Finland, Iceland, Lithuania, Sweden. 

This year Visionär will pay homage to Cheryl Dunye, a world-renowned African American director, writer, and actress who emerged as part of the “Queer New Wave” of young filmmakers in the early 1990s. Visionär will present her first feature film, The Watermelon Woman, that won the Teddy Award for Best Feature at the 1996 Berlin International Film Festival. Set in Philadelphia, The Watermelon Woman is the story of Cheryl (Cheryl Dunye), a twenty-something black lesbian struggling to make a documentary about Fae Richards, a beautiful and elusive 1930s black film actress popularly known as “The Watermelon Woman.”  The Watermelon Woman is clearly a metaphor for Cheryl’s search for identity, community, and love.

As a multidisciplinary event, Visionär will host a film concert under the name of Kino Sonico: this is a female project where two well-known female electronic musicians develop new scores for silent films made by a woman pioneering in cinema. Alice Guy Blaché’s short films of 1912, Falling Leaves and Making an American Citizen, will be shown together with a live performance of Marion Wörle aka Frau W and Lena Kocisova aka Akkamiau. Guy-Blaché was a producer, a writer, a casting director, a set designer and the first female film director – for some years the only female director – in cinema history. She began working for France’s Gaumont pictures, then moved to the US and founded her own studio, Solax. She made more than 1.000 films. How such a pioneer faded into obscurity has much to do with her gender and with how film history has been written by men. In fact, while her male colleagues were glorified, Guy-Blaché’s work was neglected, if not even attributed to the men.

On duty call to judge our nine feature films and assign the Jury Award are three film directors: Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese (Lesotho), Jules Herrmann (Germany) and Pippo Mezzapesa (Italy). Also, the audience is called to serve as a judge for both the full-length and short film selections.

Opening:

Kino Sonico
– Falling Leaves by Alice Guy Blaché, France, 1912, 12’
– Making an American Citizen by Alice Guy Blaché, France, 1912, 16’

Panorama Nordic | Female* Voices  ca. 85′
– Match (Matchen) by Pia Andell, Finland, 2018, 15‘
– The Ambassador’s Wife by Theresa Traore Dahlberg, Sweden, 2018, 17‘
– Tweener (Brottas) by Julia Thelin, Sweden, 2018, 16‘
– XY by Anna Karín Lárusdóttir, Iceland, 2019, 16‘
– I (Ég) by Hallfríður Tryggvadóttir, Vala Ómarsdóttir, Iceland, 2018, 15‘
– Quartz (Kvarcas) by Odeta Riškutė, Klaudija Matvejevait, Lithuania, 2019, 5‘36‘‘

Feature Films in Competition:

– Pahokee by Ivete Lucas, Patrick Bresnan (USA / France, 2019, 112’, Berlin Premiere)
– L.A. Tea Time by Sophie Bédard-Marcotte (Canada, 2019, 84’, German Premiere)
– Obscure by Kunlin Wang (USA/China, 2019, 91‘, German Premiere)
– Lillian by Andreas Horvath (Austria, 2019, 130’, Berlin Premiere)
– Enigma by Ignacio Juricic Merillán (Chile, 2018, 80’, Berlin Premiere)
– Tantas Almas (Valley of Souls) by Nicolás Rincón Gille (Colombia, Belgium, Brazil and France, 2019, 137’, German Premiere)
– Oleg by Juris Kursietis (Latvia, 2019, 84’, German Premiere)
– Indianara by Aude Chevalier-Beaumel, Marcelo Barbosa (Brazil, 2019, 84’, Berlin Premiere)
– Ojos Negros by Marta Lallana, Ivet Castelo (Spain, 2019, 67’ – Berlin Premiere)

Homage:

– The Watermelon Woman by Cheryl Dunye, USA, 1996, 90‘

Short Berlin Encounters: 

Of Human and Beyond, 72′
– The Divine Way (La Via Divina) by Ilaria Di Carlo, Germany, 2018, 15’
– Ali by Rain Kencana, Germany, Turkey, 2019, 13’30’’
– What We Were (Ohne Euch) by Hannah Martin & Melanie Waelde, Germany 2018, 13‘30‘‘
– Seed by Christobal Araneda, Germany, 2020, 10‘
– Q: Ghostly Remote Effect (Q: Spukhafte Fernwirkung) by Marcus Hanisch, Germany, 2020, 20‘

¡Viva La Revolución!, 85′
– Emperor (Kaiser) by Jannis Alexander Kiefer, Germany, 2019, 30‘
– Them by Robin Lochmann, Germany, Ireland, 2019, 15‘
– The Two of Us (Wir Zwei) by Cosima Frei, Switzerland, 2018, 16‘
– Revolvo by Francy Fabritz, Germany, 2019, 8’
– Lolo by Leandro Goddinho & Pablo Menezes, Germany, Brazil, 2019, 13’40’’

Heimat(en), 56′
– Everything alright (Minden rendben) by Borbála Nagy, Germany, 2018, 12‘
– How Do You Say (Come si dice) by Jasmin Preiß, Germany, 2020, 15’
– Sheep by Thomas Georgi, Malta, Germany, 2018, 11‘40‘‘
– Learn To Swim (Freischwimmer) by Gaya von Schwarze, Germany, 2019, 17‘

Death&Desire, 56′
– Sleeping Messenger (Der Schlafende Bote) by Florinda Frisardi, Germany, 2019, 5‘
– Inside Me by Maria Trigo Teixeira, Germany, 2019, 5’
– Handarbeit by Marie-Amélie Steul, Germany, 2019, 13‘30‘‘
– Post Mortem berlin by Anton von Heiseler, Germany, 2019, 27‘
– Fuckboy by Stella Macdonald, Germany, 2019, 6‘