They take on hope, disillusionment, denunciation; they fight, they are revolutionary, they dream, they hunt for themselves and for the truth. They rise, they fall and finally rise again. They are the visionary talents of today and masters of tomorrow presented at the 4th edition of Visionär Film Festival – Encounters with New Talents back in Berlin from the 1st to the 5th of April 2020 at ACUDkino.

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 international new talents. Sometimes it can be even funny.

Films tell stories but they are also a territory to reflect, investigate and rethink, aesthetically and formally, their language. 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.

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.

More info about the Homage and our panels, organized in collaboration with Filmnetzwerk, as the whole program will be revealed soon.