Faya Dayi triumphs at the Visions du Réel Festival
Les Enfants terribles and
The big winners of the 2021 edition of the Visions du Réel Festival -
Faya Dayi by
Jessica Beshir (which won the International Feature Films Competition, as well as the Mobilière Grand Prize and the Fipresci Award),
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Indeed,
Les Enfants terribles, a highly personal and courageous work
, are both first films. Presented in Nyon in a world premiere, the latter pushes documentary research off the beaten track through its skilfully ambitious blend of archive material (film and sound recordings) and stop-motion characters depicting the high-ranking officers in the Polish police force who took part in the events explored.
Visions du Réel Prizes Faya Dayi, 1970, Les Enfants Terribles
John Hopewell, provided by
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Jessica Beshir’s mesmeric Sundance hit “Faya Dayi” won big at Visions du Réel on Saturday, scooping both its top Grand Jury Prize as well as a Fipresci International Critics Award.
The prize – and Beshir’s surprised but ecstatic acceptance via Zoom from New York – brought to a climax a festival which, as director Emile Bujes pointed out at the closing ceremony, was one of the first to go completely online in 2020. This year, she noted, it became one of the first to open up an on-site component after third-wave COVID-19 launching second-half-of-the festival cinema screenings and welcoming 200 industry members. The initiative came after the Swiss government announced, one day before the festival began, that theaters could re-open in Switzerland.