Cinéma du Réel awards Differently, Mollusia

by Fabien Lemercier

02/04/2012 - A prestigious festival in the world of documentary filmmaking, Cinéma du Réel organised in Paris, in Beaubourg, from March 22, will tomorrow end its 34th edition with Jaurès by Vincent Dieutre (discovered in Berlin – read the review. This weekend, the festival awarded the winners in all four sections of its competition.

In the international competition for feature-length documentaries, the jury handed over the Grand Prix Cinéma du Réel to Differently, Mollusia by Nicolas Rey (photo). Already selected at last year’s Forum Expanded at the Berlinale, the film is shot in 16mm with used film rolls, and is made up of nine reels projected at random for a spell-binding and crepuscular trip in a mythical anti-facist country imagined in the 1930s by German writer Günther Anders. In the competition were also Le camp by Jean-Frédéric de Hasque from Belgium, Orquestra geração by the duo Filipa Reis - João Miller Guerra from Portugal, and Two Years At Sea by Ben Rivers from Great Britain.

The Joris Ivens Prize in the first feature section went to Chinese-Canadian co-production Vanishing Spring Light by Xun Yu, with a special mention for A nossa forma de vida by Portuguese filmmaker Pedro Filipe Marques for his cinematographic portrait of an old couple living in a tower, eight floors about the Douro river.

Among other awards (and there were many in the parallel sections), in the French section Contrechamp, the young jury awarded East Punk Memories by Lucile Chaufour and gave a special mention to La cause et l’usage by the duo Dorine Brun - Julien Meunier.

This 2012 edition of Cinéma du Réel in total screened 35 films in all sections, and honoured late filmmakers Mario Ruspoli and Raoul Ruiz. Workshops this year were held by British documentary filmmaker Dick Fontaine, American filmmaker John Gianvito, and Portuguese filmmaker Susana de Sousa Dias.