12/05/2009

Young Swiss director Gaël Métroz’s debut feature Nomad’s Land [+see also:
trailer
film profile] has just won Best Documentary at the 52nd San Francisco International Film Festival. The film was previously lauded at Cinema Planeta (Audience Award) and selected at the Göteborg International Film Festival, Dokfest Munich, DOK Leipzig International Festival, Hof International Film Days and the Locarno International Film Festival.

Unveiled in 2008 at the Visions du Réel Festival, the documentary, produced by Swiss company Tipi’mages, has already garnered 32,000 admissions in Switzerland – a respectable box office performance.

After his 2005 television documentary, Rimbaud’s Africa, Métroz here traces the footsteps of another “adventurer”, Swiss writer and photographer Nicolas Bouvier. Alone with his camera and backpack, the young director travels across Turkey, Iran and Pakistan and discovers that the romantic Orient of the 1950s described in The Way of the World is no longer so idyllic: Iran is in crisis, Pakistan is shaken by tribal violence and Sri Lanka is ravaged by civil war.

Métroz soon strays from Bouvier’s route to trace his own path. Along the way, he rediscovers the philosophy of travel advocated by the writer.