Visions du Réel Director Emilie Bujès on Running a Festival ‘in the Eye of the Storm’

The lockdown that went into effect in March 2020 left Visions du Réel artistic director Emilie Bujès in an unenviable spot. The festival director and her programing team had spent months putting together the various sections, securing rights and inviting talent – but with new sanitary measures putting the kibosh on any physical event, the team made an unprecedented choice, and over the course of a few frenzied weeks, moved the festival online.

One can say the bet paid off. Last April’s online edition proved successful not only for the accredited public, filmmakers and press, it also drew international attention, assuaging a skittish industry that the digital model could offer a durable, workable solution in socially distanced times.

As they planned their 2021 edition, the team hoped to take that model a step further. “We partly said ‘never again,’ while recognizing that there could be no way to move backwards,” Bujès tells Variety. “I think there will always be a digital interface [from here on out], so it would foolish to limit the new opportunities. We’d have to find a new balance.”

In many ways, putting together this year’s hybrid edition, which runs from April 15-25, proved an even greater challenge. As Europe went in and out of lockdown, Bujès and her team had to navigate a festival calendar that was ever in flux, working remotely as they sifted through nearly 3,000 submissions.

Despite complicated working conditions and a newly elevated profile, the festival remained steadfast in its programming mandate. “Last year allowed us to position ourselves in certain contexts where we weren’t so readily known,” Bujès says. “That granted us a degree of visibility we would not otherwise have had.”

“[With that in mind], we needed to further our reputation as a place that reveals new talents,” she continues. “I think that’s what we do best, and have for some time. We try to reveal new talents and help them break into the circuit. That is an essential part of our mission.”

“We’re at once an international reference, while remaining fairly small in scale,” Bujès adds. “That’s something we want to maintain. The fact that we remain ‘small-scale’ grants us a kind of unity and coherence. Anyone attending the festival, either in person or online, can meet anyone else; there’s a common understanding of a cinematic vision we’re trying to defend.”