The Winners of Visions du Réel 2025
Clarisa Navas' The Prince of Nanawa and Bani Khoshnoudi's The Vanishing Point win the two main prizes in the international competitions of Visions du Réel 2025
Argentinian director Clarisa Navas took home the Grand Prize in the International Feature Film Competition with The Prince of Nanawa, an expansive film that follows the transformations of Ángel over 10 years, from childhood to adulthood, on the border between Argentina and Paraguay. The Jury's Special Prize awarded To Use a Mountain of Casey Carter, while the Special Mention was given to Marie Voignier’s Anamocot.
Jury statement: a film where process and document are inextricable from one another. With confidence and humility, it straddles autofiction, fiction and non-fiction resisting the master’s narrative. The camera becomes a communal, familial instrument that passionately records the microcosm of youth as it negotiates borders and boundaries. The filmmakers’ gaze is solvent, hospitable and tender— without ever sentimentalizing or othering their subject.
The Burning Lights Competition honored The Vanishing Point by Bani Khoshnoudi, which breaks the family silence surrounding a missing cousin who was executed during the 1988 purges in the political prisons of the Iranian regime.
Jury statement: “The filmmaker opens her family history to unlock a kaleidoscope of materials both personal and political, past and present, that culminates in a manifesto of resistance against the regime. Guiding the viewer through archival material, history is illuminated while addressing an inaccessible present - a bold and radical exploration of shared pain and collective resistance.”
The jury of the National Competition awarded Les Vies d’Andrès by Fribourg native Baptiste Janon and Belgian filmmaker Rémi Pons, which sheds light on the daily lives of four truck drivers caught in a spiral of performance expectations and logistical constraints, interwoven with a novel about a cart driver from the early 20th century.
In the same competition, Sediments by Laura Coppens won the Jury's Special Prize. Finally, the special mention in the National Competition went to Toute ma vie by Matias Carlier.
Jury statement: “The film offers a poetic meditation on labour, dignity, and the quiet erosion of humanity within capitalist machinery. With striking cinematic language and emotional depth, the film reveals how men, like Andres, become silent cogs in systems that extract not only their time but also their souls—systems that, in their own hunger, ultimately consume themselves. For its profound exploration of endurance, identity, and the weight of invisible labour, we are proud to honour the film with this award.”
All of these films held their world premieres at Visions du Réel.
The Audience Award went to Cutting Through Rocks by Sara Khaki and Mohammadreza Eyni.
Two further films were awarded, including David Bim’s To the West, in Zapata which earned itself the Jury's Special Prize, alongside the International Critics' Prize - Prix FIPRESCI on the occasion of their 100th anniversary. A special mention went to Fierté nationale : de Jéricho vers Gaza by Sven Augustijnen.
Visions du Réel continues until Sunday evening, with encores of a selection of award-winning films. The online program remains accessible until Sunday, 20 April.
For Visions du Réel’s artistic director Émilie Bujès, “The 154 films presented at the 2025 Festival offer a myriad prisms through which to explore contemporary documentary cinema and to discover bold, personal, and singular cinematic voices. I’m delighted to see that this year’s awards reflect this ambition, notably including films created over extended periods of time. This confirms our deep commitment to offering powerful and original cinematic experiences — a true bulwark against the standardization of both cinema and ideas.”
Congratulations to all the award-winning teams !
Photo : Léa Rener
