As part of its collaboration with the Istituto Svizzero, Visions du Réel presents, for the sixth consecutive year, an open-air screening evening on 1 July from 21:15 in the institute’s garden in Rome. The programme features two documentaries from the Festival’s 2025 Official Selection: Cutting Through Rocks by Mohammadreza Eyni and Sara Khaki, and Sanatorium by Gar O’Rourke. The event will be attended by Sergio Fant, member of the Visions du Réel selection committee. Free entry, registration required.
More information and reservations
Evening Program:
21:15 – Cutting Through Rocks by Mohammadreza Eyni and Sara Khaki, 2025, 94′
Languages: Azari, Farsi
Subtitles: English
Audience Award of the 2025 Grand Angle Competition, presented by the City of Nyon
23:00 – Sanatorium by Gar O’Rourke, 2025, 90′
Language: Ukrainian
Subtitles: English
Cutting Through Rocks followed an unlikely path to winning the World Cinema Documentary Grand Jury Prize at Sundance earlier this year. Co-directors Sara Khaki and Mohammadreza Eyni first met Sara Shahverdi while searching for female entrepreneurs — a chance encounter that quickly revealed itself as destiny. It’s not hard to see why: Shahverdi is a force of nature, a compelling and inspiring figure whose unshakable resolve leaves a lasting impression.
Riding her motorcycle across the vast, windswept plains of northwestern Iran, Shahverdi cuts an unconventional figure. But it soon becomes clear that her ambitions reach far beyond her own hard-won personal freedom. She is determined to challenge the deeply rooted patriarchal norms that govern her community. As the first woman ever elected to her village council, she faces constant resistance from her male counterparts. Cutting Through Rocks captures her fierce determination, sharp political instinct, and deep empathy as she carves her own path through a world of obstacles.
In many ways, Khaki and Eyni’s thoughtful filmmaking echoes Shahverdi’s approach: even the smallest spark of freedom can open up vast new horizons. And sometimes, the roar of an engine is all it takes to set it in motion.
James Berclaz-Lewis
In times of war, the Kuyalnik Sanatorium in Odessa, southern Ukraine, is called upon to treat more than creaking joints and nutritional deficiencies. The staff — including a gargantuan all-purpose janitor, an tireless entertainer, and a doctor specialised in just about everything from ophthalmology to podiatry — do their best to keep smiling, even as their imposing brutalist building falls apart and the air raid sirens go off. As for the guests, among whom there is also no lack of memorable characters, they do their best to enjoy a few days of relaxation in pastel-coloured rooms, treatments with delightfully anachronistic Soviet-era machines, basking in the sun and the beaches of the Black Sea. All this, despite the smoke columns rising on the horizon, a reminder of how close the front line lies.
If this extraordinary humanity can smile and make us smile in the midst of war, we can’t wait to find out what they’ll be capable of when they finally return to enjoy their thermal mud baths, aquagym, karaoke and ping-pong tournaments in well-deserved peace.
Sergio Fant
Doc nights 2024
