Fire of Love, filmmaker Sara Dosa’s epic and spectacular portrait of the volcanologists Katia and Maurice Krafft, will kick off this year’s edition on Thursday 7 April. The American-Canadian feature will be presented as a Swiss premiere. Following two respectively digital and hybrid editions, the Festival team is thrilled to return to cinemas, while also providing a streaming platform with a selection of the official program and the masterclasses. The President of the Swiss Confederation, Ignazio Cassis, the Member of the Cantonal Council of Vaud, Cesla Amarelle, and Mayor of Nyon, Daniel Rossellat, will be among the speakers of the opening ceremony.
Katia and Maurice Krafft loved two things — each other, and volcanoes
Fire of Love tells the extraordinary love story of the two intrepid French scientists who died in a volcanic explosion doing the very thing that brought them together: seeking to understand the mystery of volcanoes by capturing hundreds of hours of footage and thousands of photographs. Director Sara Dosa affectionately and playfully interprets the Kraffts’ story and images they left behind. Associating them with animations, book excerpts, media appearances and the narrating voice of artist-filmmaker Miranda July, she embarks on a collaged archival exploration. Visions du Réel thus opens with an astounding film of adventure and love, revolving around the themes of love, time, the implacable unknown and the meaning of human existence amid the vastness of our planet’s most awesome force.
An ebullient festival
While the work was enthusiastically received at this year’s Sundance Film Festival online edition, Visions du Réel will present this epic and spectacular object on the big screen. It is a joy to open the 53rd edition of Visions du Réel with a film that carries such a strong symbol. Ebullient and sparkling, Visions du Réel is working on a line-up that encompasses human existences and forms that are in tune with the expectations of its public. Following two online and hybrid editions, the Festival reasserts its vocation as a place of cinematographic discovery, meetings and exchanges, where the films are introduced in theaters and in the presence of the filmmakers. However, after two pioneering years in terms of digital, Visions du Réel also wishes to uphold the positive aspects by providing an online selection of films from the programme, as well as the masterclasses. For professionals, remote participation in certain activities will also be possible.
Sara Dosa, independent director and producer
Fire of Love will be presented in the presence of the director. An Independent Spirit Awards-nominee and a Peabody Award-winner, Sara Dosa directs and produces documentaries focused on notable characters, ecology, the economy and the community. Her first feature-length film The Last Season won a Golden Gate Award at the San Francisco International Film Festival in 2014, and was nominated for the Truer than Fiction Award at the Independent Spirit Awards. Dosa co-directed an Emmy Award-nominated episode, about Johnny Cash’s concert for Richard Nixon in 1970, for the Netflix musical documentary series Remastered. Her third feature-length film as a director, The Seer & The Unseen (2019), picked up awards at many festivals. She produced Audrie & Daisy (2016 Sundance/Netflix Originals), which won a Peabody Award, and Survivors (2018 IDFA/POV), which was nominated for the Peabody and Emmy Awards. The director also co-produced the Oscar-nominated film The Edge of Democracy (2019 Sundance/Netflix Originals) by Petra Costa (to whom an Atelier was dedicated at Visions du Réel in 2020), as well as An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power (2017 Sundance / Paramount) by Al Gore. In 2018, DOC NYC nominated Sara Dosa in its inaugural class of “40 under 40” documentary directors, and she joined the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences. She is a graduate of Wesleyan University and has a Master’s degree in Anthropology and International Development Economics from the London School of Economics. Today, Sara Dosa lives and works in San Francisco.
The full programme of the 53rd edition of Visions du Réel will be announced on 15 March 2022.