41% of the films selected were directed by women; 31 films are first films. Visions du R\u00e9el pays tribute to the French author, filmmaker and screenwriter Emmanuel Carr\u00e8re <\/a>by awarding him the prestigious Prix d\u2019honneur. The 2021 Ateliers are dedicated to Tatiana Huezo<\/a> and Pietro Marcello<\/a>. Les Gu\u00e9risseurs<\/a><\/em>, the first feature-length film by Swiss filmmaker Marie-Eve Hildbrand, will open the 52nd edition on 15 April. The only festival in Switzerland dedicated to documentary filmmaking, Visions du R\u00e9el is a flagship event at an international level, and is offering a series of specific projects to make itself accessible to as many people as possible. Its Industry component constitutes an important networking platform and selects projects at all stages of their development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u00ab We will make every effort to once more make this edition a special and memorable event, to find the formats combining conviviality and safety, to give the public and the filmmakers everything that we can offer them. The edition will be as virtual as necessary and as physical as possible. \u00bb says Raymond Loretan, pr\u00e9sident du Festival.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The films that populate the 2021 official selection embrace this freedom, these subjectivities, this refusal of explanations or comprehensive information, so they may better aspire to conveying sentiments and personal emotions, which will only become even more universal. So, this powerful and eclectic 2021 selection will once again enable us to take into account the independence and the emancipation of contemporary documentary filmmaking, which keeps itself at the right distance from the sometimes alienating issues of fiction and from the often excessively confined definitions\u2014in form and in substance\u2014of the traditional \u201cdocumentary\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n