The Punto de Vista Official Selection features twenty-three films from fifteen different countries.

01/30/2024

Today saw the presentation of the eighteenth edition of Punto de Vista, the International Documentary Film Festival of Navarre, to take place in Pamplona from 11th to 16th March. This event, promoted by the government of Navarre and organised by the public company NICDO, has announced its Official Selection, to be made up of a total of twenty-three films: twelve feature-length films and eight shorts which will be competing for the prizes at the festival, plus three films outside the competition.

The highlights of the competitive Official Selection include the world première of the new feature by the Argentinean Mario Llinás (Retrato de Mondongo), the latest film from the great Indian documentary maestro Anand Patwardhan (Vasudhaiva kutumbakam / The World is Family) and the feature La rivière, by the recent winner of the Prix Jean Vigo, Dominique Marchais. Also Šutnja razuma / Silence of Reason, by the young Macedonian film maker Kumjana Novakova, a winner at IDFA and Sarajevo, a new short by the Peruvian Yaela Gottlieb — back at the festival after featuring in 2022 — entitled ¿Dónde está Mary Anne?, and the feature by French-Lebanese film maker Maya Abdul-Malak Un cœur perdu et autres rêves de Beyrouth. Among the themes running through both the Official Selection and the festival bill as a whole are those of family and historical memory, gender and identity issues, migration policies, the climate and environmental emergency, human diversity and other species.

Special mention must be made of the films opening and closing the festival, which are also part of the Official Selection though out of competition. It begins on 11th March with the première in Navarre of Zinzindurrunkarratz, the film by Oskar Alegria that has won several international prizes: "The film maker takes a poetic journey through the memory of another time, a time of which all that remains are fragments. Equipped with his Super-8, he returns to the paths his grandparents trod, in the hills of Artazu in Navarre, to record the echoes of a world that no longer exists." The festival is to close with the screening of the latest feature by visual artist, researcher and curator Pedro G. Romero, who featured in the festival in 2021. de caballos y guitarras starts out from the recording of a guitar concert for an audience of horses, mules and donkeys, organised at the Academia de España in Rome in 2019, to offer a speculative essay about equine perception, the masculine view, the vision of the camera and other related themes. Finally, also in the Official Selection but outside competition (in this case, part of the Lan section) is La vida a oscuras, an attractive portrait of the Argentinean film archivist and researcher Fernando Martín Peña, made by Enrique Bellande. Martín Peña will be visiting the festival to take part in different events, to be announced very soon, together with the rest of this section.

A highlight this year is the large number of premières in the festival's Official Selection. These include a total of five world premières, three international ones, one European one and twelve Spanish ones, from a selection from over 800 films that were entered. As usual at Punto de Vista, the Official Selection offers a rich, varied look at film makers from all over the world.  The twenty-three films come from fifteen countries: Argentina, Belgium, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Canada, Colombia, South Korea, Cuba, Denmark, Spain, the United States, France, India, Japan, North Macedonia and Peru.

The films competing in the Official Selection at Punto de Vista will be vying for one of the prizes to be awarded by the international jury (to be announced soon), the youth jury and the festival audience itself. Among these are the Punto de Vista Grand Prize for best film, worth 10,000 euros, the Jean Vigo prize for best director, worth 5,000 euros, the prize for best short film, worth 3,000 euros under the auspices of EITB, the special audience prize, worth 1,650 euros, and the youth prize, with the support of the Navarre Youth Institute and worth 1,500 euros. Also, the International Jury may award up to two special commendations, with no prize money.

The Punto de Vista programming committee, made up of  Anna Brufau — joining for the first time this year — Lucía Salas, Miguel Zozaya and Pablo García Canga had the job of choosing the selection together with the artistic director of the festival, Manuel Asín.

 

Punto de Vista Official Selection 2024:

1. Avalancha, Daniel Cortés. Colombia. 25 min. Spanish première

2. Corazón embalsamado, Julieta Seco. Argentina. 74 min. World première

3. de caballos y guitarras, Pedro G. Romero. Spain. 99 min. Non-competition

4. ¿Dónde está Marie Anne?, Yaela Gottlieb. Peru, Argentina. 6 min. European première

5. El Canto de los Años Nuevos, Alexander Cabeza Trigg. Spain. 23 min. Spanish première

6. En communauté, Camille Octobre Laperche. France. 44 min. International première

7. Homing, Tamer Hassan. Brazil, USA. 34 min. World première

8. Inde Ved Siden Af, Maia Torp Neergaard. Denmark. 18 minutes. World première

9. La rivière, Dominique Marchais. France. 104 min. Spanish première

10. La suite canadienne, Olivier Godin. Canada. 68 min. Spanish première

11. La vida a oscuras, Enrique Bellande. Argentina. 74 min. Non-competition. International première

12. Night Walk, Sohn Koo-Yong. South  Korea. 65 min. Spanish première

13. Ôte-toi de mon soleil, Messaline Raverdy. Belgium. 49 min. Spanish première

14. Procès-verbal, Matthew Wolkow. Canada. 5 min. Spanish première

15. Radiance, Shuhei Hatano. Japan. 18 min. International première

16. REMEMBERING FRANCO, Pedro Pinzolas. Spain. 69 min. World première

17. Retrato de Mondongo, Mariano Llinás. Argentina. 121 min. World première

18. Silence of Reason, Kumjana Novakova. North Macedonia, Bosnia-Herzegovina. 63 min. Spanish première

19. Submarino volador, Lucas Zacarias. Cuba. 24 min. Spanish première

20. Sur le fil d’Ariane, Adina Ionescu-Muscel & Clara Beaudoux. Belgium. 11 min. Spanish première

21. Un cœur perdu et autres rêves de Beyrouth, Maya Abdul-Malak. France. 36 min. Spanish première

22. Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam / The World is Family, Anand Patwardhan. India. 96 min. Spanish première

23. Zinzindurrunkarratz, Oskar Alegria. Spain. 89 min. Non-competition. Première in Navarre

 

Azucena Vieites, creator of the Punto de Vista image for 2024

The image for this year's festival is the work of Azucena Vieites. The artist herself says, "To create a poster image for Punto de Vista 2024, I thought the best thing would be not to produce something specifically, but to work on something I had already done. The image I chose shows the convergences between the thematic aspects of the festival and some of the pieces included in the programme." To do this, she used a technique related to the methods of Do It Yourself culture and to other influences such as surrealism (found objects) and ready-made. Multiplicity, the fragment or repetition as a break with the absolute image and linear narrative forms and the ephemeral, the nature of the piece as a process are clearly relevant factors in this artist's work. Work by Azucena Vieites is to be found in the collections of numerous institutions and museums including the Museo Reina Sofía, San Telmo Museoa, IVAM, Artium, Kutxa Fundazioa, CA2M and MUSAC.

 

Other content already announced includes Contactos, X Films and the Mediation Programme

In recent weeks the festival has announced the first details of its programme, aimed at both the general public and accredited film professionals and students.

The Contactos section is to feature a film and talk about how the gothic art of stained glass windows is related to film, given by Jerome Hiler, a legend in American avant-garde film. Another session is also to be devoted to him, featuring his rarely-screened films. The Oteiza museum is also to host an audiovisual introduction to the figure of the multi-faceted artist Néstor Basterretxea on the centenary of his birth. Moreover, Punto de Vista continues the X Films project, one of its most distinctive sections, in which the festival itself acts as a film producer. This year the film maker Celia Viada Caso has been invited to carry out a project to be shot in 2024, and the film Tránsitos will be premiered, a personal view of the Sanfermines by Anna López Luna, filmed in Super 8, which was selected as the winning proposal in 2023.

Finally, the beginning of the month saw the announcement of the contents of the Mediation Programme, which reaches out to audiences from the whole city of Pamplona, through a workshop for children, two documentary film sessions for families, a session at the Filmoteca de Navarra for upper secondary students and another edition of Jóvenes Programadores x Punto de Vista.

The rest of the bill will be announced between now and its opening. This year its structure has been simplified into six sections: the Official Selection, Focos, Lan, Contactos, X Films and the Mediation Programme.