Shifting Baselines by Julien Elie is a visually stunning, dystopian-like documentary that examines the environmental and human consequences of industrial development in Boca Chica, Texas. The arrival of SpaceX’s Starbase facility has altered the landscape and reshaped the daily lives of the people living nearby. Elie constructs his film with an assured holistic vision, letting both architecture, people involved, and nature tell the story.
Tag Archives: Visions du Réel 2025
Visions du Réel 2025 Review: “To the West, in Zapata”
TTo the West in Zapata by David Beltrán i Marí is a contemplative, COVID-era work set against the remote backdrop of Cuba’s Zapata Swamp. It follows a crocodile hunter named Landi and his wife, Mercedes, who remains at home caring for their autistic son while Landi spends long stretches deep in the wetlands. Beltrán i Marí explores isolation, survival, and the rhythms of domestic and environmental life shaped by absence and routine.
Visions du Réel 2025 Review: “Gen_”
In Gen_, director Gianluca Matarrese creates an intimate and layered portrait of Dr. Bini, an Italian fertility specialist whose clinic becomes a meeting point for a diverse range of patients. Cisgender men with fertility struggles, gay couples pursuing parenthood, trans people receiving hormone treatments, and people questioning their own gender identity all pass through his doors. The film moves through these encounters, observing with sensitivity and without imposing a fixed viewpoint.
Visions du Réel 2025 Review: “Afternoons of Solitude”
Albert Serra’s Afternoons of Solitude is a provocative, and unsettling documentary that explores the ‘art’ of bullfighting. While the ethicality of bullfighting hovers constantly over the film, Serra resists direct moralizing. He offers a raw, sensorial exploration of masculinity, performance, and spectacle, letting the audience sit with their own judgments. It becomes a strange, gorgeous character study of one man, bullfighter Andrés Roca Rey, and the hypermasculine, flamboyant culture that celebrates and consumes him.
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