Visions du Réel starts today Friday 17th April - 2nd May. Free screenings!

Although many local festivals have now been cancelled such as Paléo, the Montreux Jazz Festival and Sion sous les Etoiles, there is one festival that is still able to go ahead and that is Visions du Réel, Nyon's prestigious documentary film festival. The entire programme will be online, free and open to the public and limited to available places. Look out for the printed programme which has been has been delivered to letterboxes around the town. In it, you will find the full list of films in all the different categories from International (medium length and short length available from the 17th April, long documentaries in this category from the 25th April), to the "Opening Scenes" category of documentaries, to Swiss films and more.

One of the invited guests to the festival this year is film-maker Petra Costa.  She was nominated at this year's Oscars in the Best Documentary Feature Category for her latest film "The Edge of Democracy". A selection of her films are online and she will also give a Masterclass, available online on the 30th April at 15:00 to share her approach to cinema and her work methods. Also invited this year, is Jean-Luc Godard. As soon as the château of Nyon re-opens, Visions du Réel will present  "Sentiments, signes, passions – à propos du livre d'image", an all-new exhibition conceived with the French/Swiss filmmaker himself. Note of interest, Jean-Luc Godard lives in Rolle. Full details of all the films, and the festival are available in English, or have English subtitles (just click on the CC button on the bottom right hand corner of the screen). Registering to watch the films is very simple, just enter your name and email address, create a password and, voila!