Documentary festival Visions du Réel, which runs April 17-26 in Nyon, Switzerland, will shine a spotlight on the work of Moroccan visual artist and videographer Meriem Bennani as it hosts the Swiss premiere of her film “Bouchra,” co-directed by Orian Barki.
On April 24, Bennani will discuss her approach during a public conversation with artist and filmmaker Valentin Noujaïm, alongside a presentation of her films and video works.
Bennani is known for her art installations and hybrid projects, which feature “a lighthearted combination of globalized pop culture references and representations of Maghreb history and culture,” the festival said. She has held exhibitions at prestigious venues including MoMA PS1, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Louis Vuitton Foundation and, more recently, the Fondazione Prada.
“We are delighted to welcome artist Meriem Bennani, whose reputation in contemporary art is well established, and to present her remarkable first feature film, as well as seven short films. The conversation around her hybrid, pop and political practice will joyfully expand the spectrum of possibilities for this 2026 edition,” commented Emilie Bujès, artistic director of Visions du Réel.
During the lockdown in 2020, Bennani teamed up with Barki to create “2 Lizards,” an eight-episode miniseries in which two anthropomorphized lizards wander through a locked-down New York. Broadcast on Instagram, this fable adopts interweaves 3D animation and non-fiction sequences to “effectively capture the atmosphere of lockdown, from general apathy to diffuse anxiety and solidarity protest,” the festival said.
Initiated in 2018 and completed in 2022, “Life on the Caps: Trilogy in Single Channel” unfolds as a three-part work centered on Fiona, a CGI crocodile and resident of CAPS, a fictional island in the middle of the Atlantic, where teleportation has replaced air travel.
Using animation techniques and live-action footage, Bennani constructs a dystopian universe where the state incarcerates migrants who teleport illegally in an attempt to flee the world of CAPS, offering “an alternative representation of immigration that runs counter to the hegemonic and regularly miserabilist media discourses,” the festival said.
In 2025, Bennani co-created her first feature film, “Bouchra,” with Barki, the original soundtrack for which was also composed by the artist Flavien Berger. The film blends 3D animation, anthropomorphism and documentary material to create a surreal and colorful world reminiscent of video games. The film follows Bouchra, a Moroccan coyote filmmaker living in New York, who examines the impact of her homosexuality on her mother Aicha, a cardiologist in Casablanca. Through this hybrid work, between autobiography and fiction, the filmmakers offer “a tender exploration of queer cultures and the complexity of mother-daughter relationships.”
Alongside her film work, Bennani has also created several art installations which have garnered attention from the public and critics alike, such as the recent “Sole Crushing.” Presented at the Fondazione Prada as part of the “For My Best Family” exhibition between 2024 and 2025, the installation brings together nearly 200 pairs of flip-flops and tap shoes that perform a musical piece “somewhere between a symphony and a popular uprising, exploring questions of living together and the place of the individual in the community,” the festival said.
The full program for the 57th edition of Visions du Réel will be released on March 25.
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