Retrospective of American independent filmmaker Kelly Reichardt, in collaboration with Visions du Réel.

Undoing mythsA major figure of contemporary independent cinema, Kelly Reichardt has developed an elegant and rigorous body of work of remarkable artistic coherence on the bangs of the major Hollywood studios, distinguished by an aesthetic of purity and observation. Born in Miami, Florida, Kelly Reichardt soon turned her attention to the landscapes of Oregon, which have become central to her cinema. In a career spanning almost thirty years, she has made nine feature films, as well as several short and medium-length works. Far removed from the dynamics of the North American film industry, her filmography is characterized by an assertive economy of means and a singular reinterpretation of emblematic genres of American cinema, such as the western, the road movie, the historical film and the thriller.Anchored in fiction, Kelly Reichardt's cinema weaves invisible but tangible links with reality. Over and above her refusal to sensationalize and her sober narrative and formal style, the long time spent on location scouting and the immersion of her crews in the places filmed are the foundations of her unmistakable working method. Through her attention to everyday gestures, spaces and marginalized figures, the filmmaker turns fiction into a sensitive and ethical tool for observing the contemporary world. Rhythm, resolutely political, is another essential issue: "Rhythm, if slower, is also considered a political gesture. Because it goes against the grain of our consumer and entertainment societies. The Internet world doesn't encourage us to watch anything too closely or for too long. (...) I like to concentrate on the characters and the story. Going slower is my natural rhythm" (Kelly Reichardt in Judith Revault d'Allonnes, Kelly Reichardt, L'Amérique retraversée, ed. Revealed in 1994 with River of Grass, her first feature film selected for Sundance and the Berlinale, Kelly Reichardt has continued to explore the social, economic and political realities of the United States. Within a filmography whose coherence is constantly asserting itself, works as diverse as Old Joy (2006), Wendy and Lucy (2008), La Dernière Piste (Meek's Cutoff, 2010) and First Cow (2019) question the foundations of American society, its fractures and its legacies, while Certain Women (2016) and Showing Up (2022) offer sensitive portraits of ordinary lives confronted with the constraints of everyday life. Continuing her mischievous exploration of the margins, Kelly Reichardt's latest opus, The Mastermind (2025), is a faux heist film with a charming anti-hero, set against the backdrop of the Vietnam War and the women's liberation movement.


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