The Montreal International Documentary Festival (RIDM) has revealed the lineup of the New Visions competition for its 2024 edition, which takes place from Nov. 20 to Dec. 1.

After previously focusing exclusively on debut features from Canadian filmmakers, RIDM is opening up the category to international films.

Canada is represented by three films in this year’s competition, including Okurimono (pictured) from Laurence Lévesque, which follows a Japanese woman back to her family home in Nagasaki to confront her late mother’s painful past and the legacy of trauma from the nuclear attack on the city in the Second World War.

Another Canadian doc is The Treasury of Human Inheritance by Alexis Kyle Mitchell, which explores the experience of living with a genetic disease while meditating on questions of family inheritance and mortality.

Rounding out the Canadian docs is Eastern Anthems by Jean-Jacques Martinod and Matthew Wolkow, a Canada/U.S./Ecuador copro that shows the return of a species of cicada that only emerges every 17 years to an America that may also be starting a new cycle of life.

The field also includes a pair of France/Belgium coproductions: Kouté Vwa by Maxime Jean-Baptiste, which uses a man’s return to his grandmother’s home in French Guiana as a means to consider the legacy of colonialism and slavery; and Samira El Mouzghibati’s Les Miennes, which focuses on the complexities of mother-daughter relationships within a family of Moroccan origin.

France is also represented by Up the River with Acid by Harold Hutter, an exploration of memory, resilience, and the passage of time as experienced through the lives of the filmmaker’s parents; and the Chile/Argentina/France copro An Oscillating Shadow by Celeste Rojas Mugica, in which the director and her father, a dissident photographer in the Pinochet years, revive an intertwined personal and political history through a sensory journey.

Rounding out the selection is The Undergrowth (Spain) by Macu Machín, a portrait of the relationship of three sisters living in the Canary Islands; and Rising Up at Night (Congo/Belgium/Germany/Burkina Faso) from Nelson Makengo, which depicts the daily struggles of the people of Kinshasa to restore electricity.

The winner of the competition will be determined by a jury made of representatives from international festivals, comprising Paula Astorga of Docslisboad (Portugal), Maximiliano Cruz of FICUNAM (Mexico), and Antoine Thirion of Cinéma de réel (France).

The full 2024 lineup for RIDM will be unveiled on Oct. 30.

This story originally appeared in Realscreen

Photo by Sébastien Blais