‘While the Green Grass Grows’ by Peter Mettler Wins the Grand Prix at Visions du Réel
Trinidad Barleycorn “While the Green Grass Grows” by Peter Mettler won the Grand Prix of the International Feature Film Competition at the 54th edition of Visions du Réel, in Nyon, Switzerland, on Friday. The Swiss-Canadian director was competing with an unusual project: made in the form of a diary filmed from 2019 to 2021, “While the Green Grass Grows” is in fact a series of seven episodes with a total duration of about 11 hours. It was the finished parts one and six of the series, totalling 166 minutes, that were unveiled in world premiere at Visions du Réel and running for the Grand Prix. The whole project was also presented in the Work-in-Progress section in order to find other financing and distribution platforms to finalize the remaining parts, which have already been widely edited. This is the second time that Mettler has won the Grand Prix at Visions du Réel, after his victory in 2002 with “Gambling, Gods and LSD.”