“It’s a format that we’ve presented for the past five years…it’s well established and also highly anticipated by our international guests,” comments Charlotte Ducos, Consultant Documentary Film & Marketing Strategies, of the SWISS Films Previews programme whose 6th edition will be presented April 25 in Nyon.
Ducos points to recent successes which were launched at past previews, such as Elena Avdija’s Stuntwomen (SWISS Films Previews 2022) which world-premiered at Zurich before an international premiere in IDFA Luminous, and Eva Vitija’s highly lauded fest favourite Loving Highsmith (SWISS Films Previews 2021) which was one of the best attended Swiss docs at the local box-office in 2022. Sales for Stunt Women are handled by Andana Films, while Autlook handles international on Loving Highsmith.
“A format like the SWISS FILMS Previews is the best place to give the selected project an important spotlight in the initial phase of going out internationally,” agrees Swiss Films’ Head of Festivals & Markets Andreas Bühlmann.
Of the six projects in the 2023 presentation two are feature debuts, two are by female directors and four are produced by women. “I think that’s a good balance,” says Ducos. Most of the films are looking for world sales, international distribution and an international festival premiere.
In #TimesUp Kyrgyzstan, written & directed by Leigh Iacobucci, a young pop star in Kyrgyzstan fights for women’s rights through her music and activism, while turbulent political shifts make her fight even harder. The project is produced by Véronique Vergari of Luna Films.
“For me, it’s a stunning picture of women’s rights in a country we barely know,” says Ducos. “Leigh the director has a background as a journalist, but she has really positioned the film as a creative work… She managed to build up a close relationship with her protagonist, and we get a lot of also footage directly from the protagonist. That make for a very interesting dialogue on the visual form.”
The debut feature Swiss Citizen Soldiers, written & directed by Luka Popadić and produced by Aline Schmid and Adrian Blaser of Beauvoir Films, homes in on the subject of ‘secondos,’ the children of migrants, undergoing national service who, like thousands of fellow Swiss citizens, spend four weeks every year practising the defence of their country.
“The director is himself a Swiss army officer of Serbian origin, and he combines his own personal story and interviews with the three other men, who are of Sri Lankan, Kosovan and Tunisian descent,” says Ducos. “I think it’s a universal topic because at some point the question arises of who you would fight for in case of a war. Of course, we all think about the current war in Ukraine, if you fight for the country of your parents – or the country where you were born and raised.”
Samir is one of Switzerland’s most acclaimed filmmakers whose intriguingly (and somewhat ironically) titled The Miraculous Transformation of the Working Class Into Foreigners will be presented within the Swiss pitch event. The logline reads how, for more than one hundred years, the Swiss Social Democratic Party and trade unions shaped Swiss working class culture. In the seventies, this culture completely collapsed. Now, the working class of yesteryear are called ‘foreigners.’
“Samir is telling his own personal story of when he came to Switzerland in the 70s,” explains Ducos of the director who was born in Baghdad but raised in Switzerland. “What is also interesting is that he uses motion capture technology to find a way to tell the story when he was a young boy and then a young adult. That’s of great appeal to the international industry. It’s quite challenging to produce but has a very strong impact on the storytelling.”
One project with world sales representation already secured is Georges Gachot’s Misty – the Erroll Garner Story. The Party Film Sales is handling the English-language feature doc about the jazz great, the enormity of whose success was matched only by the complexity of his
private life. “Looking at Erroll Garner’s life means living the post-war era of the USA between the consumer boom and the Vietnam War,” reads the project logline.
Director Gachot is no stranger to music docs having previously made the Brazilian trilogy of Maria Bethânia, Musica é Perfume (2005), Rio Sonata (2010) and O Samba (2014). With Where Are You João Gilberto? (2018) he achieved “a new narrative form between fiction and documentary,” stresses Ducos.
Dominique Margot’s Mountain Ride, produced by Brigitte Hofer (maximage), is both a paean to alpine peaks and a cry for help. “The mountain is calling,” reads the film synopsis. “How much longer? After years of mass tourism in the Alps, a rethinking is slowly taking place. Whether they be researchers, artists or philosophers, many are trying to approach the essence of the mountains in new ways. They reflect the contrasting approaches in this critical time when we need to redefine our learned values and actively seek change.”
The film intertwines interviews with experts on the subject of mountains with poetic sequences from “an artist, a dancer, and some very beautifully crafted images,” says Ducos. “Of course, the whole film is also about how the mountains damaged by human activities are now really in a bad shape. It’s almost a tragedy, so alongside the storytelling there is the question of sustainability.”
Director Karim Sayad will present his new feature documentary 2G at SWISS Films Previews. Sayad’s previous doc features, Of Sheep and Men (2017) and My English Cousin (2019), both premiered at TIFF DOCS.
In Sayad’s documentary, following the ban on unlawful migrant transportation by the Niger government, four former smugglers struggle to make a living, and eventually embark on a journey through the Sahara to join dozens of gold diggers lost in the middle of the desert. Between hopes and disillusions, these men fight to survive in an increasingly hostile and unstable environment. “It’s really focusing on men that really on the margins of society and it’s impressive how Karim can tell their story,” says Ducos.
Elsewhere at Visions du Réel 2023, three Swiss films are selected for International Feature Competition, one for Burning Lights and 12 in the National Competition. Selections across the festival are as follows:
INTERNATIONAL FEATURE FILM COMPETITION
Antier noche by Alberto Martín Menacho
Pure Unknown by Valentina Cicogna, Mattia Colombo
While the Green Grass Grows by Peter Mettler
BURNING LIGHTS COMPETITION
Dreamers by Stéphanie Barbey, Luc Peter
NATIONAL COMPETITION
Allo La France by Floriane Devigne
Bloodhound by Yamina Zoutat
Chagrin Valley by Nathalie Berger
Floating Islands by Simone Fürbringer, Nicolas Humbert
Follow the Water by Pauline Julier, Clément Postec
Full Tank by Benjamin Bücher, Julia Bünter
Hawar, Our Banished Children by Pascale Bourgaux
La Maison by Sophie Ballmer
On Remembering by Laura Gabay
Ruäch by Andreas Müller, Simon Guy Fässler
The Hunter’s Son by Juliette Riccaboni
The Wonder Way by Emmanuelle Antille
INTERNATIONAL MEDIUM LENGTH & SHORT FILM COMPETITION
2720 by Basil Da Cunha
And How Miserable is Home of the Evil by Saleh Kashefi
Animal by Riccardo Giacconi
Zimmerwald by Valeria Stucki
OPENING SCENES
Sonnenhof by Tatjana Fanny Honegger
The Arrest of C. by Arthur Jaquier
The Wonderful Pain of the Wild Broom by Olivia Calcaterra
GRAND ANGLE
Paradise by Alexander Abaturov
HIGHLIGHTS
My Worst Enemy by Mehran Tamadon
