The fifth SWISS FILMS Previews programme, held in collaboration with VdR Industry will be an altogether more intimate affair in 2022 after two years of screen-based interaction. “We are all excited to be back in a cinema venue to present it. For the last two years we went online, which of course was okay, but it didn’t have the same effect. It’s a meeting point as well, for us to match-make the project holders with the industry,” explains SWISS FILMS Head of Festivals and Markets Andreas Bühlmann.
Despite its on-screen only presentation during the pandemic, the event has nevertheless helped garner much success for Swiss docs since the first edition in 2018, proving to be a “a very efficient and good” window for the projects “to come and conquer the festival circuit,” says Bühlmann.
Previous SWISS FILMS Previews selections include the likes of Dea Gjinovci’s Wake Up On Mars, which world-premiered at Tribeca 2020 (after being pitched in 2019), Marion Neumann’s The Mushroom Speaks (world-premiere CPH:DOX 2021, also pitched in 2019) and Lux by Raphaël Dubach and Mateo Ybarra, which world-premiered at Thessaloniki 2021. Lux was pitched at SWISS FILMS Previews in 2021. The feature doc My Old Man, selected for this year’s Visions du Reel International Competition, was pitched at during the Previews event in 2021.
This year’s crop of Swiss projects are diverse in subject with a very strong cohort of female directors, with five of the six films made by women. What’s more, four of the docs are feature debuts.
“We want to show what Switzerland documentary filmmaking stands for,” underlines Bühlmann, stressing a wide range of subjects from the ballet to coalmining, and a willingness to address shifting gender roles within docs that have “international potential addressing international audiences.”
The ballet-themed Becoming Giulia is the feature doc debut of Laura Kaehr, who herself trained as a professional ballet dancer. In the film we meet the eponymous Giulia, a star dancer of Ballet Zurich and a new mother. But she is fighting to keep her place in the company, and in so doing challenges the old-fashioned patriarchal world of an elite ballet company.
“This journey will lead Giulia to be the heroine of her own story, especially through the COVID period which will, against all expectations, help Giulia to find herself and establish herself as an artist in an astonishing way,” stresses the synopsis. Produced by Point Prod, the fully financed 103-minute documentary (budget: €604,400) is set for a May 2022 release. “It is a very subtle critique on the current system of male dominance,” says Bühlmann, “[and] a very strong statement of equality for women in the opera world.”
“I wouldn’t say it’s a hybrid work, but she (Kaehr] uses the elements of fiction film,” he adds. “There are a lot of dynamic plot twists, which are remarkable for a documentary. This makes the film stand out.”
In Stuntwomen, feature doc debutant Elena Avdija questions ‘the uneasiness of what the industry has taught the audience to enjoy watching: women being beaten and raped on screen.’ The synopsis reads (in part) how Virginie, Petra and Estelle are stuntwomen. They get hit by cars, sometimes several times in a row, or struck by violent husbands and gangsters – the bad guys in films. But every time, they get back up on their feet, ready to shoot the scene as many times as necessary. Freedom, glory or a search for power fuel these women’s desire to push their bodies to the limits. Dying today and living tomorrow. But how far can they go? How much violence are their bodies and minds able to take in?
Produced by Bande á Part Films and Alter Ego Production, and budgeted at €700,000, the 85-minute film is fully financed, with a 2022 second semester release planned. “I haven’t seen a film dealing with that question in that way,” says SWISS FILMS’ Bühlmann of the documentary project, shot in Malaysia, France, Switzerland and the US. “The film questions how cinema and television distribute the gender roles and the violence – mainly against women on screen – and how far the audience reacts.”
In Lisa Gerig’s 90-minute Based on a True Story, three asylum seekers whose first applications were rejected once more tell their life stories. In a film that exposes the inner workings of the Swiss asylum process in Switzerland works, will their stories now satisfy the official criteria? Can it stand up to the humanitarian principles of asylum law? And will they succeed a second time around? “It’s a remarkable way to show that storytelling also [plays] a very important part in this process,” comments Bühlmann of the Ensemble Film production, budgeted at €556,800 (of which 90% is in place). The debut feature documentary has a mooted release date of November 2022.
Red is a tale of redemption, following kickboxer Francesco whose violent and dark past as a hooligan dictates his present condition, one defined by sacrifice, love, discipline and a desperate search for self-control. The film is directed by the Swiss trio of Mara Manzolini, Élodie Dermange and Andrea Pellerani (two women and a man).
The synopsis reads how, out of nothing, Francesco’s innate leadership has gathered around him a new pack of peers who follow him no matter what. During the pandemic they started training outdoors, illegally, in parking lots, school courts, parks… This signed the beginning of his success-story as a coach, shortly followed by the opening of his own gym and a series of victories of his amateur boxers. But even if Francesco now seems to have everything he wants, there still is something missing….
“Red looks behind this stereotype of a violent man [who finds] a new voice,” says Bühlmann of the Amka Films Productions 90-minute doc whose release will be sometime in Autumn 2022. The €900,000 budget is fully met and producer Amel Soudani is looking for sales representation at VdR. Once agai, the film is a feature debut.
Laura Gabay’s I Might Remember is a highly personal documentary that delves into her family past. The logline reads how, in 1973, her father fled the military dictatorship in Uruguay to Europe. “To my unanswered questions about his history, I trace my family’s story through his archives,” she writes. In 2020, after the death of her father, Gabay discovered dozens of Super 8 films and audio recordings that her father had exchanged over a course of years with his sister, who had fled to Brazil.
“I never asked my father the reason for his exile,” she writes. He never explained it. Neither did my aunt. Trying to understand this silence is the starting point of this film. Through these archives, I build a new family story, also made of fantasies and romanticism. I find there a form of freedom to highlight the way in which the political history of our societies constructs our intimate identities and inheritances.”
The film is 37% of the way towards its €233,100 budget. Filmed in Switzerland, Uruguay and France, and with an expected running time of 65 minutes, release is expected in January 2023. “It has a very personal story that has not been told so that often,” says Bühlmann, “how to deal with violence from family members that suffered under the repression of a dictator regime.” He also underlines the quality of the film’s archive and audio material.
The final film, Once We Were Pitmen by Christian Johannes Koch and Jonas Matauschek, is described as a “heartwarming journey of five miners rediscovering themselves in times of climate change and gender discussions, after their workplace, the last underground coal mine in Germany, is shut down.” We are presented five fascinating stories of metamorphosis, one of which concerns Martina who could not and did not want to be a male miner anymore. So she took the courageous step and decided to start living as a woman.
“They are confronted with this new world, and now they have to find a new solution,” says Bühlmann of the future challenges faced by the miners. “The two directors depict very well this phase of transformation.” The fully-financed Swiss/German doc, produced by Catpics (Zurich) and elemag pictures (Leipzig), will be released in the first quarter of 2023.
“For decades Switzerland has an auteur driven documentary tradition that has a strong international reputation. But we also observe that current generations of filmmakers and producers work more internationally. We see that they participate more and more in talent labs and development programs and that they [attend] co-production markets with their projects,” says Bühlmann of Swiss docmakers.
“And I think now we have the fruit that has grown in the last years [from] very strong, internationally-planted projects. You have like titles like Taming the Garden (Salomé Jashi), Ostrov – Lost Island (Svetlana Rodina and Laurent Stoop) or Girl Gang (Susanne Regina Meures) that deal with international or non-Swiss topics…Internationally, these Swiss films cause a stir on the festival circuit.”
