Ready for a bit of Swiss bliss on the big screen? The 79th edition of Switzerland’s Locarno Film Festival is set to be a showcase of adventurous new cinema from around the globe, including homegrown productions from Swiss filmmakers and/or producers.
Various sections of the fest, running Aug. 5-16, will serve up homemade cinematic fare. In addition, the popular “Panorama Suisse” section will put the spotlight on “Swiss films that have enjoyed success at festivals, found an audience in cinemas, or are currently released in the country.” Plus, the Locarno Kids Screenings program also includes two titles with Swiss participation.
For those looking for some Swiss cinematic bliss and trying to avoid having Swiss cheese-sized holes in their Locarno schedules, THR is below highlighting a selection of Swiss treats screening at Locarno79.
The Chilean
Director: Sergio Castro-San Martín
Piazza Grande
International sales: Fandango
A political thriller telling the story of a fugitive is ready to explode onto Locarno’s screens. The big-screen epic The Chilean is a co-production between Italy, Chile and Switzerland that starts off in 1976 Chile.
Amid mining protests, Aldo, skilled in explosives, is forced into exile, leaving his wife and newborn child behind. He moves to Italy, where he must survive on menial jobs in Torino and where people simply call him Il Cileno, The Chilean. But everything changes when he meets Luciana, a doctor involved with anarchist groups. She offers him the chance to reunite with his family. But in exchange, he must return to his old trade – making bombs for revolutionary groups.
“Reconstructing an era means not only designing its atmosphere, but understanding the personalities that embody it,” the director says about The Chilean. “The exiled Aldo Marín leads us to one of the most pressing issues: immigration, omnipresent in the film.”
Happiness Is So Close!
Director: François-Christophe Marzal
Out of Competition
International sales: Point Productions
’Happiness Is So Close!,’ courtesy of Locarno Film Festival
Jean-Luc, an actor in his 80s, is set to play Don Quixote in a prestigious theater. It is the big role that he has been waiting for to bid farewell to the stage. But his health problems make rehearsals difficult, so the production team hires an understudy in case he is unable to perform. The result is paranoia. Says a synopsis: “Jean-Luc gradually sinks into an obsessive delusion, convinced that his understudy will take his place until he disappears completely.”
Jean-Luc Bideau, Gilles Privat and Aurore Clément star in the Swiss production, written by the director and Nicolas Frey, who also served as the editor.
Ahead of the Aug. 9 world premiere of Happiness Is So Close!, Bideau will receive a special honorary Leopard at Locarno.
Small Talk
Director: Matteo Yberra
Filmmakers of the Presence Competition
International sales: Urban Sales
‘Small Talk,’ courtesy of Locarno Film Festival
How’s this tease for the hybrid feature that serves up a peek behind the curtain of an elite institution? “Hoping to launch a career in the luxury world, Charlie enrolls at Institut Villa Pierrefeu – the last finishing school still operating in Switzerland. Here, women from all over the world are prepared to move within the circles of the international elite.” Over the course of a summer, their daily life is all about lessons in elegance, protocol and the art of conversation.
Written by the director, the actress, along with Louis Rebetez, Hélène Bares, Milan Alfonsi,, the film features actress Hélène Bares.
Says the director: “By working with an actress within a real educational setting, the film explores the porous boundary between performance and social behavior, questioning how identity is shaped by learned codes and expectations.”
O Jacaré
Director: Basil Da Cunha
International competition
International sales: Thera Production
‘O Jacaré,’ courtesy of Locarno Film Festival
Director Basil Da Cunha has dual Swiss and Portuguese citizenship, which explains this co-production and its elements that don’t sound quintessential Swiss: such as alligators and its setting, namely Reboleira, a suburb of Lisbon.
The haul from a robbery has mysteriously disappeared. Within the area sealed off by the police, rumors spread and speculation runs wild. Among the residents, a whole cast of colorful characters dream of getting their hands on the loot. But who will be first to find it?
For the filmmaker, who also wrote the script for the movie, the production marks a farewell of sorts. “For the past 15 years, I have been filming the Reboleira neighborhood, which is due to be demolished,” he explains. “O Jacaré is like a final dance before its disappearance: a vibrant, light-hearted film, infused with comedy and a sense of freedom.”
The Angel Maker
Director: Marina Klauser
Out of competition
International sales: tellfilm
‘The Angel Maker,’ courtesy of Locarno Film Festival
This four-part documentary series from Switzerland, written and directed by Klauser, is not for the faint of heart, but it will appeal to fans of true-crime and cult stories and audiences beyond that.
After all, the series tells the story of “the Swiss religious community of Methernitha, which still exists today, its founder Paul Baumann — the inventor of a mysterious energy machine — and the young women who brought him down on charges of child abuse,” as a synopsis reads.
Klauser has previously written and directed short films and served as head writer of the writers’ room for the dramedy series How to Be Sad – The Right Way.
Frank & Louis
Director: Petra Volpe
Piazza Grande
International sales: TrustNordisk
Kingsley Ben-Adir (left) and Rob Morgan in ‘Frank and Louis.’
Rob Baker Ashton/Courtesy Sundance
Last but not least, Locarno will showcase a well-established Swiss cinematic voice’s latest movie, but not in a world premiere, which happened at Sundance. But the film will still get a big square screening at the festival.
Swiss-Italian writer-director Petra Volpe followed up her box office and critical success Late Shift with Frank & Louis, her English-language debut, putting a spotlight on another often-overlooked care issue: the care needs of the aging incarcerated. Set within the walls of a U.S. prison, it Frank, portrayed by Kingsley Ben-Adir, who is serving a life sentence and takes on a caretaking role for aging inmates suffering from memory loss. Rob Morgan stars as one of those inmates, Louis.
“The theme of care and caretaking, what that means and how we all need it, is such an important societal issue,” Volpe told THR about her motivation for the film in a previous interview. “We take for granted that there are people who take care of us. It’s also a taboo, because nobody wants to think about being old and sick and needy. And especially in the context of prison, we never really think about it deeply.”
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