Sundance Film Festival 2024
World premiere for REINAS and two Swiss short films in competition
09.01.2024
The festival year is off to a spectacular start for Swiss filmmaking: Three films from Switzerland have been selected for screening at the renowned Sundance Film Festival in Park City, USA. Klaudia Reynicke’s REINAS will celebrate its world premiere in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition, the first majority Swiss coproduction in this section. Two short films – MATTA AND MATTO and TERRA MATER –will be screened in the Short Film Program.
REINAS is Klaudia Reynicke’s third feature-length film. The film is set in 1992 in the throes of social and political upheaval in Lima. Lucía, Aurora and their mother Elena are planning to leave their country but are apprehensive about saying goodbye to their loved ones. The Geneva-based production company Alva Film coproduced the film with Maretazo Cine in Peru and Inicia Films in Spain.
After studying Anthropology and Sociology in Lausanne and Geneva, Peruvian-Swiss director Klaudia Reynicke went on to study Film. Her first two films IL NIDO (2016) and LOVE ME TENDER (2019) celebrated their premieres at the Locarno Film Festival and were subsequently screened at numerous international festivals.
Also screening in the World Cinema Documentary Competition is the German-American documentary film ETERNAL YOU, in which Swiss producer Patrick M. Müller and his production company Docmine is involved.
Animation und Afrofuturismus
The animation film MATTA AND MATTO will be screened in the Animated Short Film Program: In a dystopian world where touch is forbidden, Matta and Matto offer refuge to the lonely at their transient hotel. Directors Bianca Caderas and Kerstin Zemp both studied Animation at the Lucerne School of Art and Design and graduated with their joint film LIVING LIKE HETA.
MATTA AND MATTO was produced by YK Animation Studio, which has made a name for itself with internationally acclaimed animation films such as IN A NUTSHELL (2017), COYOTE (2018) and LITTLE MISS FATE (2020), which also screened at Sundance.
TERRA MATER, the 10-minute short film by Swiss-Rwandan artist, author and director Kantarama Gahigiri, will be screened in the Short Film Program 4. Staged on a gigantic rubbish dump in Nairobi, the film fuses pop aesthetics, music and poetry into an Afrofuturistic performance.
Since celebrating its world premiere with a screening in the Berlinale Shorts, the Swiss-Rwandan coproduction has established an impressive international festival career, including a screening at the IDFA, among others.
The Sundance Film Festival is regarded as the most important North American platform for independently produced American and international productions.