Rotterdam & Sundance: new festival year off to a promising start
With 18 Swiss film productions and coproductions at the International Film Festival Rotterdam (January 23 - February 3, 2019) and three films selected for the Sundance Film Festival (January 24 - February 3, 2019), the new festival year is indeed off to a promising start.
23.01.2019
Screened in the Bright Future Main Programme in Rotterdam will be Simon Jaquemet’s highly regarded second fiction film THE INNOCENT (production: 8horses), which celebrated its premiere in Toronto last year and was subsequently screened at the festival in San Sebastian, among others.
Swiss filmmaker Fabrice Aragno, who has worked closely with Jean-Luc Godard since 2004 and produced his last film THE IMAGE BOOK – screened in the Deep Focus section – will speak about his work in a Framework Talk on January 29. Furthermore, Aragno will showcase a selection of his short films in the “Libre promenade” programme.
Screened in the Voices section will be the fiction films PEARL, HAPPY AS LAZZARO and KNIFE+HEART, which celebrated their world premieres at the festivals in Cannes and Venice, respectively, as well as the documentary film CLOSER TO GOD and the Rwandan-Swiss short film I GOT MY THINGS AND LEFT.
Johannes Binotto’s four-minute video essay TOUCHING SOUND will celebrate its international premiere in the Perspectives section in the “Say: no more straight lines” programme. Also screened in the same section will be Loïc Kreyden’s short animation film HIER and Daniel Zimmermann’s experimental documentary film WALDEN, which has already been selected for numerous festivals and won awards.
Emerging talent at Cinemart
Nicolas Steiner, director of the award-winning documentary ABOVE AND BELOW, was selected for the international coproduction market CineMart with his new fiction film project THE FLYING MOUNTAIN (production: maximage). Upon recommendation from SWISS FILMS, Swiss producer Franziska Sonder (Ensemble Films) will participate in the Rotterdam Lab workshop, which offers 60 producers from 29 countries the opportunity to network with industry experts.
World premiere of ADVOCATE at Sundance Film Festival
Three Swiss films have been selected for screening at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, the most important festival in the USA. The Israeli-Canadian-Swiss coproduction ADVOCATE by Rachel Leah Jones and Philippe Bellaïche will celebrate its world premiere by competing in the World Cinema Documentary section. The documentary film about the Israeli human rights lawyer Lea Tsemel was coproduced by Joëlle Bertossa (Close Up Film). In 2018 a Swiss documentary film – GENESIS 2.0 by Christian Frei and Maxim Arbugaev – was also screened in this section and won an award.
Simultaneously with the festival in Rotterdam, Daniel Zimmermann’s WALDEN (production: Aline Schmid, Beauvoir Films) will also be screened at Sundance, here in the New Frontier section, which features innovative cinematic visions by artists. Producer Aline Schmid was already successful in 2016 with the award-winning coproduction SONITA, at that time with the Intermezzo Films production company. The short film ALL INCLUSIVE by Corina Schwingruber Ilić (Stella Händler, freihändler Filmproduktion), a festival hit winning numerous awards since its premiere in Venice, will be screened in the Shorts Competition.
The Genevan producer Dan Wechsler from Bord Cadre films participated in the production of the two films DIVINE LOVE and MONOS, which will celebrate their world premieres in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition.