Swiss films and virtual reality in Venice
The 77th Venice International Film Festival (September 2-12, 2020) is the first major festival to take place on site again since the outbreak of the pandemic. Two Swiss productions will screen in the Orizzonti Competition. THE NEW GOSPEL, the latest film by theatre director and author Milo Rau, will celebrate its world premiere in the independent Giornate degli Autori section. Three virtual reality projects from Switzerland have been selected for the VR Expanded programme.
02.09.2020
The 77th Venice International Film Festival (September 2-12, 2020) is the first major festival to take place on site again since the outbreak of the pandemic. Two Swiss productions will screen in the Orizzonti Competition. THE NEW GOSPEL, the latest film by theatre director and author Milo Rau, will celebrate its world premiere in the independent Giornate degli Autori section. Three virtual reality projects from Switzerland have been selected for the VR Expanded programme.
The Italian-Swiss coproduction WAR AND PEACE by Massimo D'Anolfi and Martina Parenti will celebrate its premiere in the Orizzonti Competition. The documentary film tells the story of the centuries-old relationship between cinema and war. The film was coproduced by Lomotion AG Filmproduktion (David Fonjallaz, Louis Mataré), which had already participated in SPIRA MIRABILIS, the debut film by the Italian director duo that premiered in Venice in 2016.
Roman Hodel’s short documentary film THE GAME will celebrate its world premiere in the Orizzonti Short Films Competition. The film, produced by Ensemble Film (Franziska Sonder), accompanies the referee Fedayi San through the highs and lows of a football game. The film will subsequently screen in the Short Cuts Programme at the Toronto International Film Festival as well.
Milo Rau presents THE NEW GOSPEL
swiss playwright and author Milo Rau will present the world premiere of his latest film THE NEW GOSPEL as a special event out of competition in the independent Giornate degli Autori section. What would Jesus preach in the 21st century? Who would his disciples be? Rau translated the passion play into the present and staged it with refugees and political activists in Matera in southern Italy. The German-Swiss production was coproduced by Langfilm - Bernard Lang AG (Olivier Zobrist), which had already coproduced Rau’s previous film THE CONGO TRIBUNAL.
Virtual reality from Switzerland
No less than three Swiss projects with innovative narrative forms were selected for the Venice VR Expanded section.
Choreographer Gilles Jobin and his digital dance company created LA COMÉDIE VIRTUELLE, the virtual model of a real theatre being built in Geneva.
In DREAMIN'ZONE, Swiss director Fabienne Giezendanner examines the topic of crossing borders between North and South Korea while visualising the memories of a Korean woman as an interactive animation. DREAMIN'ZONE is a coproduction between Zéro de Conduite Productions (France), Ciné Litté (Germany), Fauvea Studios (Switzerland) and Studio Yog (South Korea).
TERRAIN by Lily Baldwin and Saschka Unseld, coproduced by Dirty Bacon in Switzerland, is a journey into the Bardo: an otherworldly space between lives, in a “docu-dream without words using the language of movement”.
SWISS FILMS, September 2, 2020