Swiss films win awards in Poland and in the Ukraine

The 11-minute short film “Das Gespenst des Glücks” by Max Philipp Schmid won the award for Best Experimental Film, endowed with EUR 1,000, at the 12^th New Horizons International Film Festival in Wroclaw, Poland (July 19-29, 2012). The film competed against European short films, together with “Romance” by Georges Schwizgebel. Six further Swiss film productions and coproductions were also screened at this festival. The New Horizons Festival focuses on new forms of expression and storytelling in film language. Last year the festival attracted some 111,000 visitors, rendering it one of the most important film festivals in Poland, apart from Warsaw and Cracow. It is accredited by the International Federation of Film Producers Associations FIAPF.

References to film history
The film “Das Gespenst des Glücks” has already been screened at ten festivals and convinced the jury of the Polish festival as well. The short film skilfully plays with references to film history, be it musical comedies from Hollywood, dance films or the dissection of a moving image alluding to the optical forerunners of cinema.

Honourable mention for Rolando Colla
The short film “Einspruch VI” by Rolando Colla – three-time winner of the “Quartz 2012” for his feature-length fiction film “Summer Games” – received an Honourable Mention at the 5^th International Short Film Festival in Lviv (July 26-29). After having won the Bernard Jubard Audience Prize last week at the 53^rd Ciné-Rencontres Festival de Cinéma in Prades (France), the film, about an asylum-seeker whose application was rejected, was shot from a subjective perspective. It premiered at the Solothurn Film Festival.

Geneva, July 30, 2012