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SOLOTHURN 2016 Awards

My Life as a Film takes home the Solothurn Award

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- The prestigious prize has gone to Eva Vitija’s graduation film from the Zurich University of the Arts, while the audience crowned Lina by Michael Schaerer

My Life as a Film takes home the Solothurn Award
Director Eva Vitija's father in My Life as a Film

My Life as a Film [+see also:
film review
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film profile
]
Eva Vitija’s graduation film from the Zurich University of the Arts, has taken home the prestigious Solothurn Award at the Solothurn Film Festival. The award, financed by the Solothurn Award Fund, and by the canton and city of Solothurn, comes with 60,000 Swiss francs, intended to be split equally between the director and the producer.

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The jury, comprising German actress Julia Jentcsh, Romanian director and screenwriter Călin Peter Netzer and Swiss diplomat Heidi Tagliavini, declared it was impressed by the director’s ability to tackle the story of her own family in a respectful and lucid manner. The members of the jury summed up this feature debut displaying rare maturity as follows: “The film shows us the importance of facing up to your own destiny in order to gain a better understanding of life, even when it is painful.” My Life as a Film will begin its (hopefully outstanding) theatrical run in German cinemas on 5 May 2016.

While the Solothurn Award served to recognise a director who paints a gentle portrait of a man, her father, the Audience Award rewarded a director who tells the dramatic story of a woman forced to remain silent. Lina [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
by Michael Schaerer won over the audience at Solothurn by recounting the story of a woman who, in the late 1960s, had the misfortune to fall in love with the wrong person, in the wrong place. Having got pregnant while still a teenager and been forced into administrative detention owing to her supposed “moral depravity”, Lina (played by promising actress Rabea Egg, who has already won the 2016 Best Swiss TV Series Award for Lina) will have to give away her child, who will then unexpectedly reappear in her life as an adult. It is a hellish but simultaneously terrifyingly realistic story. The first broadcast of the film is scheduled for 21 February 2016 on Germany’s main television channel. The Audience Award, worth 20,000 Swiss francs, is made available by Swiss Life, the festival’s main sponsor, in collaboration with the Solothurn Film Festival.

And now, all that is left to do is to look forward to the 52nd edition (19-26 January 2017) of this already unmissable event.

The awards:

Solothurn Award
My Life As A Film [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
 - Eva Vitija

Audience Award
Lina [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
- Michael Schaerer

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(Translated from Italian)

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