18/08/2020 - The film, set to start filming on 22 August, is a period drama revolving around a woman’s across-the-board emancipation

Director Stefan Jäger (© Grischa Schmitz)

Cameras will soon begin rolling for Stefan Jäger’s new project, a period drama entitled Monte Verità [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Stefan Jäger
film profile]. The Swiss filmmaker, best known for flicks such as Der Grosse Sommer (2016) and Horizon Beautiful (2013), will start shooting his new endeavor in the Locarno region of Ticino on 22 August. The news was first reported by Variety.

In detail, Monte Verità is a story of emancipation set in 1906, at the titular artists’ health spa in Ascona, Ticino, which channeled much of the groundswell of forces challenging the then Belle Époque bourgeois conservatism: Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis, the fight for women’s rights, free dance love and even vegan food. The script, penned by Cornelia Naraks, focuses on a young woman called Hanna Leitner, who feels suffocated by the rigid routine imposed by her husband Anton and their two daughters. She then begins to suffer chronic asthma attacks and rejects Anton’s sexual advances, which causes him to dispatch her to a neurologist, Otto Gross, a disciple of Freud. When Hanna is raped by her husband, she follows Gross in an act of desperation and finally experiences a freedom she has never known.

Monte Verità is being produced by Zurich-Berlin based outfit Tellfilm and co-produced by Austria’s KGP Filmproduction and Germany’s Cologne Coin Film. DCM Film Distribution is in charge of its distribution in Switzerland, Germany, Austria and Liechtenstein. The official release date is yet to be disclosed.