29/07/2005

Lionel Baier, a Swiss filmmaker who used to specialize in documentaries made his first fiction feature film last year. Stupid Boy [+see also:
trailer
film profile], a very personal , atypical, and intelligent work, registered almost 6000 admissions during its French-speaking Swiss release in March 2004, and has now been screening in German-speaking Switzerland since July the 7th.
Distributed in France by (Pierre Grise Distribution) since January, Stupid Boy screened in Paris until June. The film has been warmly welcomed by the critics and found its public with 23 000 spectators. Thanks to its success, the film is to be theatrically released in the USA (Picture This Entertainment, Los Angeles) and in Germany (Salzgeber & Co. Medien , Berlin) next autumn. The DVD will be available from September in Switzerland, France and Belgium. Moreover, it was also presented in competition at the New European Film Festival, which took place in Vitoria-Gasteiz (Spain) from May the 13th to May the 14th, where Lionel Baier received the Best European Filmmaker Award.
Born in Lausanne in 1975, Lionel Baier made his debut as an assistant producer specially for the Swiss woman director of documentary films Jacqueline Veuve. He then shot two documentaries that attracted considerable attention : Celui au pasteur and La parade (notre histoire). The first one is devoted to his father, the second one to the Gay Pride which caused sensation at the time in the little town of Sion. He is currently preparing his next feature film, A l'Est (Na Wschod), an autobiographical-inspired fiction in which he looks to his own roots, on which shooting will start on September the 17th. He is also working on the script for another film with the French actress and filmmaker Marina De Van (Dans ma peau [+see also:
trailer
film profile]).

(Translated from French)