The Huntresses, the first feature by Amelie Bargetzi and Christelle Jornod, which was presented as a world premiere in the Solothurn Film Festival’s Panorama competition and is now in the running for the Visioni Prize, bravely tackles the thorny subject of hunting through the eyes of four female protagonists. What’s surprising and what turns the film into an engaging reflection on hunting, even if it is sometimes difficult to understand, is the fact that it’s women rather than men who are talking. In their view, hunting is essential to rediscovering a link with nature which they thought they’d lost forever; an archaic practice which helps them enter into symbiosis with their environment. With indispensable nerve, the two Swiss directors show us the gorier side of hunting, or rather the tense moments that come before the killing of an animal which, in the protagonists’ view, is sacrificed in the name of a food chain which needs to be more ethical and respectful of nature.

The film’s protagonists, Fanny, Marie-Dominique, Céline and Marie, are four women from the Valais region who’ve decided to only eat the meat of animals which they themselves have hunted. Isolated in a traditionally male context dominated by gender stereotypes which they’re struggling to eradicate, these female hunters try to assert themselves and to impose their rules and values. In their eyes, hunting isn’t just a way to feed themselves, it’s an opportunity to forge a close, sensorial bond with nature. The two directors follow these women - as if they themselves were hunting them - in their somewhat utopian search for autonomy and freedom, an individual quest which becomes shared and universal through the power of film.

Alone and immersed in lunar landscapes dominated by silence, the four protagonists observe their prey as if they themselves were predatory creatures. The patience and apparent calm with which they lie in wait, observing the animals’ movements, brings to mind a meditation session, a moment in time where nothing exists apart from the sound of the first fired bullet. Immobile and camouflaged, like plants among the vegetation, the protagonists scrutinise their prey with eyes some might describe as detached, cold and devoid of emotion. But is that really the case? What emotions do they actually feel as they shoot their guns, killing animals in their natural environment who are often oblivious to any danger? The women’s inner worlds are revealed to us by way of short yet incisive phrases which appear on screen, as if by magic, like confessions torn from the pages of a journal. Trying to understand their motivations, without judgement, the directors film these women as if they were part of the same clan, as if familiar with their deepest, darkest secrets.

Seeking out a more intense and direct relationship with nature, the landscape and the surrounding environment, these female hunters talk to us about their world, inviting us into their closely guarded inner sanctum. In many respects, The Huntresses is a film which is hard to comprehend, in the same way that it’s hard to understand what drives male and female hunters to do what they do. But it’s also an incredibly poetic and mysterious work which lends a voice to those who are too often coaxed into silence.

The Huntresses was produced by Box Productions.