Swiss films – eighteen in total, across the various sections - once again dominate the line-up of the Zurich Film Festival (28 September – 8 October). Among the many world premieres on the agenda this year, we’ll see Michael Steiner’s thriller Early Birds, Thomas Thümena’s latest documentary about an official within the Salvation Army, Heaven above Zurich, and the highly anticipated series Davos by Jan-Eric Mack, Anca Miruna Lazarescu and Christian Theede, which is a significant co-production between Switzerland and Germany.

For its nineteenth edition, the festival is wagering on a considerable number of US guests (including actor Ethan Hawke), who will be presenting their films and receiving the various prizes awarded at the event each year. This time round, it will be American director Todd Haynes who receives the A Tribute to… Award, and he’ll also be presenting his latest movie, May December, which competed in Cannes back in May. Actress Jessica Chastain, meanwhile, will be honoured with the Golden Icon Award.

As for the fourteen films competing for the Golden Eye Award in the fiction competition, ten of these are European productions and co-productions. France is especially well represented thanks to Marie Amachoukeli’s Àma Gloria [+lire aussi :
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interview : Marie Amachoukeli
fiche film], which opened Cannes’ Critics’ Week, and The Rapture [+lire aussi :
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interview : Iris Kaltenbäck
fiche film], which is Iris Kaltenbäck’s first feature film and which also screened in Critics’ Week where it scooped the SACD Prize. Likewise presented in Cannes, where it bagged the Un Certain Regard trophy, is British director Molly Manning Walker’s first film How to Have Sex [+lire aussi :
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interview : Molly Manning Walker
fiche film], while another decidedly current and courageous work comes in the form of Femme [+lire aussi :
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interview : Sam H. Freeman, Ng Choon P…
fiche film], the first film by the equally British directorial duo composed of Sam H. Freeman and Ng Choon Ping, which was presented in the Berlinale’s Panorama section and which follows the inner world of a London-based drag queen (played by Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, who won an award in Montreal’s Fantasia Festival for his exceptional performance, where the film also bagged the Best Director trophy). Hailing from Venice’s Biennale, we find Enea [+lire aussi :
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interview : Pietro Castellitto
fiche film] by Pietro Castellito, who’s the son of actor Sergio Castellito, while the Orizzonti section offers up Turkish director Selman Nacar’s second work Hesitation Wound [+lire aussi :
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interview : Selman Nacar
fiche film], and the Giornate degli Autori gives us Dutch director Stefanie Kolk’s debut film Milk [+lire aussi :
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interview : Stefanie Kolk
fiche film]. Other works of European origin are Slow [+lire aussi :
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interview : Marija Kavtaradze
fiche film] (previously selected in Sundance and Karlovy Vary) by Lithuanian screenwriter and director Marija Kavtaradze, which takes a head-on approach to tackling the subject of asexuality; The Hypnosis [+lire aussi :
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interview : Asta Kamma August
interview : Ernst De Geer
fiche film] (presented in Karlovy Vary), which is a comedy-filled first film by Swedish director Ernst de Geer; and, last but not least, the feel good movie Varvara by Moldovan actor and director Anatol Durbală, which is set for an international premiere.

The Focus competition, for its part, includes six world premieres, four of which are Swiss works (out of a total fourteen films in competition): The Driven Ones [+lire aussi :
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fiche film] is Piet Baumgartner’s debut feature-length documentary telling the tale of five budding CEOs; Retour en Alexandrie is a road movie by Tamer Ruggli, starring Nadine Labaki and Fanny Ardant; Lonely is Michele Pennetta’s 3rd feature film; Las toreras [+lire aussi :
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fiche film] by Jackie Brutsche is a documentary exploring the director’s Spanish and Swiss origins; Jupiter [+lire aussi :
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interview : Benjamin Pfohl
fiche film] is a pseudo-sci-fi first feature film by Germany’s Benjamin Pfohl; and there’s also Benjamin Rost’s documentary Harraga – Those Who Burn Their Lives.

The documentary competition is hosting a similarly copious cohort of European (co)-productions, including two films presented in CPH:DOX: A Year in a Field [+lire aussi :
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fiche film] - an experimentally-flavoured first film by England’s Christopher Morris - and A Storm Foretold by Denmark’s Christoffer Guldbransen, homing in on Donald Trump’s advisor Roger Stone. Denmark also owes its presence in the competition to A Silent Story by Anders Skovbjerg Jepsen, while France is represented, in this section, by Nicolas Peduzzi’s On the Edge [+lire aussi :
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fiche film], which was presented in Cannes’ ACID line-up, and Armel Hostiou’s entertaining work The Other Profile. Meanwhile, the Colombian director trained in France Sergio Guataquira Sarmiento has been selected via Adieu sauvage [+lire aussi :
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interview : Sergio Guataquira Sarmiento
fiche film], a co-production between Belgium and France, while Anna Hints’ Smoke Sauna Sisterhood [+lire aussi :
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interview : Anna Hints
fiche film], which won an award in Sundance, also features among the European works chosen for this section. Other movies worth a mention include In the Rearview [+lire aussi :
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fiche film], a first film by Maciek Hamela which was presented in Cannes’ ACID line-up and which follows a bus of Ukrainian civilians fleeing to Poland, and Bottlemen [+lire aussi :
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interview : Nemanja Vojinović
fiche film], by Serbian director Nemanja Vojinović, which won the Heart of Sarajevo Prize for Best Documentary. The final European films in this selection are the co-productions The Castle [+lire aussi :
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interview : Martín Benchimol
fiche film] by Argentina’s Martín Benchimol, and Queendom [+lire aussi :
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fiche film] by Agniia Galdanova, which was presented in CPH:DOX and which depicts the daily life of the courageous Russian drag queen Gena Marvyn.