Swiss go to Cannes with two animated films

Blue hair, sad eyes - Icarus is the hero of My Life as a Courgette rita productions

Switzerland is represented at the prestigious Cannes film festival in France which opens today with two animated works – the feature-length My Life as a Courgette and Whatever the Weather.

In the Directors’ Fortnight section, My Life as a Courgette will have its world premiere, while Whatever the Weather will appear as part of the Cinéfondation screenings.

My life as a Courgette, by director Claude Barras, is based on the book, Autobiography of a Courgette, by French author and journalist Gilles Paris. It tells the story of a nine-year-old boy who is put in a children’s home after the death of his mother in an accident.

“It’s a very harsh story but this poetic and entertaining film is slowly instilled with tenderness. I cried a lot,” said Edouard Waintrop, member of the Directors’ Fortnight jury.

It took Barras ten months to shoot his film using stop-motion, which consists of moving each figure millimetre by millimetre. The director needed on average one day just to complete a 20-second sequence.

The film score is by acclaimed Swiss singer-songwriter, Sophie Hunger. My Life as a Courgette cost CHF8 million ($8.2 million) and was a co-production of Swiss public television, RTS.

 Whatever the Weather

Whatever the Weather by Remo Scherrer tells the story of a girl whose childhood is turned upside down by her mother’s alcohol addiction.

A production of the University of Applied Sciences and Arts in Lucerne, the film was chosen from approximately 2,300 works produced at international film schools.

Trailer "Bei Wind und Wetter"External link from Zeitraum Film GmbHExternal link on VimeoExternal link.

Translated from Italian by Dale Bechtel