Swiss films made their mark abroad in 2024

Laetitia Dosch, film director from France and Switzerland, poses during a photocall for the movie "Le Proces du chien" (Dog on Trial) at the 77th Locarno International Film Festival, in Locarno, on August 17, 2024. Keystone / Jean-Christophe Bott

Several Swiss films exceeded the 100,000 admissions mark worldwide in 2024. Le procès du chien (Dog on Trial), the first feature film by and starring French-Swiss director Laetitia Dosch, has become the best-marketed Swiss film internationally in 2024, noted Swiss Films in its retrospectiveExternal link.

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The film attracted 130,000 viewers in France alone and was shown in more than 17 territories. The film was co-produced by Lionel Baier, of the company Bande à part Films based in Lausanne and the Swiss public broadcaster, RTS. The film is loosely based on a real-life story of a trial in France which centred on a dog that had repeatedly bitten strangers. 

Several co-productions, with a minority Swiss participation, recorded even more admissions worldwide. La chimère by the Italian director Alice Rohrwacher reached 245,000; Sidonie au Japon with French actress Isabelle Huppert had 241,000 admissions; and Gloria!, directed by the young Italian actress and singer Margherita Vicario, reached 215,000. Several others exceeded the 100,000 mark.

“This is a rather good result,” Swiss Films told Swiss news agency Keystone-ATS. In 2022 and 2023, only three co-productions per year achieved more than 100,000 admissions worldwide.

Festival praise

Although Klaudia Reynicke’s film Reinas, a Swiss, Peruvian and Spanish co-production, was not nominated for the Oscar for best international film, it has garnered international praise.

Sold in 15 countries including the United States, Reinas was nominated in the category of best international film at the Satellite Award, an American prize awarded since 1997 by journalists from the International Press Academy.

After an initial selection at the Sunday Festival, the film also won the Generation Kplus prize at the Berlinale (Berlin International Film Festival) and the audience award at the Locarno Film Festival.

Presented at Cannes, Sauvages, the animated film by Swiss director Claude Barras, was considered for the feature film category at the Annecy animated film festival. Its festival career continued at Locarno and at the BFI in London. Sauvages was nominated twice for the European Film Award and has to date had over 120,000 admissions in France.

Documentaries at the cinema

Swiss documentaries have also found their audience in cinemas. Awarded in Angers, Biarritz and Montreal, Riverboom, a wacky road trip by the Swiss filmmaker Claude Baechtold in Afghanistan in 2002, recorded nearly 40,000 admissions in French cinemas.

Portrait of the Dalai Lama, Wisdom of happiness – a heart-to-heart with the Dalai Lama by Swiss producers Barbara Miller and Philip Delaquis has already been seen by more than 34,000 people since its theatrical release in Germany and Austria in November.

Translated from French by DeepL/jdp

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