Swiss Projects at Venice Gap-Financing Market — SkimNews
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- Flurin Giger's "A Year Without Summer" is set in 1816, following a peasant family whose existence is threatened when skies darken due to the real-life Tambora volcanic eruption — with producer Cécile Tollu-Polonowski noting 'it doesn't feel like a period piece' given current climate parallels.
- Stéphanie Argerich's "Kyushu Moon" stars Alba Rohrwacher and Ryo Kase as a recently divorced journalist and a 42-year-old virgin who meet at a Japanese men's retreat; the film begins a six-week shoot in Beppu, Japan, in October.
- Valentin Merz's "Chocolat Amer" centers on Sadek, a young Tunisian in Zurich who becomes the lover of a chocolate heir while the world's cacao is dying, with the heir family turning to synthetic chocolate.
- Ursula Meier's "Quiet Land" follows an ageing Montana Highway Patrol Officer investigating two fatal car crashes who, after being dismissed, fears the same fate may befall a local landowner.
- Other Swiss projects include Laura Israel's diaristic portrait of photographer Robert Frank ("Salut Robert"), Alberto Fasulo's apocalyptic sci-fi "The Rope," and Kaveh Bakhtiari's "The Smuggler" about a 16-year-old Afghan migrant in Athens drawn into smuggling and counterfeiting.
- The seven Swiss projects span genres including natural disaster drama, cross-cultural romance, sci-fi, murder mystery, documentary, and migrant exploitation, with co-production partners from France, Germany, Italy, the U.S., and Greece.
Why it matters: For Swiss filmmakers, securing a slot at the Venice Gap-Financing Market — selected from a record 370-plus submissions — provides direct access to the international financiers needed to greenlight projects in development, giving Giger, Argerich, Merz, Meier, Bakhtiari and others a high-profile platform for their upcoming features.
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