Swiss perspectives in 10 languages

Swiss film director wins Student Oscar

Oscar prop statues being painted in a California warehouse
Coveted Oscar statues since 1929 - even the props are given a golden coat in a warehouse. Keystone

A Swiss short film about an Alzheimer patient and his wife has won a Student Academy Award in the United States.

“Fast Alles” (Almost Everything), a 24-minute graduation film by Lisa Gertsch who studies at the Zurich arts college, was awarded a silver Student Oscar in the section Narrative – International Film Schools.

The prizes were handed over at a ceremony in Beverly Hills, the University of the Arts said in a statement on Friday.

Gertsch was among nearly 1,600 entries from 400 schools to arrive at the winners and is thereby eligible to compete for a 2019 Academy Award.

It is the third entry from the Zurich school to win a student award since 2013.

Previous successes include Parvaneh by Iranian-born Talkhon Hamzavi and Facing Mecca by Jan-Eric Mack.

The Student Academy Awards is a tradition dating back to 1972 to help spotlight emerging global talent in the entertainment industry.

In 2009, Switzerland’s Reto Caffi’s “Auf der Strecke” (On the line) was shortlisted for an Oscar in the Best short film, live action section.

More

More

Where there’s smoke, there’s an Oscar

This content was published on Markus Gross, professor of computer graphics at the Federal Institute of technology in Zurich (ETHZ) and director of Disney Research Zurich, tells swissinfo.ch about mixing science, business and art – and why he didn’t patent his award-winning software. On February 9, Gross, his former post-doc student Nils Thürey and two other scientists from Cornell University…

Read more: Where there’s smoke, there’s an Oscar

In compliance with the JTI standards

More: SWI swissinfo.ch certified by the Journalism Trust Initiative

You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here. Please join us!

If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.

SWI swissinfo.ch - a branch of Swiss Broadcasting Corporation SRG SSR

SWI swissinfo.ch - a branch of Swiss Broadcasting Corporation SRG SSR