Swiss go to Cannes with two animated films
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.
Translated from Italian by Dale Bechtel
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