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Movie on addiction and childhood wins Swiss film critics’ prize

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The movie captures the end of Zurich's open drug scene in the 1990s. C films

The feature film "Platzspitzbaby" by Pierre Monnard has been voted the best Swiss film of 2020 by the Swiss Association of Film Journalists.

The movie is based on a book by Michelle Halbheer and chronicles a girl’s love for her drug-addicted mother in Zurich in 1995. The young girl invents a fictional world to escape her mother’s addiction. It was made on a budget of CHF3.1 million and managed to draw around 330,000 cinema fans across the country despite Covid-19 restrictions. 

In second place of the best Swiss films of 2020 was “Mare” by director Andrea Staka. The film tells the story of a mother of a family who lives next to an airport without ever having taken a plane.

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In third place was the film “Petite soeur”. This feature film by Los Angeles-based directors Stéphanie Chuat and Véronique Reymond focuses on Lisa, a playwright who has stopped writing and is trying to get her twin brother, a famous actor who is seriously ill, back on stage.

These three award-winning films are also nominated for the Swiss Film Prize 2021: “Petite soeur” won six nominations, “Platzspitzbaby” five and “Mare” three. Due to the pandemic, 2020 was an extremely difficult year for cinema. However, numerous Swiss films (55 feature films and documentaries) were released in cinemas, from which the 170 members of the Swiss Association of Film Journalists made their choice.

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