Story of Ukrainian exile wins best Swiss feature film prize

Actress and gymnast Anastasia Budiashkina, seen here with director Elie Grappe at the awards ceremony on Friday, arrived in Switzerland via Poland after spending several days in an air raid shelter in Kharkiv, eastern Ukraine. Keystone/walter Bieri

Olga, which tells the story of a young Ukrainian gymnast taking refuge in Switzerland during the pro-European Maidan revolution in 2013-2014, has won best feature film at this year’s Swiss Film Awards.

The movie by 28-year-old Elie Grappe also won best screenplay and best sound at the ceremony that took place in Zurich on Friday evening.

Another film with resonance in the current Ukraine war, Ostrov, won best documentary.

The evening was rich in references to the ongoing war. The 20-year-old gymnast who plays the lead role in Olga, Anastasia Budiashkina, made it to the ceremony after spending several days in an air raid shelter in Kharkiv, eastern Ukraine, then travelling to Poland before reaching Switzerland.

With the war in Ukraine, Grappe’s film has had a second life, as organisations in the United Kingdom, Germany and the United States are screening it as part of fundraising efforts for Ukraine.

The film portrays a young athlete torn between training at the Swiss national sport centre in Magglingen, canton Bern, and demonstrations in Kyiv, where her mother is a journalist.

Island metaphor for Russia’s isolation

The documentary film Ostrov by the Russian Svetlana Rodina and Laurent Stoop looks at an island in Russia where life flourished before the fall of the Soviet Union. Today, the inhabitants have little more than their faith in the “saviour” Vladimir Putin.

“With the war in Ukraine, our film has become a more profound metaphor,” Rodina told Swiss public television RTS. “By attacking Ukraine, Russia is isolating itself [and] turning itself into an island.”

Other notable winners of the night included Claudia Grob, whose first film role, in La Mif, won her a surprise best actress prize. The best supporting actress award also went to a non-professional actress from La Mif, Anaïs Uldry. Pablo Caprez won best actor for Zurich director Lorenz Merz’s Soul of a Beast, which received a record eight nominations.

The Swiss Film Awards are given out by the Federal Office of Culture in collaboration with the Quartz association in Geneva and Zurich, and the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation, SWI swissinfo’s parent company.