Swiss ‘unrest’ conquers Berlinale film festival

Director Cyril Schäublin and his award. Keystone / Clemens Bilan

At this year's Berlinale, four Swiss films were in competition for major prizes. In the experimental section Encounters, film-maker Cyril Schäublin won the prize for best director for his unusual historical feature Unrueh (Unrest) – the most important award to go to a Swiss film this year. 

“We need to destroy all institutions, all states, all legislatures – except Switzerland.” With some pride, Schäublin repeats the words of the 19th century Russian revolutionary and anarchist Mikhail Bakunin, who lies buried in Bern, when asked what image of Switzerland he wants to project with his film. 

Bakunin believed that Switzerland, with its federalist and decentralised system, was actually an anarchist state when compared to the great powers of the 1800s. The film-maker evokes this historic energy in Unrueh.  

The drama, which won him the best director prize in the Berlinale’s showcase of experimental films, is an unusual piece of work. Schäublin, who hails from a watch-making family in the Jura, links the early history of the watch industry to the role that Switzerland played in the anarchist movement of the second half of the 19th century. 

Schäublin tries to look at society from the inside and outside, for one of his sources of inspiration is a real historical character, the Russian geographer and anarchist Piotr Kropotkin, who wrote about his experiences in Switzerland.  

The film succeeds as an impressionistic portrayal of how factory and office workers in the early years of industrialisation spent their days. It ponders the different forms society can take, how we can use technology responsibly, and the meaning of time.  

Unrueh is also innovative in structure. The scenes are laid out almost like panoramas, so that the people in them look like extras in the background. The cold, severe aesthetic that Schäublin and his cameraman Silvan Hillmann created in their début effort Dene wos guet geit (Those Who are Fine), is masterfully rendered here. 

Godard’s glory undimmed  

Schäublin’s wasn’t the only Swiss film to come home with a prize from the Encounters section. A vendredi, Robinson (See you Friday, Robinson) won Iranian director Mitra Farahani a special jury award. A Swiss co-production, this is Farahani’s first feature-length film and a carefully crafted documentary, if at times too mannered. 

Mitra Farahani Keystone / Ronny Hartmann

The film follows correspondence between two of her artistic idols, Iranian film-maker Ebrahim Golestan and Jean-Luc Godard – the most famous Swiss director of all time and a man who made most of his career in France.  

It is testament to the undimmed adoration that the 91-year-old Godard continues to enjoy today that he is represented here, and not only in front of Farahani’s camera. Two of his films were shown in the retrospective section of the festival: Sauve qui peut (la vie) (Every Man for Himself), featuring a young Isabelle Huppert, and the 2004 documentary essay Notre Musique (Our Music). 

But Farahani’s film also shows to what extent Swiss productions are now dependent on international financing. A vendredi, Robinson was produced by Switzerland, France, Iran, and Lebanon. And while her film does have a direct connection to the Alpine country, this is not actually a pre-requisite for Switzerland to help finance a project. It costs large sums of money to make a film – and financing rarely comes from just a single source.  

International co-productions 

For Swiss films to be eligible for international partnerships, Switzerland must finance some foreign productions too. This cash allows the Swiss film industry to remain visible on the world stage. Creative and professional exchanges also become more feasible. 

Two foreign productions with Swiss funding screened at the Berlinale. One, an experimental documentary film, Jet Lag, combines its Chinese director Zheng Lu Xinyuan’s experiences during the Covid-19 pandemic with coming to terms with her family history. 

The other is a large-scale feature film by the Italian Chiara Bellosi. Calcinculo (Swing Ride) is an intimate coming-of-age story and Bellosi’s second film to be co-produced by Switzerland. 

The two Swiss films in the main competition of the festival were both international co-productions. Ursula Meier’s strongly directed and intelligent tragi-comedy La Ligne, which explores the tangled relationship between a mother and her three daughters, was financed by investors in Switzerland, Belgium and France. 

Meier used a host of French actors, including Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi in the role of the self-righteous mother and co-writer Stéphanie Blanchoud in the lead role. 

Switzerland in all its variety 

Meier had an international breakthrough with her first feature film, Home (2008), starring Huppert. The Swiss-French director said she could not imagine making her films anywhere else but in Switzerland, in spite of her close ties to Belgium and France – or rather because of them. She believes she needs a somewhat detached perspective in order to come to grips with the realities of Switzerland. 

Canton Valais, the location for La Ligne, had a major influence on her during filming. Different natural environments – mountains, rivers and plains – as well as social spaces sit closely together, and that inevitably has an impact on society. This variety in such concentrated form is rare outside Switzerland. 

Location also played an important role in Michael Koch’s visually stunning drama Drii Winter (A Piece of Sky), a Swiss-German co-production. Filming in the mountains of Uri in central Switzerland, Koch told SWI swissinfo.ch he was aware of the delicate balancing act he had to strike to avoid creating Swiss-Alpine romanticism. 

Koch wanted to observe people, drawn in by their closeness to nature and composure in the face of life’s difficulties. His experiences are reflected in the muted yet intense love story told by non-professional actors in a remote, inhospitable but magnificent Alpine setting. 

While La Ligne left the festival empty-handed, Drii Winter was singled out for Special Mention by the jury.  

Souheila Yacoub Keystone / Sascha Steinbach

The Swiss presence at this year’s Berlinale shows how varied Swiss cinema is both in form and content. It also points to the multicultural character and social complexity of Switzerland. Souheila Yacoub, born in Switzerland to a Tunisian father and a Belgian mother, was selected as one of the European Shooting Stars – promising young actors – at this year’s Berlinale, following in the footsteps of compatriots Joel Basman, Carla Juri and Luna Wedler, who are making careers abroad too. 

Adapted from German by Terence MacNamee, Geraldine Wong