To foreigners, Switzerland often means Alpine mountains, cows, chocolates – and tax evasion. As Frédéric Maire, director of the Swiss national film archives, explains in this video, the Hollywood movie machine is helping to keep these clichés alive.
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1 minute
I have a wealth of experience as a journalist working in Switzerland and enjoy producing videos, articles and podcasts on a range of subjects, recently focused mainly on politics and the environment.
Born in the UK, I studied law at Nottingham University, then went on to attend the first-ever post-graduate radio journalism college in London. After working as a radio journalist in the UK and then Switzerland from 1984 to 1995, I returned to the UK to complete a post-graduate diploma in film at Bournemouth Film School. I have been working as a video journalist ever since.
He examines whether the sleazy characters depicted in films such as Wolf of Wall Street are simply exaggerations of the real bankers working in Geneva. We ask him whether the rigid, stiff, secretive, protestant, Germanic banking types of Zürich are real or just figments of filmmakers’ imaginations.
Switzerland is the largest offshore wealth centre in the world, managing 27% of all cross-border assets. In October 2018, it officially started exchanging bank account data with tax authorities in other countries, marking the end of Swiss banking secrecy. Banks are required to report transactions if they suspect criminal funds are involved. But still villains in movie thrillers often take the form of a Swiss banker.
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The Oscar-nominated film is based on Jordan Belfort’s memoirs of brokers who defraud millions of dollars from unwitting clients and indulge in an outrageous life of drugs, sex and conspicuous consumption. It also features a suave Geneva banker, whom Belfort meets in an effort to stash away some of his ill-gotten funds. The scenes involving the…
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Although many Holly- and Bollywood scenes are shot in Switzerland, until now Swiss self-promotion hasn't been anything to sing and dance about.
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