At the opening of the 2012 Solothurn film festival on Thursday, this year’s Swiss president, Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf, praised the quality of Swiss cinema.
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She said it deserved the quality label “Swissness”.
For her part, the new director of the festival, Seraina Rohrer, compared filmmaking with winemaking.
“Filmmakers also depend on a good climate, financially and politically,” she said. She said she hoped the new regulations on the allocation of public money would create a good basis for future film production.
In her speech, Widmer-Schlumpf admitted that finding the way to allocate money to filmmakers in a fair and effective way was a “challenging” task.
The first film to be shown at the festival was Xavier Koller’s “Eine wen iig, dr Dällebach Kari” (Someone like me – Dällebach Kari), the tragic story of a well-known Bernese character from the first part of the 20th century.
The festival lasts until January 26. Last year it attracted 55,000 visitors.
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