Switzerland Today
Dear Swiss Abroad,
Should it be easier to become Swiss? Should the public be able to sack government ministers who they think are doing a poor job? Two popular initiatives asking these questions were launched today. If campaigners can collect 100,000 valid signatures in 18 months, the issues will go to a nationwide vote.
In the news: Musical stamps, two new popular initiatives, Netflix pilgrims from South Korea, and the Cannes film festival.
- For the first time in Switzerland a stamp can be animated and produce music via a mobile phone app. The stamp in question is commemorating the centenary of SUISA, the cooperative of Swiss songwriters, composers and music publishers.
- Anyone who has lived in Switzerland for five years, has a basic knowledge of a national language and has not committed a serious criminal offence should receive a Swiss passport. This is the demand of a popular initiative launched today. At present, only people who have a C residence permit and have lived in Switzerland for at least ten years are eligible for naturalisation.
- Another initiative launched today wants the public to be able to sack unpopular government ministers. Switzerland’s seven-member government is elected by parliament every four years following a general election. The initiative’s organisers believe ministers should then be subject to a public vote of confidence every two years. The performance of government ministers has been the subject of closer, and often more critical, scrutiny, particularly since the Covid-19 pandemic.
- Were the Turkish president elected only by Turkish voters living in Switzerland, his name would be Kemal Kilicdaroglu. The Turkish opposition candidate won 57.6% of their votes, clearly more than current president Recep Tayyip Erdogan on 40.3%.
A Swiss village that features in a popular South Korean Netflix series is imposing fees and traffic controls to avoid being over-run by tourists.
Last summer the lakeside village of Iseltwald was brought to a standstill by an unexpected influx of fans of the Crash Landing on You series. Tourists from Korea and other Asian destinations were drawn to a wooden pier on Lake Brienz – the centrepiece of a riveting romantic scene in the show.
Locals, however, were unimpressed by the sheer number of people taking selfies, jamming up the traffic and then disappearing without spending much money. Some 12 coaches packed with tourists were reportedly turning up every day at the small village in canton Bern, central Switzerland.
This year, the village will only allow in pre-booked coaches that pay for reserved parking spots and will impose a CHF5 ($5.60) selfie fee on tourists. “One way or another we’ll get the situation under control,” Iseltwald mayor Peter Rubi told Swiss public broadcaster, SRFExternal link. “We want to offer regular guests and new tourists a quality stay.”
The PostBus public transport service will introduce a special timetable with larger vehicles to cope with up to 2,000 anticipated guests a day during the peak season. At weekends, the service will run up to 34 trips a day to ease the congestion on the village, which has a population of just over 400.
Sticking with streaming, “Cinema beats Netflix” is the headline of an article in today’s Tages-Anzeiger about the Cannes film festival and how Hollywood’s “brave new streaming world” could lose the battle against the big screen.
“The historical moment when cinema didn’t die after all – at some point it has to be marked with a date and entered in the history books,” wrote the author of the articleExternal link, Tobias Kniebe. This will only be possible in retrospect, of course, and several years down the line, he said, but he had a feeling that the opening of the 76th Cannes International Film Festival could be it.
CannesExternal link, which opened today and runs until next Saturday, “insists on being connected to the original film experience more stubbornly than the other big film festivals”, he wrote. That’s why, for example, the showing of the opening film Jeanne du Barry, in which Johnny Depp plays King Louis XV, has been deliberately synchronised with cinemas all over France.
“A victory for cinema is also the fact that this opening brings a kind of ceasefire between the festival and Netflix” – the two main warring parties in the battle over whether every film must also be available online quickly (Netflix’s view) or be allowed a long, exclusive run in cinemas, with a waiting period for all other providers (the French film industry). Netflix has acquired the streaming rights to Jeanne du Barry but will dutifully wait the 15 months stipulated in France until the film can be watched online.
This is not voluntary, but the result of determined political regulation, according to the Tages-Anzeiger. “It also ensures that the streamer Apple TV+ also respectfully adheres to cinema traditions at this festival,” it said, pointing to Martin Scorsese’s eagerly awaited Indian reservation thriller Killers of the Flower Moon with Leonardo DiCaprio. “An expensive and prestigious Apple production that the festival, with its long Scorsese tradition (manifested, among other things, in the Palme d’Or for Taxi Driver in 1976), was naturally keen on.”
Those who “defiantly and fearlessly” insist on the primacy of the big screen are considered visionaries, it said. First and foremost Tom Cruise, who had the power to hold back his finished Top Gun: Maverick for two years until people dared to return to the cinemas – and was rewarded with people storming cinemas. Or James Cameron, whose Avatar sequel broke audience records as if Covid had never existed.
There are plenty of names at Cannes that are whetting the Tages-Anzeiger’s appetite: Wes Anderson and Todd Haynes from the US, the stoic Finn Aki Kaurismäki, the Japanese Hirokazu Kore-eda, Catherine Breillat from France, the Turkish master Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Nanni Moretti, Marco Bellocchio and Alice Rohrwacher from Italy, plus Jonathan Glazer and Ken Loach from the UK.
“In short, from blockbuster makers to auteurs, there’s a renewed sense of optimism about the future of cinema, and the rich and promising Cannes programme reflects that,” it concluded.
Six films with Swiss involvement are being shown at Cannes, with one in competition for the Palme d’Or: La ChimeraExternal link by Alice Rohrwacher, a Swiss-Italian-French co-production.
In compliance with the JTI standards
More: SWI swissinfo.ch certified by the Journalism Trust Initiative
