30/12/2016 - Solothurn will host the best of Swiss film in January thanks to a rich and innovative schedule

The baroque city on the river Aare is transformed, once a year, into the capital of Swiss cinema. Feature-length films, documentary, shorts and even films in VR: at the Solothurn Film Festival there are no genre constraints, it’s quality that counts.

“Both feature and documentary films scheduled for the 52^nd edition of the Solothurn Film Festival look further than their national borders; however the allure of the ‘other’ or the ‘foreign’ can also be found in the stories of Switzerland itself”, remarks the director of the Solothurn festival, Seraina Rohrer, talking about the highly-anticipated event. The Divine Order [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Petra Volpe
film profile] directed by Petra Volpe, a film focusing on women’s suffrage in Switzerland, will open the event and is also in contention for the prestigious “Prix de Soleure”. In the same category are another five female directors: Elene Naveriani with her debut film I Am Truly a Drop of Sun on Earth, a love story about a prostitute and a Nigerian migrant, Elise Shubs with her debut documentary Impasse [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile], about the pressing and sensitive themes of prostitution and migrants on the streets of Lausanne, the now very well-known Léa Pool (Double Sentence [+see also:
trailer
film profile]), Heidi Specogna (Cahier africain [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile]), and Jacqueline Zünd (Almost There [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile]). These directors have travelled all over the world thanks to the characters in their documentaries. From the prisons of Nepal and Guatemala to the war zones of central Africa, navigating through the Californian desert, Benidorm and Tokyo – international cinema ventures far and wide. Among the other films in contention for the “Prix de Soleure” are The Valley of Salt [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] directed by Christophe M. Saber, who went to visit his parents in Egypt for the first time since the beginning of the revolution, Mehdi Sahebi’s The Field [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile], Aldo Gugolz’s directorial debut Rue de Blamage [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile], the portrait of a street and its inhabitants who are heroes on the margins of society, and Sören Senn’s Weg vom Fenster-Leben nach dem Burnout [+see also:
trailer
film profile], which focuses on the new illness of the 21st century, ‘burnout’.

There are however ten films in contention for the “Prix du public”. Among them is Lotto, Micha Lewinsky’s most recent satire, telling the tale of a son willing to do anything to see his father happy, maybe for the last time, Martina Rieder and Karoline Arn’s Unerhört jenisch [+see also:
trailer
film profile] in which we accompany the amazing Stephan Eicher to the Swiss mountains in search of Yenish traditions, Benoît Lange and Pierre-Antoine Hiroz’s Docteur Jack [+see also:
trailer
film profile], the even more mysterious Mercy [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Fulvio Bernasconi
film profile] from Fulvio Bernasconi, and the poetic documentary The Girl Down Loch Änzi [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] from Alice Schmid.

The highly-anticipated “Swiss Panorama” category and the beating heart of the festival is a window into the very best Swiss cinema of the year, and has no fewer than 179 films in its category. Among these, to name but a few, is Frédéric Gonseth’s Das Gripenspiel, which gives us a look behind the scenes of Swiss politics, Daniel Wyss’s Delamuraz, Nicholas Greinacher’s first film, Maximilian, and the experimental comedy ‘Two Hookers and a Bitch’ from Daniel Young.

Swiss-French sound engineer and designer François Musy will be the guest of honour at the 2016 edition of the festival. At this 52nd edition, Solothurn’s audience will be able to discover a selection of Swiss films directed in virtual reality. Among these is Watchout! – the VR game which allows players to explore the universe of Claude Barras’s My Life as a Courgette [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Claude Barras
film profile].

(Translated from Italian)