Valentin Merz’s “De Noche los Gatos Son Pardos” scooped the biggest prize, the Cinegrell First Look Award, at this year’s Locarno Festival First Look pix-in-post competition, one of its industry centerpieces.
Now in its tenth edition, First Look’s focus this year was Switzerland with a jury and industry audience given the chance to preview six upcoming Swiss feature films at various stages of rough or final cut.
The Cinegrell First Look Award consists in SFr 50,000 ($54,500) of post-production services from Cinegrell, a Zurich-based services and restoration company.
Merz’s second feature, after the time and character-hopping “A Vulgar Adventure,” “De Noche” turns on Valentin, a film director, who disappears half way through shooting a libertine costume drama in wooded hills. Robin, its DP and Valentin’s lover, travels to the shores of Mexico’s Pacific Ocean, fulfilling a promise he once made to Valentin.
Produced by Marie Lanne-Chesnot and Merz at Andrea Film, “De Noche” won for “its complexity, its playfulness and its innovative and challenging storytelling,” said a jury consisting of Sebastian Höglinger (Diagonale), Orestis Andreadakis (Thessaloniki International Film Festival) and Jean-Pierre Rehm (FIDMarseille).
The Le Film Français Award – an offer of advertising services – went to “Semret.” The feature debut of editor-turned-director Caterina Mona, it centers on an Eritrean single mom who works at a Zurich hospital. Aspiring to become a midwife, she is forced to face her past.
The film is produced by Michela Pini at Cinédokké, and co-produced by Cineworx Produktion Basel and RSI Radiotelevisione Svizzera.
An estranged father-son relationship drama set in the Swiss mountains, “Réduit,” the feature debut of Leon Schwitter, nabbed the Kaiju Cinema Diffusion Prize, which comes in the form of the design of an international poster. “Reduit” is produced by Caroline Hepting, Rea Televantos, Leon Schwitter (EXIT Filmkollektiv) and is co-produced by Sabotage Filmkollektiv.
More to come