2018 featured country: Swiss retrospective

A time and space journey into the cinema of the Swiss Confederation…

Switzerland is better known for its bank confidentiality than for its films. And yet… At the end of the 1970s, a few filmmakers, including the iconic Alain Tanner, burst onto the international scene on the waves of May 1968 at a time when their French counterparts were still stuck gazing at their own navels. It goes without saying that this cinematic wealth was also on display in short films, whose high-quality, diverse production climbed onto the world’s screens as a mirror of the country itself.

Four programmes give us the opportunity to go back in time to the very first retrospective in the Festival’s history, which was dedicated to Switzerland in 1982. This is a wonderful occasion to celebrate the Festival’s first forty years through the best films of the country’s vibrant, polyphonic cinema in all its variety, from fiction to animation, to documentaries, to experimental films, student films and independent productions, from filmmakers who are now well known, and from others who have remained in the shadows… Some of the films have been selected previously at Clermont-Ferrand but most are here for the first time. To go along with the retrospective, we are organizing a host of activities to help you delve deeper into the world of the filmmakers featured in these programmes.