International Jury – Feature Films 2016

Poetry sometimes slips into art, as is the case for Flapping in the Middle of Nowhere, the wonderful first film by Vietnamese director Diep Hoang Nguien, who won three awards at FIFF 2015. But a person can also incarnate poetry, and the FIFF audience who had the chance to meet her last year will be delighted, as we are, to once again see in Fribourg the woman who begins to sing when overwhelmed with emotion.

In the heart of summer 2015, an aerial and sensory masterpiece landed in Swiss cinemas: The Summer of Sangaile. The few spectators who had the chance to see it have kept an immense desire to live and love. Who was hiding behind this cinematic ideal or this ideal cinema? A Lithuanian-born filmmaker, Alanté Kavaïté, an artist with complete freedom whose finesse and exactness—a balance so rare in cinema—is certainly not done making our hearts and spirits flutter. 

In 2006, the Lebanese Jocelyne Saab received at the FIFF what many young filmmakers consider the two highest honours: the Public Prize and the Youth Jury Award. Fribourg was struck by her marvellous film Dunia and fell in love at first sight with the creator’s humanity, a war correspondent turned filmmaker with the commitment and ethics of steel. A cultural resistance fighter, she turns her fight against violence and inertia into art. 

In late January, at the Sundance Film Festival’s closing ceremony, one of the largest cinematic events in the world, Sonita won the Grand Prize and the Public Prize in the Sundance World Cinema Documentary section. The creator’s photo has invaded news feeds. And who do we see at her side? Aline Schmid! This Swiss co-produced the film with the Genevan company Intermezzo Films and is no stranger to FIFF: in the early 2000s then again in 2010, she was a member of the festival’s team, press and its publications! FIFF can lead to many things, even to international success! 

Five years ago, the Swiss Maja Zimmermann wandered around FIFF with an ambition forming: to have a thriving career as a producer in Latin American cinema. No matter how her eyes twinkled with passion and hope, the bond between Latin America and this fashion photographer who studied film at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, wasn’t clear at first. Five years later, she seems to have made her dream come true, an associate to almost a dozen films spanning the continent, starting with Chili where her collaboration with Alejandro Fernández Almendras on the astounding Much Ado About Nothing has just landed her in the official selection of the Sundance Film Festival!