08/03/2010

Séverine Cornamusaz’s Animal Heart [+see also:
trailer
film profile] was the surprise top winner at the Swiss Film Prize ceremony, held on March 6 in Lucerne.

Winning two hotly contested Quartz trophies (Best Feature and Best Actor for Antonio Buil), the young Swiss-French director’s debut feature pipped all other contenders, including some impressive ones, to the post. While Frédéric Mermoud snapped up the Best Screenplay Quartz for his film, Complices [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Frédéric Mermoud
film profile] (“Accomplices”), Christoph Schaub’s Julia’s Disappearance [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Christoph Schaub
film profile] went home empty-handed despite its five nominations.

Even Bruno Ganz, one of the greatest German-language actors, failed to pick up honours. Such was the decision of the professionals at the Swiss Film Academy after two rounds of voting.

Adapted from Swiss writer Noëlle Revaz’s mountain-set domestic violence drama “Rapport aux Bêtes”, Animal Heart certainly shows admirable skill and unquestionable directorial talent, but some characters would have benefited from being more nuanced.

The Quartz for Best Documentary went to Vadim Jendreyko’s The Woman with the 5 Elephants, thus honouring its subject Svetlana Geier, considered to be the greatest translator into German of Dostoevsky’s major works – his “five elephants”. Another contender in this category, Peter Liechti’s The Sound of Insects: Record of a Mummy [+see also:
trailer
film profile], nabbed the Quartz for Best Film Score (composed by Norbert Möslang).

Best Actress was presented to Marie Leuenberger for her role in Micha Lewinsky’s Will You Marry Us? [+see also:
trailer
film profile] and Best Emerging Actor/Actress to Uygar Tamer for her performance in Dominique Othenin-Girard’s Dirty Money - L’infiltré.

Finally, the Special Jury Prize was awarded to DoP Stéphane Kuthy for his cinematography on Bettina Oberli’s The Murder Farm [+see also:
trailer
film profile].

Alongside a few illustrious Swiss natives – including actor Bruno Todeschini, artist H.R. Giger (who designed the creatures for Alien), musician Sophie Hunger, stage director Christoph Marthaler and new Culture Minister Didier Burkhlater – about 1,000 guests attended the Swiss Film Prize ceremony. This was organised for the second time by public television service SRG SSR idée suisse and rebroadcast by networks in the country’s three linguistic regions during an evening entirely devoted to domestic films.

(Translated from French)