Three high-profile actors (Ben Kingsley, Charlotte Gainsbourg and Eddie Redmayne) will be attending this year’s Zurich Film Festival in order to collect three prizes: the Golden Icon Award, which will be bestowed upon the veteran British actor, and the Golden Eye Lifetime Achievement accolade which will go to the French actress and British actor alike.

Whilst an impressive défilé of stars has always been a strong point of the festival, according to artistic director Christian Jungen, who enthuses that the team "are thrilled to be welcoming more stars than ever this year", the promotion of emerging filmmakers (with an impressive 49 first works featuring in this year’s edition) and of Swiss film is also one of his priorities. Of the 156 films hailing from 49 countries making up the programme of this 18th edition (running 22 September – 2 October), 18 are Swiss productions (including 7 Romandy works, which is a record for the Zurich-based festival). Jostling amongst these is the world premiere of A Forgotten Man by Geneva’s Laurent Nègre - who adapted Swiss writer Thomas Hürlimann’s book “L’Ambassadeur”, whilst also adding some new and highly sensitive facts - and the screening of Golden Years by Swiss-Hungarian director Barbara Kulcscar.

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The Focus section, hosting a selection of films hailing from Germany, Austria and Switzerland, consists of 14 films, all of which are first, second or third works (10 first works feature in the Focus Competition alone). Titles gracing this line-up include David Wagner’s Austrian movie Eismayer [+leggi anche:
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intervista: David Wagner
scheda film] which triumphed in Venice’s Film Critics’ Week and which explores the torments of a military drill instructor wrestling with his own homosexuality, and Laura Kaer’s Swiss documentary Becoming Giulia, which tells the tale of the dancer and star of the Zurich Opera, Giulia Tondelli.

There’s a considerable quantity of European (co)productions in the Fiction Competition. These include British work Blue Jean [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Georgia Oakley
scheda film] by Georgia Oakley, which homes in on English culture at the end of the eighties, a dark time for the LGBTIQ+ community, and Aftersun [+leggi anche:
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scheda film] a poignant yet disturbing movie about memories by Charlotte Wells (UK/USA). The same competition also features Something You Said Last Night [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Luis De Filippis
scheda film] (Canada/Switzerland) by Luis De Filippis, revolving around a young transgender man trying to find a balance between his desire for independence and the comfort of the family nest, Polish movie Fucking Bornholm [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Anna Kazejak
scheda film] by Anna Kazejak, which shines a light on the contradictions and hypocrisy of a middle-class family, Spanish work Suro [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Mikel Gurrea
scheda film], in which Mikel Gurrea recounts the journey embarked upon by a couple as they move from the city to the countryside, Denmark’s Unruly [+leggi anche:
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scheda film] by Malou Reymann, which brings one of the darkest periods in the country’s history to life, The Cake Dynasty [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Christian Lollike
scheda film] by Danish director Christian Lollike, which tells the tale of a man who decides to convert to Islam, The Kings of the World [+leggi anche:
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scheda film] by Laura Mora, depicting the quest for justice and happiness of five kids from Medellin, Return To Seoul [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Davy Chou
scheda film] by Davy Chou, revolving around a search for roots, Until Tomorrow [+leggi anche:
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scheda film] by Ali Asgari which recounts the daily life of a teenage mum wresting with Iran’s patriarchal value system, and Valeria Is Getting Married by Israeli director Michal Vinik, which homes in on organised marriages between Ukrainian women and Israeli men.

The Documentary Competition also boasts a high number of European (co)productions, including A Taste of Whale [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Vincent Kelner
scheda film] by France’s Vincent Kelner, which looks into whale hunting on the Faroe Islands, as well as Matt Sarnecki’s Danish-American-Czech co-production The Killing of a Journalist [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Matt Sarnecki
scheda film]. Finland and the UK are also in the game, with two films each: The Mission [+leggi anche:
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scheda film] by Tania Anderson, about a group of four young Mormons, and The New Greatness Case [+leggi anche:
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scheda film] by Russia’s Anna Shishova, which explores a mother’s battle to free her daughter who is accused of extremism; and then the incredible story told by Jono McLeod in My Old School [+leggi anche:
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scheda film] by Italy’s Victoria Fiore, which depicts the contradictions inherent to living in a city as complex as Naples. Last but not least, there’s A Provincial Hospital [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Ilian Metev, Ivan Chertov …
scheda film], a co-production between Bulgaria and Germany by Ilian Metev, Ivan Chertov and Zlatina Teneva, which opens a window onto daily life in a Bulgarian hospital, All That Breathes [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Shaunak Sen
scheda film] by Shaunak Sen (India/UK), which scooped Cannes’ Golden Eye trophy, and Mike Day’s Cowboy Poets (USA/UK).

This year’s New World View section, meanwhile, will be devoted to Spanish cinema, boasting no less than 18 films and also celebrating the tenth anniversary of the festival’s strategic collaboration with the San Sebastian Film Festival.