A “heroine” alone is not enough to cure the ailing Swiss cinema

Filmmakers from all over the world are gathering in the Locarno heat these days. But the festival is also traditionally a showcase for local filmmaking. Or it could be. However, for years, this has rarely attracted international attention. And things aren't looking much better on the domestic market.

Now at least one television production is being talked about: For the first time ever, the Piazza Grande has been opened for such a format, and the first two episodes of "The Deal" captivated the premiere audience there on Monday.

Lausanne-based Jean-Stéphane Bron, known as a brilliant documentary filmmaker ("Mais im Bundeshuus"), conceived the RTS series together with French director Alice Winocour. He revives a historical event from the summer of 2015, meticulously researched and highly topical, with fictional elements. The plot revolves around the final round of negotiations for a nuclear agreement between America and Iran in a luxury Geneva hotel. This becomes a gripping object lesson in diplomacy as a verbal exchange in times when the law of the jungle is rampant on this stage.

A collaboration with Arte and private partners in France helped RTS achieve the most expensive series production in its history: the budget for six 45-minute episodes was CHF 12 million. That's not to say; the SRF miniseries "Davos 1917" was even more expensive and not as good. "Quartier des Banques," clearly stronger than its SRF counterpart "Private Banking," demonstrated a few years ago that French-speaking Switzerland knows its craft when it comes to series. "The Deal" has international stature, as far as can be judged from the first third (a detailed review follows).

But one swallow on television doesn't make a great Swiss film summer. As surely as a chair back occasionally breaks with a crash during screenings on the Piazza Grande, the Locarno industry has been complaining about a lack of funding for years, and audiences are puzzled by the ailing Swiss film industry. Despite this, or perhaps precisely because of it, Federal Councilor Baume-Schneider continually praises it in speeches at the current festival. She praised Switzerland at the opening, noting that it is represented with 28 works. She failed to mention that almost half of these are in the "Panorama Suisse" section. Of course, there are gems to be discovered there. But one would wish for more appeal.

The culture ministry's whitewashing is understandable in light of current and impending austerity measures in funding. However, it does not advance filmmaking any further, just as the Federal Councilor's complaint that, due to a lack of funds, fewer and fewer productions can be supported and that currently only one in five funding applications is accepted. It is known that applications are constantly being received. But the problem is not that there are too few Swiss films. Sabine Boss, director of box office hits such as "Der Goalie bin ig" (The Goalie Bin I) and head of the film department at the Zurich University of the Arts, spoke at an industry event in Locarno rather of overproduction: She has the feeling that people in this country love making films more than watching them.

The film industry operates at the interface of art and commerce, of cultural and economic development, which doesn't make things any easier. The Federal Office of Culture (FOC) is increasingly emphasizing the importance of private companies and institutions for film funding. This has been enforced since the beginning of 2024 by the "Lex Netflix," which requires private streaming and television providers to invest 4 percent of their gross domestic revenues in Swiss filmmaking. As the FOC announced on the sidelines of the festival, this generated a total of 30 million francs from 21 companies in the first year. A large portion of this goes into the acquisition and production of feature films and series, and a portion also goes into advertising. May it bear fruit.

Of the approximately 90 state-supported Swiss films released each year, very few achieve more than a few thousand admissions. The market share of Swiss productions has hovered at 5 to 6 percent for years, rising slightly in 2024, primarily thanks to the comedy "Bon Schuur Ticino." An even more astonishing success story this year is "Heroine": Petra Volpe's famous hospital drama about the work of a nurse, which is running in Locarno's "Panorama Suisse" and now also on Netflix, drew around 200,000 people to the cinema here (and twice as many in Germany). The film, with which Switzerland will enter the Oscar race, combines social relevance with audience appeal in a semi-documentary approach – like "The Deal."

Ten "heroines" per year would be needed to give Swiss cinema a market share of over 20 percent, similar to that achieved by the Danish industry in its domestic market. Yet, several times as many films are produced here (especially thanks to the strong documentary genre). The "Danish film miracle," incidentally, began because the ailing industry pulled itself together in the 1990s and a joint film center was created. The budgets per film were halved. And only after the boom did the state multiply the subsidies.

It may be that a Danish-style directorship model would also help Swiss productions develop a distinctive style and greater impact, as an external study commissioned by the Federal Office of Culture and Culture (BAK) concluded in 2024. The study did not give a positive assessment of the efficiency of the Swiss subsidy system, which is endowed with approximately CHF 80 million annually. Therefore, the discussion needs to shift away from money and focus more on content, such as the chronic shortage of good screenplays.

Box office admissions and ratings are one measure of success, festival prizes another. Fabrice Aragno of Neuchâtel is the only Swiss filmmaker to make it into Locarno's main competition this year. His "Le Lac" (The Lake), shot in 4:3 format, is a kind of meditation in fantastical images, largely silent and without a plot in the traditional sense. The camera follows a couple on their sailboat during the 120-hour "5 Jours du Léman" regatta on Lake Geneva, through calm and choppy waters, between clouds and waves, by day and night.

Aragno's artistic consistency, among other things as Jean-Luc Godard's cinematographer and confidant in his final films, is admirable. However, his contribution is neither among the hottest contenders for the Golden Leopard, nor will it, as a niche product, reach a large audience.