Swiss Film Prize 2024 – “Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry” is the best feature film – Culture

Best feature film, best screenplay, best editing: three Quartz trophies go to a work that has so far been overlooked in cinemas.

The Swiss Film Prize honors art, not audience success. An attitude that doesn’t please everyone. But the members of the Swiss Film Academy vote the way they vote: unimpressed by whether the general public knows, appreciates or supports something.

Silent Fable wins best feature film

A quiet fable about the sexual awakening of a woman in her mid-forties was chosen as the best Swiss feature film of 2024: “Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry”. It is a Swiss-Georgian co-production by Elene Naveriani, director who completed her film studies in Geneva.

The film also won two other awards – for Best Screenplay and Best Editing. However, it hasn’t caused an earthquake at the box office: According to the cinema and film distribution umbrella organization Pro Cinema, the film had none in German-speaking Switzerland until last week 2000 entries recorded.

The Swiss Film Prize as an opportunity

Apart from the specialist audience and a few curious people, hardly anyone saw “Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry” in the cinema. And yet the drama deserves the prize: Elene Naveriani is undisputedly one of the current talents in Swiss film.

Legend:

Virgin at 48: In “Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry,” the whole village gossips about Etero (Eka Chavleishvili) and her virginity.

Frenetic Films

“Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry” has won festival prizes in Hungary, Poland and Bosnia and Herzegovina. In Germany it will soon be in cinemas as “Blackbird in the Blackberry Bush”. The start is still pending in French-speaking Switzerland. The Swiss Film Prize can help to attract audiences to cinemas.

Dominant Romandy?

Keyword French-speaking Switzerland: The dominance of French-speaking Switzerland in the nominations had already been discussed in advance. Whether there is actually an imbalance here is ultimately irrelevant – the prospect of more work being done across language boundaries seems more important. There are nice examples of this in the price list.

There is the award-winning actress Ella Rumpf (“Le théorème de Marguerite”), who skillfully divides her career between German-speaking and French-speaking countries. Or the director Jela Hasler, trained in Zurich and Lucerne, who stars the Vaud actress (and director) Jena Hasse in her award-winning short film “La gravidité”.

Legend:

Ella Rumpf (“Le théorème de Marguerite”) is named Best Actress.

Outside the Box

The best documentary film according to the Swiss Film Prize, “The Hearing” by Lisa Gerig from Zurich, is again a German-speaking Swiss production in which, among other languages, French is also spoken – and interpreted. The Cameroonian Pascal Onana helped recreate an asylum procedure for this film and is now involved in promoting the film.

Next race: European Film Awards

Commitment and art were honored at the Swiss Film Prize – more commercial ventures, such as the nationwide audience success As expected, “Bon Schuur Ticino” or Michael Steiner’s Netflix thriller “Early Birds” received no attention.

This pronounced will to reward the high-quality, but not the popular, has a special background this year: In December 2024, the European Film Prize will be awarded on Swiss soil for the first time – at the KKL Lucerne. In this context, the Swiss Film Prize 2024 was a welcome opportunity to position the industry for the next race.

Swiss Film Prize 2024: the overview