58th Solothurn Film Days
Film festival addresses current topics such as war and feminism
At the 58th Solothurn Film Days (-25.1.), which begin on Wednesday evening, powerful stories, unconventional narrative styles and a striking number of feature films await the audience.
Published: 2 minutes ago
For the first time in the office of artistic director: Niccolò Castelli is giving films in other languages and stories about minorities more space at the 58th Solothurn Film Festival (18-25 January).
Topics such as war, feminism, struggle for human rights, democracy and the environment dominate this year’s edition. “The films want to play a role in society,” said Niccolò Castelli, the new artistic director of the Filmtage, at the program media conference last December. The directors want to “put their fingers in the wounds”.
In an interview with the Keystone-SDA news agency the day before the opening, the filmmaker (“Atlas”) explained this further. In his first year as co-director of the festival, he wants to bring in “a greater sensitivity to films in other languages and from minorities”.
“The new filmmakers, who are between 25 and 40 years old, often have at least half of their roots abroad,” he explains. Indirectly, this will make Swiss cinema “a bit more international”.
What is particularly striking in the program is the large number of feature films and stories about strong female characters and the question of generations. The Swiss-Egyptian co-production “Big Little Women” by Nadia Fares, for example, deals with women’s cross-generational struggle against patriarchal prohibitions, while “Trained To See – Three Women And The War” by Luzia Schmid portrays three women war reporters in World War II.
The Swiss retrospective will open in the presence of Federal Councilor Alain Berset with “This Kind of Hope” by the Swiss-Polish director Pawel Siczek. The documentary film, shown in a world premiere, is a look at the past and present of Belarus. The focus is on Andrei Sannikov, who played a key role as a diplomat in the nuclear disarmament of Belarus in the 1990s and later ran for president.
(SDA)