Archive | 3. SFFF | 2016

Statements

Gabriel Zurbriggen

As a festival every year we have the chance to reinvent ourselves. Selecting the programme was exciting until the very last moment. Which films are going to make it into the selection and can we pave for our favorites the way to the screen of Cinema Rex? Sometimes coming straight from Berlinale or the Sundance festival.

We are very happy with this year’s programme and with our wonderful jurors. The films of the third edition once again provide us with a glimpse of the extremes of human nature. The filmmakers and actors have shown a lot of courage and imagination. As a novelty in this year’s programme we are offering an acting workshop lead by our jury member Sigrid Andersson, and we are glad to have Murat Parlak as a fantastic pianist at our festival.

Furthermore, we can present some new partners such as Ernst Göhner Stiftung, PostAuto AG and Helvetia Insurances.

At Saas-Fee Filmfest you have the unique opportunity to watch the films together with our juries and to sit next to famous actors and directors. Together with national and international fans we are looking forward to meeting again in Cinema Rex, when we call: „Action!“

Stefan Fichtner 

Stéphane Brizé’s film THE MEASURE OF A MAN identifies and thematizes what appears in many other films in this year’s competition as a side story or subtext: the narrowness of capitalism is reflected for example in WILD in the shape of the rigid working hierarchy in the creative start-up, in JE SUIS UN SOLDAT in the protagonist’s fall through the cracks, in DEUX RÉMI, DEUX in an absurd office routine or in SUPERWELT in the neat, candy coloured day-to-day horror, the protagonist breaks out from. It seems that the constraints articulated by THE MEASURE ... radicalize the cinematographic eye of this film year and produce the most contradictory filmic strategies. On the one hand a relentless exploring gaze, that doesn’t look away and glues itself to reality in an almost documentary style, like besides THE MEASURE ... NAPOLI JUNGLE dares to show. And on the other hand the dream-like state of being elevated from reality, often only through a minimal shift, as celebrated in the sensual cinematic dreams WILD , DER NACHTMAHR and ALOYS.

Let me most cordially invite you to embark with us, our wonderful juries and the makers of our competition films on an unforgettable journey - May the 3rd. Saas-Fee Filmfest begin!