A month rich in emotion

Le Regard Libre N° 41 - Jonas Follonier

July should be synonymous with summer, and therefore with vacations, but it's no use: when work is passion, work is constant. No cause for complaint, then; on the contrary, joy! With three colleagues, we experienced the Neuchâtel International Fantastic Film Festival intensely, each viewing over twenty feature films in one week. Our special report, on pp. 26-54 of this issue, contains just a selection of our reviews - and we'll be happy to share them with you. all available on our website - as well as two exceptional interviews with a talented director and actress.

I also had the honor of being part of the Taurus Studio Innovation Jury, whose aim was to reward the most innovative Swiss short film. The eighteenth edition of the NIFFF was a varied vintage, as my colleague Thierry Fivaz mentions, and this already applies to the dozen or so short films we had to judge as part of the jury. There were some very good ones, and some not so good. On the one hand, it reminded us of the relevance of a national debate on the Billag fee and what it finances, but it also showed us that Switzerland is capable of providing quality productions.

Read also: «NIFFF 2018: a varied vintage»

Our jury chose the short film Das Mädchen im Schnee («The Girl in the Snow»), by Denis Leddergerber. Its subject, the creation of sound effects and soundtracks for a film, has the merit of shedding light on a little-known yet valuable and fascinating profession. But above all, the raw moment of this work manages to marry with an admirable aesthetic and arouse emotions.

Debating cinema, culture and literature is an activity which, like our coverage of certain concerts at the Montreux Jazz Festival and Sion under the stars, like our love of nuanced political reflections and the launch of philosophical discussions, like our desire to introduce readers to a certain gastronomy, seems to belong to a different kind of Switzerland than the detestable and criticizable one that spent the month of July hoping that France wouldn't win the World Cup and spewing out its inordinate and unjustified hatred. Everyone has the power to choose which of these two Swiss people they want to be like. The one of true emotions and sharing, or the one of instinctive impulses and false community. That, at least, is my conviction. Enjoy your reading!

Write to the author : jonas.follonier@leregardlibre.com

Photo credit: © Loris S. Musumeci for Le Regard Libre