ZURICH. The Zurich Film Festival has unveiled the gala premieres for its 22nd edition, and the list balances awards season muscle against one film that lands close to the national bone: 111 - Echoes from Halifax, the Swiss Canadian drama about the 1998 Swissair crash, will have its international premiere on the Limmat.
The film, directed by Mauro Mueller and led by Ursina Lardi, follows the relatives, helpers and coastal residents bound together after Flight 111 went down off Halifax on 2 September 1998. It opens the Atlantic Film Festival in its world premiere before travelling to Zurich, where its screening is already the most anticipated Swiss date of the festival.
The gala strand, which the festival describes as dedicated to auteur cinema for a broader audience, also carries world premieres from two of German language cinema's most decorated directors. Andreas Dresen brings Love, After All, with Dagmar Manzel and Joachim Krol as a couple whose forty year marriage is unsettled by retirement. Doris Dorrie brings How Can I Help?, a comedy in which Angela Winkler's injured matriarch is assigned a care robot with instructions she would rather not discuss.
Festival director Christian Jungen said the team was particularly delighted that Dresen and Dorrie had entrusted their premieres to Zurich. Their films, he said, are grounded in everyday life and, with a little wink, reflect on the state of our society.
The international contingent mixes pedigree with commerce. Peter Farrelly's I Play Rocky, with Anthony Ippolito as the young Sylvester Stallone, arrives from its world premiere in Toronto. Beth de Araujo's Josephine, the Sundance breakout starring Channing Tatum and Gemma Chan, continues its festival run. Possible Love, the new drama from the Korean director Lee Chang-dong, comes to Zurich straight from Venice.
Also announced: Wicker, a science fiction romantic comedy with Alexander Skarsgard, Olivia Colman and Elizabeth Debicki; Company, Casey Affleck's latest; It Will Happen Tonight, with Louis Garrel and Jasmine Trinca; and Burgundy, a documentary from the makers of The Truffle Hunters. The Hammer, Simon Wallon's portrait of the auctioneer Simon de Pury, completes a gala selection containing eleven world premieres.
The structure of the fortnight is now clear. The galas carry the premieres and the carpets; the competition strands, where Zurich has built its reputation on first and second features, will be revealed with the full programme on 9 September. Ticket presales open on 14 September.
The festival runs from 24 September to 4 October, overlapping this year with the federal referendum Sunday, a scheduling accident the programmers accept with a shrug. Zurich has always sold itself as the festival you attend between other commitments, and a vote is, by Swiss standards, a respectable one.
What the gala list signals, beyond the names, is where Zurich now sits on the autumn circuit: late enough to gather the Toronto and Venice harvest, early enough to matter for the awards season, and confident enough to put a quiet Swiss grief on the same poster as Rocky Balboa. The full programme lands in a fortnight.