ZURICH. The 22nd Zurich Film Festival opens tonight at the Kongresshaus with the European premiere of Tenzing, an Apple film about the 1953 ascent of Mount Everest, and with a Golden Eye award for Tom Hiddleston. The actor, who plays Edmund Hillary, is expected on the green carpet with co star Willem Dafoe and director Jennifer Peedom. Federal councillor Elisabeth Baume-Schneider and Zurich’s mayor, Raphael Golta, are the guests of honour. The festival says more than a thousand people from business, culture and politics will be in the room. The edition runs until 4 October.
Why this film, and why tonight
Festival chief executive Christian Jungen has tied the choice to this year’s motto, “dream big”. Tenzing, he said, shows what it takes to grow past the limit you were handed, and it carries a second point the festival wants heard in a mountain country: the first ascent worked because the climbers respected the Sherpa community and the mountain itself, known to Tenzing Norgay as Chomolungma rather than as a peak to be conquered. Peedom, the Australian director of Sherpa and Mountain, has spent two decades filming in the Himalaya. The screenplay is by Luke Davies. See-Saw Films produces, with Norbu Tenzing, son of Tenzing Norgay, among the executive producers.
Hiddleston’s Golden Eye was announced on Tuesday. Jungen called the performance proof that a large dream still depends on believing in yourself and respecting other people, which is also the sentence the festival would like on the poster. Dafoe plays expedition leader John Hunt. After Zurich, Tenzing reaches selected cinemas on 9 October and Apple TV on 16 October. For eleven days the city gets the premiere, the award and the guests. The platform gets the audience afterwards.
The opening is the glamorous end of a programme Zurich has been assembling since late summer. The gala strand already includes the international premiere of 111, Echoes from Halifax, the Swiss Canadian drama about the 1998 Swissair crash, plus world premieres from Andreas Dresen and Doris Dörrie. Fourteen Swiss productions are in the official sections, the largest home contingent the festival has fielded. Tonight’s carpet does not cancel that bet. It is the shop window.
The awards around the opening
The honours list for the fortnight is long even by Zurich’s standards. Julianne Moore receives the Golden Icon. Naomi Watts, John Turturro, Leïla Bekhti and Luna Wedler receive Golden Eyes of their own, alongside Hiddleston’s. Martin McDonagh is the subject of a tribute. Richard Linklater and the composer Gabriel Yared receive career awards, as does the Swiss production company DCM and its founders. The point of the list is industrial as much as ceremonial: Zurich wants the people who open films in Venice and Toronto to treat the Limmat as a necessary stop, not a courtesy.
The timing collides with the rest of the country’s week. Sunday is the federal vote on neutrality and food security. Monday the Council of States opens its debate on the EU treaties. A film festival that asks politicians to put on evening dress between those two dates is very Zurich, and the programmers have never apologised for it. Baume-Schneider’s presence tonight is the neatest symbol available: the health minister will spend Tuesday announcing next year’s insurance premiums, and Thursday walking a green carpet for a film about a mountain.
For Swiss cinema the useful days are the ones after the opening, when buyers sit through the Swiss titles and the industry strand tries to turn Locarno’s summer prizes into distribution. Public funding still covers the part of a budget that commercial money will not. Ticket prices have been held for three seasons. The late night genre strand is aimed at the crowd that stays around Helvetiaplatz after the galas. None of that photographs as well as a carpet. All of it is why the festival claims to matter in a country that also has Locarno.
Tonight is simpler than the argument about what a small film industry is for. A hall on the lake, a film about the highest mountain, two actors most of the room already knows, and a mayor and a federal councillor in the front seats. The carpet is green. The mountain is the subject. Zurich has eleven days to show that the rest of the programme deserves the same queue.