Miscellaneous 60th Solothurn Film Festival shows the heavy themes of life
The 60th Solothurn Film Festival is about to open. The anniversary edition features a lot of young filmmaking as well as films that deal with inheritance from different perspectives. This is not just light fare.
14.01.2025, 12:39
SDA
This year's festival is clearly dominated by documentaries. It is also striking that there are many young filmmakers who deal with the darker sides of life, trauma, mental health and well-being. Overall, there are many films that deal with the question of what wars, economic booms, art or grandparents have left us. "We believe that the new generation feels the need to draw a line under things and look to the future," said artistic director Niccolò Castelli at the program announcement last December.
This is not just an explicit question about inheriting wealth within the family, as in the documentary "We Heirs" by Simon Baumann or the feature film "Road's End in Taiwan" by Maria Nicollier.
Bosnia, Sri Lanka, Switzerland
Many films take a historical approach and ask what certain events have left us. The Bosnian war, for example. In the documentary "Il Ragazzo della Drina" by Zijad Ibrahimovic. Or the Sri Lankan civil war for women in the documentary "Under Mango Trees" by Damaris Lüthi. The documentary "Immortals" by Maja Tschumi shows what the US invasion of Iraq and the subsequent power struggles in the government mean for the young generation in Baghdad. The four films are nominated alongside others for the "Prix de Soleure", which is endowed with 60,000 francs and will be awarded on the last evening of the festival.
Watching them is not easy fare, if only because of the subject matter. And they are approaches to often lost, searching figures. They are not just looking for answers, but for a future that holds better things in store.
This tendency can be seen in the films nominated for the award, on the one hand, and in the Panorama Switzerland section, the heart of the Solothurn Film Festival, on the other. Here, too, many films are in dialog with the last century, where answers are sought for today. Filmmaker Samir, for example, finds them with his visually diverse documentary "The Transformation of the Working Class into Foreigners" about Swiss migration history.
Portrait of artists
With the focus on biographies, it is in the nature of things that portrait films also make up a significant part of the festival. As varied as these may be - from biopics in feature film format to experimental docs - it is nevertheless clear who the films portrayed in 2024. It was often artists. Be it the writers Thomas Mann, Eduard Limonov or Lukas Bärfuss, the comedian Emil, the jazz pianist Erroll Garner or the Swiss-based architect and artist Bryan Cyril ("Greina").
The 60th Solothurn Film Festival also focuses on the landscape of the Jura. As every year, they present a showcase of Swiss film. The anniversary edition of the Solothurn Film Festival will open on January 22 with the documentary "The Legacy of Bruno Stefanini" by Thomas Haemmerli. It ends on January 29 with the presentation of the "Prix de Soleure" and other prizes, as well as the screening of the winning films.
