We are happy to announce that the animated documentary «Chris the Swiss» by Anja Kofmel has been selected for the 71st Festival International de Cannes in the category «Semaine de la critique». The festival takes place from 9.-17. May 2018.
«Chris the Swiss» won the Golden Zagreb Award as the best project in development at Animafest Zagreb in 2013 and is now celebrating its long-awaited world premiere in Cannes.
The film takes the viewers to Croatia in 1992: In the midst of the Yugoslav Wars, Chris, a young Swiss journalist is found dead in mysterious circumstances. He was wearing the uniform of an international mercenary group. Anja Kofmel was his cousin. As a little girl, she used to admire this handsome young man; now a grown-up woman, she decides to investigate his story, trying to understand what really was the involvement of Chris in the conflict …
The 36-year-old Anja Kofmel made the story behind the mysterious death of her cousin in 2009 the subject of her highly regarded graduation film «Chrigi». With «Chris the Swiss» she has now realized her first feature film. The famous Swiss actor Joel Basman (Chris) lends Chris his voice and Susanne-Maria Wrage leads through the film as a narrator.
The film was produced by Samir -Dschoint Ventschr Filmproduktion; Sinisa Juricic - Nukleus Film Croatia; Heino Deckert - ma.ja.de., Germany and Iikka Vehkalahti - IV Films, Finland.
The four-country co-production was financed by the SRF Swiss Radio and Television, the SRG SSR, Teleclub, Eurimages, the Swiss Federal Office of Culture, the Zurich Film Foundation, Succès Cinéma, the Lottery Fund Canton Solothurn, SSA, Suissimage, the Ernst Göhner Foundation, Focal, Verena Josephsohn, the Croatian Audiovisual Centre (HAVC), the MDM Film Commission, the Finnish Film Foundation and YLE.
