“Olga” by Elie Grappe won the 2022 Best Fiction Film Prize on Friday and “Ostrov” that of the best documentary. The resonance between these films and the war in Ukraine will have weighed more heavily than the number of nominations.
“Olga”, the first feature film by Elie Grappe, 28 years old and trained at ECAL, tells the story of a young Ukrainian gymnast who takes refuge in Switzerland at the time of the pro-European Maidan revolution in 2013 and 2014. His film, co-produced by Point Prod and Jean-Marc Fröhle at Geneva once more scoops the award for Best Screenplay and Best Sound.
The actress of “Olga” in Switzerland
Stranded for several days in an air-raid shelter in Kharkiv, eastern Ukraine, Anastasia Budiashkina, the young 20-year-old gymnast who plays the main actress in “Olga”, managed to reach Poland and then Switzerland. . She was present Friday evening in Zurich where she spoke briefly in an emotional and modest way on the aggression of Russia once morest her country.
With the latest events, “Olga” is experiencing a second life, as it is shown in England, Germany and the United States, where it is “used” to raise funds for Ukraine. “We have to stay awake, we have to continue to participate in donations and collections”, underlines Elie Grappe.
In the film, Olga is torn between her sports training in Macolin for the Olympics and the demonstrations in kyiv where her mother, a journalist, is involved. “This tension between gymnastics and documentary images of the revolution is also what my character experiences. These two images have nothing to do with each other and at the same time do not stop clashing.”
For the sound, it’s regarding the same lexical field: the snap of the metal bar echoes those of the beatings during the demonstrations, she said in an interview with Keystone-ATS.
Ostrov’s metaphor
The documentary “Ostrov” by Russian Svetlana Rodina and Laurent Stoop focuses on a Russian island on which life once flourished before dying out with the fall of the USSR. Today, the inhabitants have little more than their faith in the “savior” Vladimir Putin.
“With the war in Ukraine, our film has become a much deeper metaphor,” said Svetlana Rodina on RTS. “Russia by attacking Ukraine isolates itself, turns into an island”.
“While filming, we had signs that war was in the works, but without really understanding it,” she continued. “Our protagonists watched the news every night on Russian television and we filmed this several times. And every day one, two or three subjects mentioned the so-called Nazis in Ukraine.”
Claudia Grob best actress
The rain of nominations, attributed to other films, will have weighed less heavily in the balance. In “La Mif” (6 nominations), the Genevan Frédéric Baillif worked with the residents and the director of a real home. And this last Claudia Grob won the Quartz for Best Actress.
Yet she does not consider herself an actress: “We played our own role, but not our own story,” she explained Keystone-ATS. The best female supporting role also goes to a non-professional actress from “La Mif”, Anaïs Uldry – Audrey in the film. “La Mif” still wins the prize for best editing.
Pablo Caprez rewarded
The best male interpretation goes to Pablo Caprez (Gabriel) in “Soul of a Beast” by Zurich director Lorenz Merz, nominated eight times, a record. This film is still awarded the prizes for the best music and that of the best cinematography.
The Swiss Film Prize is awarded by the Federal Office of Culture (OFC), in collaboration with the “Quartz” association. Geneva Zurich and the SSR. In addition to mentions of the war in Ukraine and the upcoming Netflix Lex vote in May, the strong presence of non-professional actors and actresses was striking during this edition.
As for the honorary prize, Federal Councilor Alain Berset awarded it to filmmaker Fredi M. Murer. He is the director, among others, of “L’Âme-soeur”, “Pleine lune” and “Vitus”.
The five fiction films nominated for this 2022 edition and four documentaries out of five were co-produced by the SSR within the framework of the audiovisual pact. Three of the five fiction films selected (“Olga”, “La Mif” and “Azor”) were directed or produced by Romands, as were two out of five documentaries (“Les Guérisseurs” and “Réveil sur Mars”).
