At the Geneva International Film Festival (GIFF) last November, Swiss series stole the show from the feature films in competition, filling the theatres. Three productions were at the top of the bill, reflecting the cultural and linguistic diversity of the Confederation with unprecedented brilliance and ambition. They deserve to land on the radar of French broadcasters.
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With a 33.9% market share in German-speaking Switzerland, Tschugger unveiled its third season. The zany retro comedy, whose title means "cop" in the Upper Valais dialect, follows Bax's adventures. This policeman, with a mustache as thick as Magnum, is taken aback when his village begins to attract criminals. "I love the detective genre. There is humour and drama in it. Switzerland does not have major problems, like its French and German neighbours. There was a real discrepancy in confronting our amateur heroes with banditism," explains writer, lead actor and co-director of Tschugger David Constantin. "In his head, Bax thinks he's doing Hollywood feats, but he's more like Beverly Hills Cop," says the Sacha Baron Cohen fan who has worked in advertising.
Scaling up
The French-speaking part of Switzerland presented the GIFF with the historical fresco Les Indociles. This adaptation of Camille Rebetez's comic book and Pitch Comment follows the fate of three friends from the 1970s to the 2000s. Eager to change the world, they will put their utopia into action on a farm in the Jura. A saga that gives us a glimpse of unsuspected facets of Switzerland: the turmoil of May 68, the emergence of open drug scenes, the desire for independence. As in The Crown, the actors pass the baton to others when they are no longer old enough to play their characters.
The latest manifestation of this dynamism is the presentation of Alter Ego, the first production shot in the canton of Ticino. The thriller depicts a series of ritual abductions in the middle of Carnival in the medieval walled town of Bellinzona. The enigma is bathed in a twilight atmosphere. David Fincher's influence is palpable. This project was born under the impetus of the public audiovisual group SSR, which wants to develop creations for the Italian-speaking community, which is less represented on screen.
Switzerland has not escaped the global enthusiasm for the playoffs. Elena Tatti, producer of Les Indociles, has noticed "a restructuring and professionalization of production accompanied by a decline in the number of units". "The projects are less aimed at a local audience. They address issues and genres that speak internationally. TheIndociles have a strong anchorage in our territory, but the breadth of the purpose gives hope that the programme will be exported," she said.
This change of scale is expected to accelerate in 2024 with the entry into force of the "Netflix law", which requires streaming platforms and major foreign television channels (TF1, M6), which broadcast Swiss-specific advertising, to invest 4% of their revenues in the audiovisual and film sector. They will therefore be on an equal footing with Swiss broadcasters, who are already making their contribution to Swiss fiction.