Cannes 2018: Animated Feature ‘Chris the Swiss’ Selected For Critics’ Week

The 57th International Critics’ Week, a parallel section of the Cannes Film Festival organized by the French Syndicate of Film Critics, will offer the world premieres of both an animated feature and short among its competition lineup.

The feature is Anja Kofmel’s Chris the Swiss, a hybrid documentary that combines animation and live-action. The 90-minute project is a co-production between Switzerland (Dschoint Ventschr), Croatia (Nukleus Film), Germany (Ma.ja.de), and Finland (IV Films).

Chris the Swiss tells the story of Kofmel’s older cousin who traveled as a journalist to Croatia to cover the Yugoslav Wars in the early-1990s and ended up dying under mysterious circumstancing wearing the uniform of an international mercenary group. “As a little girl, she used to admire this handsome young man,” explains the film description. “Now a grown-up woman, she decides to investigate his story, trying to understand what really was the involvement of Chris in the conflict…”

Kofmel first starting exploring this personal history in a seven-minute animated student short Chrigi that she made at the Lucerne School of Art and Design back in 2008.

Watch the trailer below. Extended clips from the film were screened last month at Cartoon Movie, and it’s a compelling watch, with effective mixing of animation and live-action.

The sole animated short selected for Critics’ Week is the world premiere of La Chute, a new film by French filmmaker Boris Labbé, whose previous works inlcude Orogenesis, Rhizome, Any Road, and Kyrielle.

The film description:

When inhabitants of heaven go down to contaminate those of Earth, the world order is upset. It is the beginning of a tragic fall which leads to the creation of hell and, at the opposite, of circles of paradise.

Labbé’s latest is also selected for competition at Zagreb and Annecy in June.

The 2018 edition of Critics’ Week runs May 9-17 in Cannes, France.