At MIA to talk about filmmaking in and with Italian-speaking Switzerland

Swiss Italian cinema, for us Swiss, is (for the most part) Ticino cinema. Swiss Italian cinema, seen from Italy, is Italian cinema shot (also) in Switzerland. It is, in fact, an opportunity to make films in another territory, where the same language is spoken, the same professionalism is encountered, and where an hour's drive takes you from palm trees to glaciers, from medieval castles to technological centres. An opportunity that in Italy is still often unexplored and on which the Ticino Film Commission wanted to turn the spotlight with two events aimed at industry professionals, organised in collaboration with SRG SSR, Swiss Films, Istituto Svizzero and Ticino Turismo in the ambit of the MIA, International Audiovisual Market, underway in Rome until 13 October.

Productions, and mainly Swiss ones, were the focus of the meeting held on the morning of Monday 9 October in the splendid setting of Villa Maraini, headquarters of the Swiss Institute in Rome. A meeting that began, after a welcome from the director of the Swiss Institute, Joëlle Comé, and an introduction by the director of the Ticino Film Commission, Niccolò Castelli, along with Gregory Catella, producer of national and international co-productions at SRG SSR, with a video presentation of the new films coming to the channels of the Swiss radio and television organisation. Along with titles such as Davos 1917 (Contrast Film), Les Indociles (Box Productions) or Tschugger 3 (Shining Film), the first of the projects at the centre of the presentation, the Ticino series Alter Ego by Erik Bernasconi and Robert Ralston, will also be presented.

Set in the Bellinzona area, where all filming took place in the first months of the year, the six-episode crime series is produced by Amka Films in co-production with RSI and stars Italian actor Gian Marco Tognazzi. "The first series of this size and ambition to be made entirely in Ticino," emphasised producer Olga Lamontanara, "Alter Ego's strengths and originality lie in the fact that it is the first thriller to be made in Italian and set in a Ticino town in a style that is close in tone, colour and atmosphere to Nordic noir.

While Alter Ego is currently in post-production and is expected to be on TV at the beginning of December, the series Lugano Connection, by Fulvio Bernasconi from Ticino and Tommaso Matano from Rome, produced by Elena Tatti for Box Productions, is currently in development. This fiction with an international flavour, set between Ticino, Italy and South America in the 1980s, tells the story of a Swiss policeman who infiltrates drug trafficking cartels at a time when cocaine was also beginning to arrive here.

The last project presented was the film Body Odyssey by Grazia Tricarico, a co-production between Italy and Switzerland by Revok Film and Amka Films. 'Having a Swiss protagonist, Jacqueline Fuchs,' said producer Donatello Della Pepa, 'we wanted to find a Swiss side, which turned out to be fundamental; we were not united by language, but by the need to build a non-place that reflected the idea of artificial aesthetic perfection of the bodybuilder protagonist of Body Odyssey'.

In this case, therefore, it was Italy that looked towards Switzerland, also thanks to the connecting role played by the Ticino Film Commission. Ticino, on the other hand, is a natural bridge between Italy and the rest of Europe, not only geographically but also culturally. This is also reflected in the Locarno Film Festival, one of the founders of the Ticino Film Commission. It is no coincidence that 'being Swiss, being international and being Italian-speaking' (actually the largest Italian-speaking festival after Venice and the only one outside Italy), are the three pillars on which the Locarno Film Festival rests, as artistic director Giona A. Nazzaro recalled in Rome. Nazzaro, part of the Ticino delegation present at the MIA to promote the audiovisual production of our region and intensify relations with Italy.

The panel

These relations were the focus of the panel "Swiss Italian Cinema", held in the afternoon within the framework of the MIA in a packed Cinema Barberini. After the welcome of Niccolò Castelli, director of the Ticino Film Commission, and Giona A. Nazzaro, artistic director of the Locarno Film Festival, speakers included Patrizia Pesko (head of the Film Promotion Department of the Federal Office for Culture), Alessandro Marcionni (RSI fiction production manager), Michela Pini, Swiss producer (Cinéddoké and Amka Film) and Tommaso Arrighi, Italian producer (Mood Film).

An hour of wide-ranging discussion, moderated by journalist Mauro Donzelli, on filmmaking in Ticino and the opportunity that our region can represent for Italian cinema. An hour in which many topics were touched upon, from the mechanisms of Swiss co-production and its incentives to the forthcoming entry into force of the revision of the law on cinema and the effects it may have, to the variety of our locations up to the professionalism present in our territory.

Publication

And it is precisely some of our region’s audiovisual professionals who are the focus of the publication of the Ticino Film Commission’s  “Swiss Italian Cinema”, presented at the MIA in Rome. A publication - which can be consulted and downloaded HERE - which also through these men and women wants to inform Italian productions of a film territory that is still not fully known but able to welcome them with absolute professionalism, with which to share the same language and pursue collaboration. They have already done so - and with satisfaction - for example Leonardo Pieraccioni, or producers Carlo Cresto-Dina (Tempesta Film) and Emanuele Savoini (Cattleya): their experiences of the "Ticino set" testify to this in the pages of the booklet.