Villi Hermann Receives the 2026 Swiss Film Honorary Award

Villi Herman has been awarded the 2026 Swiss Film Honorary Award. The Federal Office of Culture announced the decision, noting that over the course of his 50-year career, the Ticino-based director, screenwriter, and producer has had a profound impact on Swiss cinema.

In awarding the prize, the jury praised the work of a great filmmaker, according to the ATS news agency. Hermann, born in Lucerne in 1941 to a Swiss-German father and a mother from Ticino, was honored for his role in “revitalizing Italian-language Swiss cinema and helping to shape its identity,” according to a statement from the UFC.

After studying first at the Lucerne School of Fine Arts, then in Germany and Paris, where he initially focused on painting, Hermann went on to attend the London Film School in England.

Highly sensitive to social issues, he began his career in the 1970s with films that straddled the line between documentary and fiction. His works consistently explore the reality around him: from cross-border workers to factory workers, and artists. Beginning in 1976, Hermann worked with the Zurich Filmkollektiv, with which he (co-)produced several of his films.

His first feature film, "San Gottardo" (1977), shot during the construction of the highway tunnel and screened at the Cannes Film Festival, won the Silver Leopard at the Locarno Film Festival.

In the 1980s, Hermann screened his films at the Venice International Film Festival and the Berlinale. Among his best-known films are "Matlosa" (1981), "Innocenza" (1986), and "Bankomatt" (1989).

In the 1970s, his parents moved to Malcantone. In 1981, the now 84-year-old filmmaker founded the production company Imagofilm Lugano, which initially focused solely on producing his own films but later, starting in the 2000s, distinguished itself for its support of film productions by emerging Ticino directors, including Erik Bernasconi and Niccolò Castelli, artistic director of the Solothurn Film Festival. Villi Hermann thus contributed “in a decisive way to the emergence of a ‘new wave’ in Ticino cinema,” the statement notes.

Among his most recent works is the documentary "Flavio Paolucci: From Guelmim to Biasca" (2024), a portrait of the Swiss painter and sculptor, who hails from the Blenio Valley.

The Swiss Film Awards ceremony will take place on Friday, March 27, 2026, at the Kongresshaus Zürich. This celebration of Swiss cinema is organized by the Federal Office of Culture (FOC) in collaboration with partners SRG SSR and the “Quartz” Association of Geneva and Zurich. Swiss Films, the Swiss Film Academy, and the Solothurn Film Festival are also collaborating on the organization.