In Switzerland, the timid rise of animated film studios since the success of “Ma vie de courgette”

It is a small industry, which weighs little in the shadow of the big French neighbor, but which grows at its own pace. In Switzerland, animation film production studios have been booming for several years.

This is the success of the animated feature film my zucchini life in 2016 which sparked a new dynamic according to Sylvain Vaucher, short film consultant at Swiss Films. “For six years, we have been talking about Swiss animation on another level. my zucchini life has changed mentalities about what can be done in Switzerland”he explains.

Directed by Claude Barras, my zucchini life had the honor of appearing in the Quinzaine des Réalisateurs at Cannes and enjoyed great success in cinemas.

In the Swiss studios, other nuggets are perhaps maturing. Director Marcel Barelli is working on a feature film around the figure of the first British paleontologist, Mary Hanning. This autodidact had begun to collect fossils to resell them to amateurs, before becoming a major figure in vertebrate paleontology. “My dream is to be able to continue doing what I do. When I tell my father that I earn my job by drawing dinosaurs, he tells me that it was my dream when I was three years old” laughs Marcel Barelli.

Less endowed than the competition, the Swiss animators make do with the means at hand. “Swiss animation is very creative and it is also very artisanal in the good sense of the term. There are few studios, few industry, so people have gotten used to doing their projects in a less rich way than the others”concludes Nicolas Barlet, producer at Nadasdy Film.