* Black Box Diaries and Es Gehts Um Luis/About Luis at Zurich Film Festival 2024 *

gimme a beat with babymonster

2024 was an even more successful year for Zurich Film Festival than its organizers expected.

It was an important year as the Zurich Film Festival festival celebrated its 20th year. The dates moved to the beginning of October, but that didn't stop the visitors. This year the festival attracted 140’000 visitors (even more than the previous year). A total of 107 films were shown, including 17 world premieres, 8 international premieres, and 11 European premieres – every 3rd film is a world, international, or European premiere.

First held in 2005, Zurich Film Festival established itself very quickly on the national and international film festival scene.

Looking at all these years I have been visiting or reviewing (since 2017) Zurich Film Festival. The way I like to explain its success is to quote/paraphrase the sentence I found in the industry booklet a few years ago. Basically, the organizers agree on a few basics for a successful film festival: "Content is king, Collaboration is key and Encounters among creative folks are essential". I am glad to confirm that even after many years, the organizers are still taking "these basics" seriously while developing the festival further and, most importantly, in the right direction.

This is why I keep coming back and reviewing Zurich Film Festival.

From the perspective of Gimme A Beat, exploring *the female factor* of the festival is easy. Zurich Film Festival always provides a significant number of female stories and movies from female directors, and a good balance of different genres, aspiring filmmakers, and (potential) blockbusters.

As listeners of Gimme A Beat (and my family and friends) already know, having a busy schedule is business as usual for me, and with so many great movies, definitely a pleasure. For me, Zurich Film Festival is all about watching movies. My most enjoyable moment is sitting in the dark cinema, fully immersed in the storyline. This year, even if many fabulous events were happening on the festival grounds, I haven't attended/seen any of them.

Most importantly, I have seen almost 35 movies and managed to get together with 5 female filmmakers and 2 lead actresses.

With so much more material I decided to dedicate several whole Gimme A Beats to Zurich Film Festival, the one happening tonight and a few others later on. In most cases, I will adapt my radio show to the Swiss screenings of movies, to make sure that these movies receive the attention they deserve.

Considering the number of movies I've seen (almost 35), I will not be reviewing all the movies and posting them on the Gimme A Beat page. But, I will continue posting the reviews after tonight's show until the end of the year since most of the movies from the festival are coming to the cinemas next year. This year again I will be focusing on my highlights only. To find them you should follow the search with the following hashtags: #zff #zff2024 #highlight #gimmeabeat.

In tonight's Gimme A Beat, I will be focusing on the following movies:

- Black Box Diaries, the documentary directed by Shiori Ito, who I had a chance to interview. Swiss official release on October 31st.

- Es Gehts um Luis / About Luis, directed and written by Lucia Chiarla, with Natalia Rudziewicz as a lead actress. I had a chance to interview both of them. Swiss official release is not known yet, but I will keep you posted.

Tune in to Gimme A Beat (21.10.2024) tonight to hear my impressions of the Zurich Film Festival, the reviews of the movies in the focus, and interviews with Shiori, Lucia, and Natalia combined with music selected by Lucia and Natalia and music from Freya Arde, who wrote the music for another one of my highlights, Riefenstahl. While that soundtrack is not out yet, this was another opportunity for me to celebrate female talent.

Check also the relevant ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Spotify⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ or ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Deezer⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ playlist.

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for the info about old shows, please go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠previous entries