Switzerland Showbiz Latest News and Updates

Jane Campion will be heading to Switzerland this summer to receive an honorary award at the 77th edition of the Locarno Film Festival, running from August 7 to 17.

Eurovision Song Contest has been unveiled ahead of the grand final next month.Lighting and Screen Content designer Fredrik Stormby from Green Wall Designs and production designer Florian Wieder are the creative masterminds who helped create, design, and deliver a large-scale and spectacular show to a global audience of over 160million for the 2024 Eurovision final in Malmö, Sweden on May 11.This year’s stage and lighting design for Eurovision will focus on the audience more than ever by having the stage placed in the centre of the arena. By doing so, viewers will be able to experience the unique 360 degree view in the Malmö Arena.The stage will also be shaped like a cross with movable LED cubes and LED floors.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Cinephil has sold Arun Bhattarai and Dorottya Zurbó’s feature documentary “Agent of Happiness” to a wide range of key international territories ahead of the film’s Hot Docs debut this weekend. Deals are confirmed in the U.K.

Eurovision Song Contest 2024.According to Eurovision World, the favourites to win the competition have been revealed. Coming in first place is Switzerland’s NEMO, who currently has a 25 per cent chance at snagging the crown this year with their song ‘The Code’.Behind Switzerland in second place is Croatia, whose entry Baby Lasagna is predicted to have a 17 per cent chance of winning with his song ‘Rim Tim Tagi Dim’.

Paramount+ has renewed the animated preschool series Dora for a second season.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent The Locarno Film Festival will honor Jane Campion with its Pardo d’onore Manor award. The prominent Swiss fest dedicated to indie cinema will celebrate the revered auteur from New Zealand on Aug.

EXCLUSIVE: June Zero, the latest from writer-director Jake Paltrow (Young Ones, The Good Night, De Palma) and producers Oren Moverman (The Messenger, Bad Education), Miranda Bailey (Swiss Army Man, The Diary of a Teenage Girl) and David Silber (Incitement, Junction 48), is set for theatrical release in New York on June 28, Los Angeles July 5 and nationwide July 12 by Cohen Media Group.

Foxtel/Binge Topper Amanda Laing Exiting

Nas has announced details of a new UK and European tour, celebrating the 30th anniversary of his iconic album ‘Illmatic’. Find ticket details below.The dates will see the hip-hop legend embark on a number of shows across the continent later this year to mark 30 years since he dropped his iconic debut album.Set to run throughout October and November, 15 shows are lined up, and each live date will see the American rapper and East Coast legend perform the breakthrough album in its entirety.The dates kick off with the run of European shows, starting at the House Of Culture venue in Helsinki on October 22.

Lise Pedersen In an exclusive interview with Variety after picking up the top industry prize at Swiss documentary festival Visions du Réel, Franco-Iranian director Mehran Tamadon outlined the intention of his upcoming feature documentary “The Last Days of the Hospital.” Set against the backdrop of France’s public health crisis and shortage of personnel, the film will show patients from a psychiatric hospital on the outskirts of Paris taking charge of their own ward. Tamadon has been running film workshops with the patients at the hospital for the past eight years, and decided it was time to make a film to denounce what he describes as “the ultra-liberal policy which plans the death of the public hospital.” “French public hospitals are not doing well, nurses and caregivers are leaving because they are mistreated and poorly paid.

Lise Pedersen Sporting a warm smile and a pair of sunglasses – “Sorry, I’ve been busy editing and my eyes hurt,” he explained – one of China’s leading indie directors Jia Zhangke, whose upcoming film “Caught by the Tides” will be vying for the Palme d’or in Cannes next month, was guest of honor at the 55th edition of Swiss doc festival Visions du Réel this week. Finished just in time for submission to Cannes, the film features his wife Zhao Tao, his muse over the last two decades, and tells the story of a couple spanning 20 years.

Lise Pedersen “The Landscape and the Fury” by Switzerland’s Nicole Vögele took the Grand Jury Prize in the International Feature Film Competition at Swiss doc festival Visions du Réel on Friday. Shot on the Bosnian-Croatian border, which is also the European Union border, the film unveils the struggle of refugees being chased away by police and navigating a terrain still contaminated with mines from the Bosnian War.

Nathan Zellner and David Zellner’s Sasquatch Sunset is stomping into circa 850 theaters this weekend after debuting in 9 with a solid opening for a film many could find weird. A tribe of Sasquatch, possibly the last of their kind, live and love in the woods of northern California, where it was shot.

Kraftwerk, The National and Raye set to perform.The 58th edition of the prestigious Swiss event is due to take place on the Lake Geneva shoreline between July 5-20. Tickets go on general sale at 11am BST tomorrow (Friday, April 19) – you’ll be able to buy yours here.The aforementioned acts will all grace the Lake Stage along with The Smashing Pumpkins, Alice Cooper, PJ Harvey, Justice, Jessie Ware, Massive Attack, Air, Lenny Kravitz, Sting, Janelle Monáe, Michael Kiwanuka, Duran Duran, Paolo Nutini, Soft Cell and more.Artists for the stage’s opening day are yet to be confirmed.The Casino Stage programme, meanwhile, “blurs the lines between jazz, afrobeats, pop and rap”.

Lise Pedersen Two new cash prizes introduced this year in Swiss film festival Visions du Reel’s industry section, VdR-Industry, were among a flurry of awards handed out as the program wrapped in Nyon, Switzerland, on Wednesday. The Eurimages Co-production Development Award, created to promote the fund’s role in encouraging international co-production from the initial stages of a project, and which comes with a cash prize of €20,000 ($22,000), went to “The Last Days of the Hospital” by Mehran Tamadon (“My Worst Enemy,” “Bassidji”).

Holidaymakers across the UK may be owed a payout if their flight was either delayed or cancelled.

Swiss Films Previews, the only spread of national movies at Switzerland’s Visions du Réel, the country’s leading doc festival. Presented via excerpts at a two-hour showcase on Wednesday, three further titles – “Kalari – the Martial Art of Female Power,” “The Boy from the River Drina” and “Spheres” – underscored the strength in depth of documentary filmmaking in Switzerland and at least in this year’s Previews, a leitmotif.

Public Service Broadcasting have announced details of a huge tour across the UK and Europe – set to take place later this year. Find dates and ticket details below.Set to kick off this winter, the London-based band will travel across the UK and Ireland for the first leg of the 2024 tour, before making their way over to mainland Europe for the latter half of the new dates.The shows will launch with an opening night at the Cyprus Avenue venue in Cork on October 11, followed by a stop at the Telegraph Building in Belfast the following night.

Annika Pham New York-based director/producer Katy Scoggin has worked with high-profile U.S. documentary filmmaker/journalist Laura Poitras on two shorts and three features, notably as co-producer and DP on Poitras’ Oscar-winner “Citizenfour” and Cannes Directors’ Fortnight’s “Risk.” Poitras now serves as executive producer on Scoggin’s feature debut “Flood,” one of six creative documentaries to be pitched as works in progress April 16, at the Visions du Réel festival in Nyon, Switzerland. “Flood” centers on Scoggin’s journey to repair her relationship with her former missionary father, with whom she has become estranged.

Lise Pedersen Berlinale Forum entry “Shahid,” the debut feature of Iranian-German filmmaker Narges Kalhor, has been picked up by Prague-based doc specialist Filmotor ahead of its premiere at Swiss documentary festival Visions du Réel, where it is competing in the more experimental Burning Lights section. Described by Kalhor as a collective work between herself and other artists, including a costume artist and a painter from Iran, a German music composer and a choreographer from Berlin, “Shahid” shifts playfully between genres, challenging conventional filmmaking rules.

Annika Pham Talent-driven doc sales outfit Rise & Shine has boarded “Fire Fire Fire” (“Feu Feu Feu”), the feature debut of Swiss rising voice Pauline Jeanbourquin (“Dusk”), due to world premiere in the national competition strand of Nyon’s Visions du Réel docu festival. Variety has had exclusively access to the international trailer. The poetic and captivating coming-of-age story of a young girl with healing talents, is produced by high-profile Geneva-based Close Up Films, credited for the 2023 Swiss Oscar entry “Thunder” and as co-producer of the Oscar-nominated “I Am Not Your Negro.” “I enjoy working on first features, meeting a new voice, exploring and questioning what it means to direct, figuring things out together.

Lise Pedersen Zagreb-based doc specialist Splitscreen has boarded Argentinian gaucho tale “Where the Trees Bear Meat” by Alexis Franco ahead of its world premiere at Swiss documentary film festival Visions du Réel. It is one of 15 films vying for the top prize in the main international competition. Set in the Argentine Pampas, the film follows Omar, a farmer, whose cows are dying as a result of a prolonged drought.

Clayton Davis Senior Awards Editor In Luca Guadagnino’s latest cinematic endeavor, “Challengers,” Zendaya, Josh O’Connor, and Mike Faist form a dynamic, throuple-esque trio, each delivering performances that scream Oscar-worthy. The real question is, will Academy voters look beyond the palpable sexual chemistry to acknowledge the film’s artistic merit? That’s a challenge for the marketing maestros. Penned by newcomer Justin Kuritzkes, the spouse of “Past Lives” writer-director Celine Song, “Challengers” weaves through a 13-year narrative, chronicling the life of Tashi Duncan (Zendaya), a tennis wunderkind-turned-coach, who hatches a plan for her husband Art’s (Faist) comeback.

Celtic keeper Benji Siegrist's partner Brittany Hockley opened up on the couple's fertility issues as she admitted that she's running out of time to have kids.

Lise Pedersen In her first media interview published ahead of the world premiere of her debut feature “Fragments of Ice” at Swiss documentary film festival Visions du Réel, Ukrainian director Maria Stoianova tells Variety how her film’s intention shifted after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Based entirely on archival footage shot on a camcorder by her father, a figure skater in former Soviet Ukraine, the film is voiced by the director, who was born in 1986 and takes the viewer back to the mid 80s and early 90s through her family’s story, as they experience the dissolution of the Soviet Union and of their dreams of a Western paradise.

When the teamsheets were distributed at Dublin's Aviva Stadium on Tuesday night, few will have been surprised to see Sarina Wiegman ring the changes for England's clash with the Republic of Ireland.

EXCLUSIVE: Swiss distribution and production group Ascot Elite Entertainment has announced the start of shoot for Austrian filmmaker Gerald Salmina’s hi-octane sports doc and four-part mini series Downhill Skiers – Ain’t No Mountain Steep Enough.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Leading European distributor Global Screen, part of Telepool, has secured further international sales of high-end drama “Davos 1917” at MipTV. New acquisitions of the six-part thriller include SBS Australia, TVP in Poland and Big Tree Entertainment in India and the subcontinent. “Davos 1917,” which launched at the end of last year on SRF in Switzerland and ARD in Germany, has already been bought by a strong lineup of premium international broadcasters and streamers across North America, Europe and Asia.

Don’t expect to see Sandra Oh back on Grey’s Anatomy anytime soon.

After three successful seasons, the supernatural drama series, “Evil” will return for its fourth and final installment this summer. Yesterday, Paramount+ revealed the official trailer and premiere date for the critically acclaimed original series.