Locarno Premiere: Inside 'Small Talk,' Where an Actress Went Undercover at Switzerland's Last Finishing School

Mateo Ybarra's doc-fiction film Small Talk has its world premiere today, August 11, at the Locarno Film Festival, screening in the Cineasti del Presente competition — the festival's strand devoted to emerging directors (Instagram). The screening is scheduled for 18:00 in PalaCinema 1, presented in its original English and French with subtitles in both languages (Locarno Film Festival).

The film centres on Charlie, played by Hélène Bares, who enrols in a summer course at Switzerland's only remaining etiquette school for women, aiming to break into the elite luxury industry. But Bares was not simply playing a part. She was invited to attend the school's six-week intensive program as a genuine student, sitting alongside the real participants — all of whom appear in the film as themselves (Variety).

That school has operated for more than 70 years. Its flagship summer program is exclusively for women, though mixed courses run during the rest of the year (Variety). The setting gives the film its engine: real women from across the world navigating questions of gender roles, class hierarchy, and female empowerment inside an institution built on old-world codes of conduct.

Small Talk blurs the line between documentary and fiction — a doc-fiction hybrid, the form that blends staged narrative with real subjects and unscripted moments. Ybarra directed from a screenplay by Louis Rebetez and Milan Alfonsi (Swiss Films). The film is a 2026 Swiss production, shot in 4K DCP format, with copyright held by L'Artifice (Locarno Film Festival).

Ybarra produced alongside Madeline Robert under their L'Artifice banner, with RTS Radio Télévision Suisse co-producing (Variety). International sales are handled by Urban Sales, where Garance Targowla serves as sales and acquisition manager — the person a festival audience never sees, but whose job is to place the film with distributors across territories after the premiere (Variety).

For a film like this, the Cineasti del Presente slot is the point of the spear. Locarno's competition for new directors is where buyers and programmers from other festivals first encounter work that has not yet secured distribution. A strong premiere can set the trajectory for the film's festival run and its eventual theatrical or streaming life in the months that follow.

What makes Small Talk stand out is its method. Bares did not observe from the margins. She completed the full course as an enrolled student, and the women beside her were not cast — they were simply there, pursuing the same finishing-school certificate for their own reasons. The fiction lives in Charlie's story; the documentary lives in everything around her.