Zurich Film Festival to Honour Distributor DCM
The Zurich Film Festival will honour film distributor DCM with a Career Achievement Award at its 22nd edition. The festival runs from 24 September to 4 October in Zurich. The honour was reported by Deadline on 15 September.
DCM is a Berlin and Zurich-based distributor and production studio. A distributor is the company that handles a film's cinema release, from booking screens to marketing. Five people share the prize. The award goes to co-founders Marc Schmidheiny, Christoph Daniel, Dario Suter and Joel Brandeis, alongside Swiss managing director Stephanie Candinas.
The prize will be presented ahead of a screening of Wim Wenders' documentary From Inside Out: The Architecture of Peter Zumthor. DCM acted as a producer on the film and is handling its release in Germany and Switzerland. The pairing ties the honour to a live project from the company's current slate.
DCM was founded in 2008. Its distribution credits include the Oscar-winning films The Artist, Moonlight and I'm Still Here. The company expanded into Switzerland in 2013 with the release of Kon-Tiki. In 2025 it acquired Swiss independent distributor Ascot Elite Entertainment.
Zurich has played a part in that growth. DCM's first feature production, Waffenstillstand, had its European premiere at the festival in 2009 and won the Audience Award, which is voted by festivalgoers. This year's edition will also host the world premiere of Eurostrash, the new film by Frauke Finsterwalder from the DCM catalogue. A world premiere means the first public screening anywhere.
What makes this stand out is the choice of recipient. Festivals often honour directors and actors. Here the spotlight falls on the business behind the screen, the team that selects films, helps fund them and finds them cinemas.
Zurich presents its Career Achievement Award to more than one recipient. Director Richard Linklater will also be honoured at the 2026 edition, described as the Golden Eye award for career achievement, according to Yahoo. He is due to accept in person on 28 September at Filmpodium Zürich. Composer and Oscar winner Gabriel Yared is also listed among this year's honourees by the festival.
