Fukunaga and Plambech to lead Zurich competition juries
Cary Joji Fukunaga will lead the Feature Film Competition jury at the Zurich Film Festival, with Danish anthropologist and filmmaker Sine Plambech heading the Documentary Competition jury, as reported by Variety.
Fukunaga, the director of No Time to Die, will work with four other jurors. They are Swiss-French actress Ella Rumpf, Mexican director and screenwriter Fernando Eimbcke, producer Julie Billy and Italian film editor and director Walter Fasano.
Plambech will be joined by Spanish cinematographer Alfredo de Juan, Norwegian producer Anne Köhncke, Swiss director Jela Hasler and Austrian director and producer Nikolaus Geyrhalter. That five-person group will decide the documentary awards.
Each competition holds 14 films. The feature section is reserved for directors on their first, second or third features. Its top prize is the Golden Eye, with CHF 25,000 ($30,340).
Both jury presidents have history in Zurich. Fukunaga’s first feature, Sin Nombre, screened in competition there in 2009, and the festival staged No Time to Die as a Gala Premiere in 2021. Plambech’s debut documentary Heartbound won the Golden Eye in 2018, and her new film Rescue will have its European premiere at this year’s festival.
Among the 14 features in the race are Rhys Marc Jones’ Black Church Bay, Zou Jing’s A Girl Unknown, Blerta Basholli’s Dua and Pierre le Gall’s Flesh and Fuel, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Black Church Bay stars Tom Cullen and Joe Locke in the story of a man whose world unravels after an intimate encounter with a younger man. The list also includes Andrina Mračnikar’s Mila / Marija, Manuela Martelli’s El Deshielo, Ramzi Bashour’s Hot Water, Fabian Stumm’s Die Ideen, Tareq Daoud’s Serife Tavsan, Arie Esiri and Chuko Esiri’s Clarissa, Mads Mengel Nielsen’s The Guest, Ghasideh Golmakani’s Head to Head, Andrius Blaževičius’s How to Divorce During the War and Ufuk Emiroglu’s Sevda.
The documentary race includes Juan Cabral and Santiago Franco’s The Match, about the Argentina v England game at the 1986 FIFA World Cup. The line-up also features Habiba Nosheen’s The Gymnasts of Fisherman Colony, Guillaume Massart’s Le Detention and Christian Bonke and Adam Bonke’s Perfect Road, which follows a man who has lived as a nomad on his bicycle for 10 years. The rest of the section is Elisabeth Rasmussen’s We Are Stardust, Erik Shirai’s Sumo: Spirit Weighs Nothing, Gar O’Rourke’s The Siege of Paradise, Simon David’s Shreckschraube, Lucas Paleocrassas’ Bugboy, Pete Muller’s Bucks Harbor, Itab Azzam and Jack MacInnes’ One In a Million, Khoroldorj Choijoovanchig’s Colors of White Rock, Patrick Wally’s My Home of Wind and Sand and Arnaud Alain’s La Face Cachee De La Terre.
Beyond the competitions, Zurich will host galas including Peter Farrelly’s I Play Rocky, Beth de Araújo’s Josephine with Channing Tatum and Gemma Chan, and Lee Chang-dong’s Possible Love. The programme also includes Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson’s Wicker with Alexander Skarsgård, Olivia Colman and Elizabeth Debicki, Jordan Firstman’s Club Kid and Bunker with Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz. Julianne Moore will be honoured with the Golden Icon Award.
What makes this stand out is the loop. Two former Zurich selections return to judge new directors chasing the same prize.
