A Swiss Film Set on a Geneva Bus Heads to Tallinn
A new Swiss feature set inside a double-decker bus in Geneva will have its world premiere on 14 November. The film, A Job Well Done (Un travail exemplaire), is in the Official Selection Competition at the 30th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival in Estonia, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
On the bus, social workers welcome migrants who come looking for help, shelter or conversation. The film is written and directed by Fred Baillif, a Swiss filmmaker who blends fiction with documentary. Before filmmaking, Baillif played basketball at national level and worked as a prison educator, with a background in social work.
His earlier films also dealt with hard lives on the margins. Tapis rouge looked at street work, and The Fam (La Mif) followed young people in a group home. Both sit in the same territory as this new project, which is a fiction film built on real places.
The story grew out of time spent with people in the field. Baillif spent periods of immersion at AMIC, the Association of Intercultural Mediators, and at the Roseraie migration and integration centre in Geneva. He wrote the screenplay with Joanne Giger, working from interviews and improvisation workshops.
The cast mixes professional actors with non-professional performers who bring social-work knowledge or experience of migration. The listed cast includes Sewit Abadi, Sabbel Ceesay, Rebecca Baillif, Claudia Grob and Selam Tesfu.
The production is by Alva Film, with co-production from Fresh Prod and RTS Radio Télévision Suisse, the Swiss public broadcaster. Its path from workshop to competition slot is typical of how many festival films are made: a small team, a long research phase, and a festival that becomes the first public test.
Tallinn's festival is held at Telliskivi Creative City, its home since 2009, and it hosts an industry programme alongside the screenings. The World Congress of Science & Factual Producers runs in Tallinn from 9 to 12 November, bringing the international factual community to the city ahead of the premiere, per the festival's website.
For a film made from conversations with the people who do this work, the premiere is a first chance to see how audiences respond to it in a room. The festival is where that starts.
