Zurich Film Festival: An Interview with Anja Fröhner

During the Sundance Film Festival Universal Cinema Film & TV Journal’s Amir Ganjavie interviewed Anja Fröhner the co-Head of Programme for the Zurich Film Festival (ZFF) (Anja’s Head of Programme and Guests). What follows is part of that interview.

Amir Ganjavie, UniversalCinema Magazine (UM):  How important is it to have premieres in your festival?

Anja Fröhner (AF): We are not an A festival. We’re not looking specifically for world premieres. I think our biggest focus is the audience. We do require Swiss premieres for our films and that’s the minimum requirement. Of course, it’s nice if you have a film that hasn’t played everywhere else. But for us, it’s most important that we bring films to our audience, which we feel are the ones that we liked best over the year.

(UM): How important is it to have films that are crowd pleasers, especially when considering ticket sales?

(AF): I think it really depends. At the heart of our festival are our three competitions, the feature film competition, the documentary competition, and the competition for films that were produced in Switzerland, Austria, and Germany. In these competitions, we only screen first, second, and third-time directors. Especially with these competitions, it’s about what films we want to show our audience and we feel that after 19 years we are at the point where people trust us and I think we can make them maybe take a risk and go see films that they might otherwise not. Most of the films that we screen in competition don’t have distribution in Switzerland and will not be screened in cinemas. And I think that’s more the focus of our competition, to shine a light on new voices. We have other sections like the gala premieres, where we also screen films that have broader appeal or have a lighter note, because one challenge as a programmer is to find funny films. And so the gala premiere is a section where we try to balance this more.

(UM): I remember a couple years ago you had the James Bond premiere.

(AF): Obviously, it was great that this worked out. It came about because due to Covid the world wide release of the film was pushed to the dates of our festival. And then it was clear to us, we want to have sort of a pre-premiere if we can.

(UM): Do you have a quota in the festival in terms of gender and diversity balance?

(AF): We don’t have any written quota[s]. But of course, we do feel that representation is important. But I think it shouldn’t drive programming. We do try to to screen diverse films, and want to present our audience with the broadest perspective of films that there is. And at the same time, I think it’s also our role as a festival, to bring people into the cinema to experience stories that they would otherwise not experience. So, I think my understanding of diversity in terms of programming goals goes a bit beyond quotas, it’s also about how can we excite people for films that are maybe not Marvel films, and how can we bring them in and show them the vast amount of stories from the vast amount of people out there and try to broaden everyone’s horizon. So, I think that’s what drives our programming. But of course, diversity is important.

(UM): I wonder, for example, suppose that I’m a filmmaker and I have a movie that goes against the trends. For example, a film against abortion, but a very good quality movie. Do you accept such kinds of movies, very divisive movies?

(AF): Absolutely. Our artistic director used to be a journalist and one of the things I like best about working with him is that we almost never agree on a variety of topics. And I think this should also be reflected in the programming. Sometimes we have films where even within the programming team, we take very different stances. And we feel it’s a shame if the final program doesn’t reflect the discussions that we had. So yes, absolutely.

Of course, we provide a platform for films, and people always tell you to be very careful about for which films you provide a platform. But still, we feel we are mostly a platform for discussions. And we want to be the place where people can have these discussions.

(UM): How is your relationship with the Locarno Film festival? How do you try to differentiate yourself from Locarno Film Festival?

(AF): We program very differently. And they’re at a different time of the year. They are an A festival and screen a lot of world premieres. And so, I think we’re looking for very different films. Of course, there have been screenings in Locarno where we thought, “oh, that was a good one. We would have loved to have this one as well.” And I’m sure it’s been the other way around as well. But I think Switzerland is big enough for both of us, absolutely.

(UM): In terms of Covid, how was the impact of Covid on your film festival? Did it change the landscape of your festival?

(AF): First of all, we were extremely lucky in 2020. We had this discussion with our artistic director about “what are we going to do.” It’s now April. September is far away, but still. And he was very clear from the beginning that he did not want to have an online festival as for him the essence of cinemas is about people coming together. So we moved forward hoping we could go through with our festival but realizing that perhaps we will have to cancel everything. It took a lot of strength, but we were able to go through with an in-person festival both in 2020 and 21. The first year with limited capacity, and the second year with Covid checks and green passes. But yes, both times, we felt it was worth it to really go this extra mile, and we felt enormous gratitude from filmmakers who were able to attend and still present their films. And from the audience.

(UM): Any final thoughts?

(AF): You asked about diversity and what drives us in programming. I think these are really important questions and being here at Sundance after Covid also makes you realise what it’s all about and what we’re hoping to bring to our festival, namely to have really full cinemas — with filmmakers in attendance, able to tell the audience a bit more about the film and also to create this love for filmmaking and the cinema again. I think that’s why we also have quite a large program for kids, not just films but we also do a lot of workshops to ignite that spark that maybe goes beyond TikTok. Because this is our future audience and that’s also our job as programmers to think about the next generation, and we want to keep this tradition of cinema alive.