Much acclaim for “Sister” as Oscar entry

Ursula Meier’s fiction film “Sister” (“L'enfant d'en haut”) is well on track as Switzerland’s entry for a nomination in the category of Best Foreign Language Feature for the 85^th Academy Awards. The response from the Academy members is positive, and the press is elated.

“Sister will steal hearts”
The film was released in cinemas in the USA on October 5 and in Germany on November 8. The “Time Entertainment Review” reported “… a penetrating study of familial bonds, quietly devastating in parts, beautiful on whole and destined to make you fall in love with a practiced and entirely amoral preteen thief. It … deserves to make the final cut for nominees.” And “The New York Times” praised the film with: “ … a story that is simultaneously personal and political, intimate and bigger than any one life.” Kacey Mottet Klein and Léa Seydoux, the leading actors in the film, are attracting just as much attention as the film’s director: “The chemistry between the two leads is a razor’s-edge dance: feral, childish, tender and always complex.” (“Los Angeles Times”). “The Hollywood Reporter” has even considered “Sister” among the Top 5 contenders for an Oscar nomination; “Entertainment Weekly” placed it under “The Top 10 Things We Love This Week”; and the headline in the Boston Herald claimed that “Sister” will steal hearts.

Coordination of Oscar campaign
Some 300 members of the Academy select the nominees for Best Foreign Language Feature. SWISS FILMS, the promotion agency, has coordinated the Oscar campaign carried out in Los Angeles and other cities in the USA on behalf of the Swiss Federal Office of Culture. A key factor in the campaign has been the close collaboration with the American distributor Adopt Films. The screening at the Wilshire Screening Room in Beverly Hills on November 4, organised together with the European Film Promotion, was so successful that Ursula Meier will travel to California for further screenings with the Academy members and interviews on November 12. At the beginning of January, “Sister” will be presented at the Awards Buzz at the 24^th Palm Springs International Film Festival, with the film’s director in attendance.

Smelling the snow in “Winterdieb”
The film has been launched as “Winterdieb” in Germany, where it has also received much acclaim and a great deal of praise: “Alone the composure with which Gelassenheit, Ursula Meier delays revealing the secret until far into the second half of the film illustrates the clarity, dramaturgic beauty and sophistication of ‘Winterdieb’” (“Die Zeit”). And the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” reported that: “It has been ages since viewers could smell the snow so distinctly as in Ursula Meier’s “Winterdieb.” ”

Zurich, November 9, 2012