Azor

Prix du cinéma Suisse nominated director Andreas Fontana interrogates the culture of secrecy in Swiss banking through a historical lens. Interrupted at an early stage of editing, the film is a portrait of a banker caught up in the political turmoil of military dictatorship in Argentina.

– Julian Ross, Selection Committee

Andreas' Journey in the Festival's History

A few years ago, I was walking through the streets of Geneva with Mariano Llinás and we started talking about Hugo Santiago. Hugo had just died and Mariano was his friend and collaborator. He was on his way to Locarno to present his own film - labyrinth, "La Flor" (2018). At one point during our walk, Mariano said to me: "It's interesting: everyone who has seen Invasión is convinced that in Argentina, at the end of the 1960s, people dressed exclusively in suits. Obviously that wasn't the case". That's one of the dizzying aspects of Invasión: treating the fantasy genre with such rigour that everything becomes believable. Who is Hugo Santiago? I don't know very much, just a few rumours. A young Argentinian who travelled to Paris in 1959, met Robert Bresson at Cocteau's and followed him like a shadow until he became his assistant. A young filmmaker who, when he returned home, went to find the living legend that is the writer JL Borges to write a film – which became Invasión. A director whose precision and attention to detail was said to border on obsessive. What is Invasión? A film that has all the ingredients of a detective film, or a spy film, or a resistance film, or all of these together, but whose radical strength lies in its unsolved mystery and the incessant melancholy of its characters. I won't say any more. But in my opinion, mystery and melancholy are two excellent arguments for going to see a film.

– Andreas Fontana