Highlights among the nominees for the Swiss Film Award 2026

With seven nominations, À bras-le-corps is considered the favourite in the race for the Swiss Film Award. In her sensitive period film, Marie-Elsa Sgualdo tells the story of 15-year-old Emma (Lila Gueneau), who becomes pregnant after being raped – and thus shatters the moral certainties of her Protestant village community in the Jura border region. Against the backdrop of the Second World War, Emma's fate becomes a quiet but unyielding rebellion against religious hypocrisy and patriarchal oppression. Nominated for: Best Feature Film, Best Screenplay, Best Supporting Actor, Best Film Music, Best Cinematography, Best Editing, Best Sound

Since the coronavirus pandemic, at the latest, the shortage of skilled workers in the healthcare sector has become a matter of public concern. Petra Volpe translates this structural problem into a gripping cinematic experience and shows the effects of constant overload on nursing staff. The film centres on nurse Floria (Leonie Benesch), who battles her way through her daily work in an understaffed surgical ward with unwavering empathy. Staged as a nerve-racking thriller, "Heldin" takes stock of a system at its limits and makes a powerful plea for those who keep it running day after day.

Nominated for: Best Feature Film, Best Screenplay, Best Sound

What begins as a music documentary develops in "I love you, I leave you" into an intimate portrait of friendship, identity and mental health. Moris Freiburghaus accompanies his long-time friend, the musician Dino Brandão, on a journey to Angola – his father's country of origin. The return to his roots becomes a confrontation with biographical ruptures and culminates in a manic episode. Freiburghaus responds to this exceptional situation with sensitive closeness. The result is a film that allows for tenderness without ever tipping over into voyeurism.

Nominated for: Best Documentary Film, Best Film Music

Following its appearance at last year's Berlinale, Lionel Baier's visually imaginative comedy "La cache" is now competing for the Swiss Film Award. Loosely inspired by Christophe Boltanski's 2015 family chronicle of the same name, the film draws on just half a paragraph. Baier condenses this short text passage into a fast-paced burlesque that touches on the upheavals and repressions of France's past through the example of a wonderfully eccentric family. Nominated for: Best Feature Film, Best Film Music, Best Cinematography

The war in Gaza continues to rage, destroying lives on a daily basis. In "Qui vit encore", Nicolas Wadimoff gives a voice to nine people who managed to escape the violence. Using a simple chalk sketch of a map of the Gaza Strip, they talk about their former lives, their losses and their search for stability in exile. The minimalist format focuses attention entirely on the narrators, whose accounts of the Gaza Strip speak volumes. Nominated for: Best Documentary Film

Yonne by Julietta Korbel and Yan Ciszewski is another period film from a decidedly female perspective among the nominees. The directing duo sets its story in 19th-century Morvan, France: two sisters, Jeanne (Madeleine Delaunay) and Eugénie (Isis Van Groeningen), dress up as men to join the wood raftsmen and escape the confines of their village. Carefully composed images unfold in a moving work about female empowerment and the courage to subvert social role models. Nominated for: Best Short Film

While "Heldin" shows hospital life from the perspective of a nurse, Luisa Zürcher's animated film "Ich bin nicht sicher" (I'm Not Sure) sees the hospital as a space for existential experiences. Zürcher uses playful images to process her own stay in hospital: between pain, homesickness and physical alienation, absurd, surprisingly funny moments flash up again and again. This personal work can be read as a meditation on loss of control and on how fragile our relationship with our bodies becomes when they elude our own will. Nominated for: Best Animated Film