Höhenfeuer, Fredi M. Murer, Switzerland, 1985, 120', OV with Spanish subtitles, DCP.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, three films brought the so-called New Swiss Cinema to the attention of the world, having a great impact at festivals and among critics: Alain Tanner's Jonas qui aura 25 ans en l'an 2000 (1976); Les Petites Fugues (1979) by Yves Yersin; and The Boat Is Full, (1981) by Markus Imhoof. In this context, the arrival of Höhenfeuer, filmed by a 45-year-old poet-director, was received with great admiration and immediately considered one of the great milestones in the history of cinema of the Swiss Confederation.
Murer’s story is set on a small farm lost at the foot of a mountain, where the family around which the story revolves, lives: a farmer and his wife, their daughter, Belli, and her younger brother, born deaf. The boy is sent to the top of the mountain to work in the clearing of a plot of land and, when Belli comes to visit him, secret love is born.
The film won the Golden Leopard at the Locarno Film Festival in 1985, where mention was also made of its “ethnographic accuracy, the quiet beauty of the landscape and a very carefully selected natural soundtrack”.
Screening of the film 'Höhenfeuer' by Fredi M. Murer, in the framework of the carte blanche to the Locarno Film Festival.