Petra Volpe receives the 2017 AZ Medien Culture Award

Petra Volpe makes moviegoers laugh and cry with a piece of Swiss history. More than 250,000 people in Switzerland have so far seen her film "Die göttliche Ordnung" (The Divine Order) about the campaign for Swiss women's suffrage in 1971.

Petra Volpe lovingly and precisely portrays her main character Nora, who almost against her will becomes an activist for equal rights, and the entire female community in the village in eastern Switzerland, according to the AZ Medien statement. "How precisely she has researched, how coherent are milieu and setting. Typical Volpe. Like her penchant for strong women in leading roles: from her grandmother to a baker's wife to a prostitute and a cuckolded wife in "Traumland". And she even took the children's book "Heidi" to new cinematic seriousness and success as a screenwriter two years ago. "The Divine Order," the most lusty domestic history lesson since "Schweizermachern," is even taking off internationally," the release continues.

Petra Volpe was born in Suhr, Aargau, in 1970. Her mother was a baker's daughter, her father an Italian immigrant worker. After her commercial diploma at the Kanti Aarau, she studied art at the F+F in Zurich (1992-94), spent time in New York (1994-95), worked as an editor and studied dramaturgy and screenwriting at the HFF (Hochschule für Film und Fernsehen) Konrad Wolf in Potsdam (1997-2001). Since then Petra Volpe works as a freelance screenwriter and director, she is married and lives in New York and Berlin. "The Divine Order" received three Swiss Film Awards in 2017 (Volpe for Best Screenplay) and three awards at the Tribeca Festival in New York.

Petra Volpe is the 18th recipient of the Culture Award. The award will be presented to her at a ceremony this August. In previous years, the AZ Medien Culture Prize went to: Sabine Boss, Dieter Ammann, Massimo Rocchi, Pedro Lenz, Andreas Fleck, Max Lässer, Beat Zoderer, Sol Gabetta, Samir, Klaus Merz, Sonja and Roger Kaysel, Ruedi Häusermann, Franz Hohler, Hugo Suter, Egon Ammann, Flamenco en route, Scuola e Teatro Dimitri.