Swiss Film Award 2023: Honorary Award for Ruth Waldburger
With this award, the Swiss government honors "a filmmaker who brings people together and has been committed to Swiss film since the beginning of her great career."
Ruth Waldburger grew up in Arosa and Herisau. In the mid-1970s, she began her career as a production assistant for the Swiss television program "Kassensturz". From the end of the same decade, she made a name for herself as a dedicated production manager on many Swiss films of the new generation of filmmakers. Even then, she laid the foundation for collaborations with film authors from French-speaking Switzerland, such as the one with Alain Tanner. In 1982, she moved from the set to work as a producer and became co-owner of the production company "Xanadu Film". Together with other young producers, she realized several films by local and international new talents in the following years.
International awards
From 1988, as owner of the newly founded production company "Vega Film," she began a close collaboration with Jean-Luc Godard and realized eleven films with him. Shortly thereafter, she produced U.S. director Tom Dicillo's debut film, "Johnny Suede," with current Hollywood star Brad Pitt in one of his first leading roles. The film received the "Pardo d'oro" at the Locarno Film Festival, and other films produced by Waldburger have also repeatedly won awards at international film festivals. In this way, she established herself within a short time as the most important Swiss producer in the European region and from then on worked with renowned international filmmakers. She also remained active in Switzerland. In the 1990s, for example, she produced the television series "The Director" for Swiss television.
Ruth Waldburger's oeuvre is as dense as it is successful. For example, the film "L'enfant d'en haut" by Ursula Meier won a Silver Bear at the Berlinale in 2012, "Schwesterlein" by Stéphanie Chuat and Véronique Reymond was awarded five Swiss Film Prizes in 2020, and the co-production "Tides" by Tim Fehlbaum received four prizes at the German Film Awards in 2021. The world premiere of her latest film "Let Her Kill You" (directed by Jérôme Dassier) is scheduled for spring 2023.
In addition, Ruth Waldburger was and is active in film politics. Together with other producers and filmmakers, she founded the association "GARP - Gruppe Autor:innen, Regisseur:innen, Produzent:innen" (GARP - Group of Authors, Directors, Producers), which in 2001 established the "Dîner Politique" at the Locarno Film Festival, an extremely influential joint event for politics and film.
With this award, the Swiss government honors a filmmaker who brings people together and has been committed to Swiss film since the beginning of her great career, a statement said.
The Swiss Film Awards ceremony in 13 categories will take place on Friday, March 24, 2023, at the Bâtiment des Forces Motrices in Geneva. The tribute to Swiss filmmaking is organized by the BAK in partnership with SRG SSR and the Association "Quartz" Genève Zürich and in collaboration with Swiss Films, the Swiss Film Academy and the Solothurn Film Festival.
