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As the guns of war fell silent across Europe, Heinrich Zwygart found no rest. As Switzerland’s man in Berlin, he walked a delicate line during the Nazi regime. Now, on the eve of victory, he returns home, hoping for a hero’s welcome. But shadows from the past have longer reaches than Zwygart expects.

Inspired by real events, A Forgotten Man sees Zwygart, played superbly by Michael Neuenschwander, wrestling with his decisions as ambassador. Chief among them was his role in the fate of theology student Maurice Bavaud. Bavaud’s attempt to assassinate Hitler ended with his execution, despite Zwygart’s position. Now Bavaud’s spectre haunts the ambassador’s thoughts.

Director Laurent Nègre crafts a nuanced examination of individual and national responsibility through Zwygart’s plight. As criticisms grew of Switzerland’s “neutral” policies, did Zwygart and Switzerland do all they could? Back home, Zwygart finds a nation and family changed by war.

Chicago – The 20th Century crisis that was World War II resulted in a bloodbath for virtually all of European and Allied countries … except in “neutral” Switzerland. Veteran writer and director Laurent Négre, a Swiss native, pokes the holes of truth into that overinflated neutrality in the imported feature film “A Forgotten Man.”

Rating: 4.0/5.0

Set in 1945 at the final days of World War II, the story involves Heinrich Zwygart (Michael Neuenschwander) … the Swiss Ambassador to Germany … returning home to Geneva with wartime Ptsd and a cache of secrets about the relationship of “neutral” Switzerland to the just-defeated Nazi regime. Thinking he would have a cakewalk in his homecoming, especially with the dirt he has on the Swiss leadership, he is greeted with indifference from his government, wife Clara (Manuela Biedermann), daughter Helene (Cléa Eden) and Helene’s boyfriend Nicolas (Yann Philipona), who pursues the truth for the “school paper.” The past...

U.K.-based film production and distribution company Sovereign is expanding across the Atlantic with the launch of a distribution arm in the U.S.

With a plan to release two to three titles a year theatrically and across VOD platforms, the first film slated for release from the new entity is Laurent Nègre’s World War II thriller “A Forgotten Man,” which Sovereign also produced. Set in 1945 after the surrender of Nazi Germany, the story follows the Swiss ambassador (played by Michael Neuenschwander) after he leaves Berlin, but finds himself haunted by his past.

The film, which recently had its U.S. premiere at the Miami Jewish Film Festival and first bowed in Zurich, was released in the U.K. by Sovereign with support from the Swiss Confederation and Swiss Films. Its U.S. release is now slated for April.

Andreas Roald, who first founded Sovereign in 2008, and the head of U.

Switzerland did not go unscathed in the Second World War — there were border skirmishes and even erroneous Allied bombing raids on its towns and cities — but the Swiss story of WWII remained one not of war but of diplomatic brinkmanship, which is the subject of this new film by Laurent Nègre, who channels the nation’s experience through Heinrich Zwygart (Michael Neuenschwander), the Swiss ambassador to Germany.

Zwygart is a fictional character based closely on Ambassador Hans Frölicher, who, amongst other things, failed to stop the execution of Maurice Bavaud, a Swiss student who plotted to assassinate Hitler. With Zwygart as its allegory, A Forgotten Man imagines the toll this took on Frölicher’s psyche in the spring of 1945, when the forces of atonement — and punishment — swept the continent.

This is weighty history, but A Forgotten Man, like the country it’s set in, is a rather sedate experience. Nègre...

Laurent Nègre’s stagey film is also a free adaptation of Thomas Hürlimann’s play on the same subject, and may have worked better in the theatre

Switzerland’s strange postwar burden of quasi-collaborator-guilt, with all its symptoms of evasion and denial, is the theme of this intimately presented black-and-white movie from writer-director Laurent Nègre. It is inspired by the real-life case of Hans Frölicher, the Swiss ambassador to Nazi Germany from 1938 to the end of the war, much approved of by the Nazi elite due to his submissive pro-German loyalty. It is also a free adaptation of The Envoy, Thomas Hürlimann’s stage-play on the same subject.

Michael Neuenschwander plays the ambassador, here fictionalised as Heinrich Zwygart; he returns to Switzerland and his handsome family estate in 1945, a haggard and haunted figure with a drink problem, yet outwardly fiercely correct as befits a Swiss public figure and civil servant.

The thriller follows Germany’s Swiss ambassador post World War II.

UK-based distribution company Sovereign has acquired Laurent Nègre’s Swiss thriller A Forgotten Man ahead of its world premiere at Zurich Film Festival.

The film is slated for a UK and Ireland release in early 2023.

Set after the collapse of Nazi Germany in 1945, A Forgotten Man follows Germany’s Swiss ambassador arriving back home as he grapples with his own political ambitions and the past decisions he made in the name of neutrality.

The cast includes Michael Neuenschwander, Manuela Biedermann, Clea Eden, and Yann Philipona.

Sovereign also financed and...

The Zurich Film Festival has selected some of the year’s most anticipated auteur films and high-brow Hollywood movies in its Gala Premieres section. Among other films, the fest screens the European premieres of “The Woman King,” with Viola Davis, and “Bros” by Nicholas Stoller. It also plays “The Son” by Florian Zeller.

“Of the 145 films in this year’s festival program, we are able to show more than a quarter of them as world or European premieres – more than ever before in the festival’s history,” Christian Jungen, artistic director, says.

“We are particularly proud to be holding the European premieres of Gina Prince-Bythewood’s historical epic ‘The Woman King,’ in which Academy Award-winner Viola Davis leads an international Black cast, as well as the gay romantic comedy ‘Bros’ by Nicholas Stoller, who cast all LGBTQ+ actors for the film. These two movies are a testament to the diverse talent working in Hollywood cinema,...