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Sabine Gisiger’s “The Mies van der Rohes,” Steven Vit’s “My Old Man” and Caterina Mona’s “Semret” feature in this year’s pix-in-post showcase First Look, one of the industry highlights of the Locarno Film Festival, which focuses for the first time on movies from Switzerland.

The films are joined in First Look by Valentin Merz’s “De Noche los Gatos Son Pardos,” Leon Schwitter’s “Reduit” and Jackie Brutsche’s “Las Toreras” in a six-title spread which works as a predominantly new Swiss talent showcase.

Four of the six movies are first features, another a second; only Gisiger has a directorial career that stretches back several decades.

Presented by established production houses or producers such as Zurich’s Dschoint Ventschr Filmproduktion and Ticino’s Michele Pini, the titles also drill down, often in a highly personal fashion – two of the titles are autobiographical doc features – on questions...

Films include Samir’s Baghdad In My Shadow and Bettina Oberli’s The Wind Turns.

International co-productions garnered the lion’s share of the production support paid out by Switzerland’s new incentive scheme Film Investment Refund Switzerland (Pics) in its first year of operations.

Speaking during this week’s Locarno Festival (which runs 2 - 12 August), federal councilor Alain Berset, head of the Federal Department of Home Affairs, revealed that 53% of the $6.2m (CHF6m) allocated in support between July 2016 and June 2017 had gone to nine international co-productions with Switzerland.

The co-productions supported included:

Bettina Oberli’s first French-language feature film The Wind Turns, produced by Rita Productions with France’s Silex Films and Belgium’s Versus Production (co-producer of Locarno Festival Piazza Grande film Lola Pater)Samir’s London-set Baghdad In My Shadow (pictured), produced by Dschoint Ventschr with Germany’s Coin Film and the UK’s Ipso Facto Productions - with Filmcoopi and Nfp handling...

Ben & Joshua Safdie's Good TimeThe lineup for the 2017 festival has been revealed, including new films by Wang Bing, Radu Jude, Raúl Ruiz and others, alongside retrospectives and tributes dedicated to Jean-Marie Straub, Jacques Tourneur and much more.Piazza GRANDEAmori che non sonno stare al mondo (Francesca Comencini, Italy)Atomic Blonde (David Leitch, USA)Chien (Samuel Benchetrit, France/Belgium)Demain et tous les autres jours (Noémie Lvovsky, France)Drei Zinnen (Jan Zabeil, Germany/Italy)Good Time (Ben & Joshua Safdie, USA)Gotthard - One Life, One Soul (Kevin Merz, Switzerland)I Walked with a Zombie (Jacques Tourneur, USA)Iceman (Felix Randau, Germany/Italy/Austria)Laissez bronzer les cadavres (Hélène Cattet & Bruno Forzani, Belgium/France)Lola Pater (Nadir Moknèche, France/Belgium)Sicilia! (Jean-Marie Straub & Danièle Huillet, Italy/France/Germany)Sparring (Samuel Jouy, France)The Big Sick (Michael Showalter, USA)The Song of Scorpions (Anup Singh, Switzerland/France/Singapore)What Happed to Monday (Tommy Wirkola,...

Swiss feature doc Yalom’s Cure, which premiered at the Locarno Festival in August, has been snapped up by a number of European distributors.

Sales agent Autlook Film Sales has confirmed that both Swiss distributor Filmcoopi and German outfit Alamode Films, who have acquired the film, are planning a late 2014 theatrical release in German-speaking territories following the Zurich Film Festival (Sept 25 - Oct 5).

Meanwhile, a number of other buyers have now come on board. Sophie Dulac Films (France), Cinemien (Benelux), and Filmtrade (Greece) have all taken Yalom’s Cure. Both a Czech /Slovak and a Us release will be announced soon.

The deals we’re all negotiated by Autlook’s Salma Abdalla.

Yalom’s Cure (aka Yalom’s Guide To Happiness) is directed by Sabine Gisiger. The film profiles bestselling author, popular scholar and existentialist Irvin D. Yalom, one of the most influential living psychotherapists.

Millions of Yalom’s books have been sold worldwide. The film is...