Carmen Jaquier

Born in Geneva, Carmen Jaquier studied graphic design before teaching herself filmmaking and making her first short films. She then joined the École cantonale d’art de Lausanne (ECAL).

Her graduation film, Le Tombeau des filles, received the Pardino d’argento at the Locarno Film Festival in 2011. She subsequently explored image and editing as part of the Aamen collective, directing two short films, Les Vagues and Le Bal des Sirènes. Her films La Rivière sous la langue and Heimatland (a collective feature film) were selected for the Locarno Film Festival in 2015. She also worked as cinematographer on Emmanuelle Antille’s film A Bright Light – Karen and the Process, presented at Visions du Réel in 2018. Her first feature film, Foudre, released in 2022, was presented at numerous festivals, including Toronto, San Sebastian, Busan and Rome. It received several awards, notably Best Director at the Marrakech Film Festival, and was selected to represent Switzerland at the Academy Awards. Les paradis de Diane, her second feature film, co-directed with Jan Gassmann, premiered at the Solothurn Film Days, was presented in the Panorama section of the Berlinale, and received the Zürcher Filmpreis 2024 for Best Feature Film.