Petra Volpe's The Girl Who Saved the Day sweeps the 2026 Swiss Film Awards
Four Awards for Petra Volpe's The Girl Who Saved the Day at the Swiss Film Awards
With The Girl Who Saved the Day, Swiss-Italian screenwriter and director Petra Volpe has crafted a heartfelt tribute to healthcare workers. On Friday evening, the film was honored as Best Fiction Feature at the 2026 Swiss Film Awards, celebrated in Zurich's Kongresshaus.
The drama, starring Leonie Boesch in the lead role, triumphed over four other nominees in the same category: Lionel Baier's literary adaptation The Hideout, Nicolas Steiner's black-and-white debut Do You Believe in Angels, Mr. Drowak?, Marie-Elsa Sgualdo's Holding Tight, and Piet Baumgartner's Excavator Drama.
Volpe's film took home a total of four awards. It won Best Screenplay—a category in which Volpe had previously excelled, earning the same prize in 2017 for The Divine Order. On Friday, The Girl Who Saved the Day also secured a third Quartz trophy for Best Sound. The fourth accolade, announced in advance, was the inaugural Box Office Quartz, awarded to the year's highest-grossing Swiss film. With over 207,000 cinema admissions, The Girl Who Saved the Day was the most successful Swiss release of the year.
The film offers a gripping portrayal of a nurse's struggles in a Swiss hospital, where mounting pressure takes a toll not just on the protagonist but on the audience as well. The Girl Who Saved the Day is now available for streaming on Netflix and Cinefile.
Best Documentary Also Wins Best Score
In the Best Documentary category, I Love You, I Leave You emerged victorious. Director Moris Freiburghaus chronicles the bipolar disorder of his best friend, musician Dino Brandão, capturing the singer-songwriter and guitarist's volatile swings between manic highs and crushing lows.
This deeply personal film, which previously won the Golden Eye at the Zurich Film Festival, is underscored by Brandão's own music—a choice that earned it a second Swiss Film Award on Friday, this time for Best Original Score.
Powerful Performances in Excavator Drama
Two films led the nominations with seven apiece, each ultimately winning two Quartz awards. One was Piet Baumgartner's Excavator Drama, a searing exploration of a family shattered by loss yet unable to articulate their grief. Instead of confronting their emotions, the parents and their adult son retreat into silence, debating only the future of the family business.
Though nominated in multiple categories—including Best Fiction Feature, Best Screenplay, Best Editing, and Best Sound—Excavator Drama claimed its Quartz awards for acting. Bettina Stucky won Best Actress for her portrayal of Conny, a mother who has long shouldered the family business, mourns her daughter, and faces the painful realization that her husband, Paul, has fallen for someone else. Phil Hayes, the Swiss-British actor playing Paul, was honored with Best Actor.
The other seven-time nominee was Marie-Elsa Sgualdo's emancipatory period drama Holding Tight, which took home awards for Best Editing and Best Cinematography. Benoît Dervaux's camerawork is particularly striking, keeping the focus squarely on protagonist Emma. Through her expressive silence—rendered speechless by the trauma of rape and an unplanned pregnancy—the film conveys her despair with devastating clarity.
When Films Reflect Reality
The Swiss Film Awards ceremony was attended by Federal Councilor and Culture Minister Elisabeth Baume-Schneider, who delivered a laudatory speech for Villi Hermann. As previously announced, the director, screenwriter, and producer—whose career began in the 1970s—received the Honorary Award for his enduring influence in shaping the identity of Italian-language Swiss cinema.
During her remarks, Baume-Schneider discussed Hermann's 1974 film Cerchiamo per subito operai, offriamo... ("Urgent: Workers Wanted..."), which explores the realities of Italian guest workers in Switzerland. Drawing parallels to the present day, she warned against the Swiss People's Party (SVP) initiative "No to a 10-Million Switzerland," set for a public vote on June 14. The proposal seeks to cap the permanent resident population at 10 million before 2050.
The Swiss Film Awards honor the most outstanding Swiss films and key figures in the country's film industry each year. Nominees already receive prize money, with CHF 25,000 awarded in each of the two main categories—Best Fiction Film and Best Documentary—per nomination. (sda)
