Geneva Film Festival to honour director Mira Nair

Mira Nair will receive Geneva’s Prix Film & Beyond when the festival opens its 32nd edition on October 30. The Indian-American director, whose career includes a Golden Lion from the Venice Film Festival, will discuss her work with Vinzenz Hediger, director of the Cinémathèque Suisse. The conversation gives Geneva audiences a direct encounter with one of international cinema’s most recognised filmmakers.

Nair’s appearance forms part of a programme that brings established figures, independent creators and emerging film forms together in the city. The Geneva International Film Festival will run until November 8, with 113 works scheduled for screening. The organisers say more than two-thirds will be presented as Swiss, international or world premieres.

French screenwriter Fanny Herrero will also join the festival. Known for the series Dix Pour Cent, released internationally as Call My Agent!, and Drôle, Herrero will take part in a moderated discussion. The festival will screen works by Herrero, excerpts from them and the 2026 film sequel to Dix Pour Cent. Her participation broadens the programme beyond directors and reflects the growing attention paid to screenwriting as a defining force in contemporary television and film.

Fifteen Swiss works will sit within a 113-title programme designed to connect local filmmaking with international cinema. The festival’s Swiss presence includes the Geneva-based collective Exit Void, whose work spans short films, features and music videos. The collective is rooted primarily in the rap scene, bringing a music-driven independent perspective to a festival known for crossing boundaries between film, television and new media.

The programme also gives a prominent place to competition. Forty works will contend across feature films, series, immersive experiences and the Future is Sensible section. The categories reflect the changing ways audiences encounter stories, from traditional cinema screens to interactive and virtual reality projects.

One Swiss co-production will compete in the feature film section alongside nine other international works. Les Indes, directed by Pauline Julier and Nicolas Chapoulier, travels back to the 17th century. Its story follows a young Spanish nobleman charged with delivering a portrait of the Infanta of Spain to the child Louis XIV. The historical adventure gives the Swiss selection a period setting and an international narrative scope.

Taiwanese cinema will provide this year’s major international focus outside the competitions. The selection moves across genres, formats and subjects, offering Geneva audiences a view of Taiwan’s film production through both conventional and immersive works.

The programme includes In the Mist, a 2020 short film by Tung-Yen Chou that explores personal sexuality. It also features Just for You, a 2025 virtual reality trilogy by Craig Quintero. Placing the two works in the same focus programme allows the festival to present Taiwanese cinema as a broad creative field rather than a single national style.

The emphasis on virtual reality also reinforces GIFF’s commitment to formats beyond the standard feature film. Immersive works will compete in their own section, alongside feature films, series and entries in Future is Sensible. For Swiss audiences, the Taiwanese focus offers a concentrated opportunity to encounter filmmakers and forms that rarely receive sustained attention in a general cinema programme. The selection sits alongside the festival’s wider effort to combine international premieres with independent work from Geneva and Switzerland.

The festival will close on November 8 with a film built around memory, investigation and action. Japanese director Sabu’s Arrested Memory, a 2026 Taiwanese-Japanese action comedy, follows a police officer who suffers from amnesia while investigating a case. Its placement at the close of the festival extends the Taiwanese focus into the final public screening and gives the programme a cross-border conclusion.

The closing film also points to the range of the Geneva event. Across ten days, the festival will move between auteur cinema, television, historical adventure, music-led independent production and virtual reality. Its competition structure accommodates four distinct areas, while the wider programme brings in international guests for discussions and presentations.

The festival’s schedule places Geneva in the international circuit without leaving Swiss production at the margins. The organisers have identified 15 Swiss works among the 113 titles being shown. More than two-thirds will have a Swiss, international or world premiere. Those figures suggest a programme built around first encounters, giving local audiences access to new work while creating a visible platform for Swiss filmmakers and co-productions.

From October 30 to November 8, Geneva will turn its cinemas and festival venues into meeting points for Swiss and international film culture. Mira Nair’s lifetime award gives the event a major public face, while Fanny Herrero’s appearance highlights the importance of writing in the success of contemporary screen storytelling.

The programme’s Swiss dimension reaches from the Geneva-based Exit Void collective to Les Indes, the Swiss co-production competing in the feature film section. Its international range extends to Taiwan, India, the United States, France and Japan through films, discussions and immersive experiences. That combination gives the festival relevance beyond a sequence of premieres. It creates a platform where Swiss creators can be seen alongside established international figures and where audiences can move between familiar formats and experimental work.

For Geneva, the festival offers a concentrated cultural event with a clear local stake. The organisers have assembled 40 competition titles across four sections and scheduled 113 works overall. The result is a programme that brings global cinema to Switzerland while keeping the city’s independent film community visible at its centre.