French and US films take top prizes at Zurich Film Festival

The Zurich Film Festival placed French and American filmmaking at the centre of its 2026 awards ceremony. Pierre le Gall’s Du fioul dans les artères won Best Feature Film, while Pete Muller’s Bucks Harbor took the Golden Eye for Best Documentary. The prizes were announced on October 4 at the Zurich Opera House during the 22nd Zurich Film Festival.

The results underline the festival’s role as a meeting point for international cinema and Swiss audiences. The winning films approach very different worlds: le Gall follows a French and a Polish lorry driver confronting the isolation of life on the road, while Muller documents young fishermen in Downeast Maine as they enter adulthood under severe winters, dangerous work at sea and strict paternal expectations.

Each of the two main awards carries CHF 25,000, giving the recognition a direct financial dimension alongside its critical value. The jury praised le Gall’s film as a “profoundly cinematic reflection on the fundamental human need for connection”. That focus on distance, work and emotional survival links the feature and documentary, even as their settings remain far apart. Zurich’s closing awards therefore offered a snapshot of contemporary cinema shaped by movement, labour and family ties.

Du fioul dans les artères won the festival’s top feature prize with a story built around two drivers and the loneliness of the road. Directed by French filmmaker Pierre le Gall, the film follows a French and a Polish lorry driver as they try to make room for love while working in an occupation defined by long journeys and separation.

The jury’s citation placed human connection at the heart of its decision. Its description of the film as a “profoundly cinematic reflection on the fundamental human need for connection” points to the film’s emotional and visual ambition, while the story itself remains grounded in the working lives of its protagonists.

The French victory also reflects the international range of the Zurich programme. A story that crosses national borders through its characters and setting reached the top of a Swiss festival that attracts filmmakers, critics and audiences from beyond the country. The film’s pairing of French and Polish perspectives gives its central relationship a distinctly European frame, with transport routes and professional routines connecting people who might otherwise remain strangers.

The CHF 25,000 Best Feature Film prize gives le Gall’s film one of the festival’s clearest endorsements. It also directs attention toward a work that treats mobility as both an economic reality and a source of personal isolation.

Bucks Harbor brought the documentary Golden Eye to the fishing communities of Downeast Maine. Pete Muller’s film follows young fishermen as they move through the difficult transition into adulthood. Their lives are shaped by harsh winters, demanding work at sea and rules handed down by their fathers.

The documentary’s setting gives the award a strong sense of place. Downeast Maine is presented through the conditions that organise daily life: weather, labour, family authority and the risks associated with fishing. The young men at the centre of the film face an inheritance that is practical as well as emotional, with the sea providing work while imposing its own limits.

Muller’s recognition places an American documentary alongside a French feature at the top of Zurich’s international competition. The pairing broadens the festival’s portrait of contemporary filmmaking, moving from professional isolation on European roads to generational pressure in a coastal community in the United States.

The Golden Eye carries CHF 25,000, matching the feature film award. That equal prize value signals the importance Zurich assigns to documentary storytelling and gives Bucks Harbor a prominent platform among critics and festival audiences. Its attention to young workers and inherited expectations also connects with wider European conversations about rural economies, family trades and the future of traditional industries.