Flying Film Festival 2021 Roundup

Picture This Post writers have been thrilled to cover the unique Flying Film Festival for several seasons. “What a cool idea” was the thought then and now. Let those on transatlantic flights see high quality short documentaries, instead of the more usual lite-weight cinematic fare. Good for the passengers, good for the documentarians who deserve far more audience, and good for the documentary film genre in general—this unique film festival sponsored by Swiss Air continues to serve up some of the best films our writers get to see.

Read prior reviews of the 2019 Flying Film Festival films by clicking here.

Click a picture in this round up to read a review of the films in this year’s festival.

Here below, Picture This Post (PTP) catches up with Francesca Scalisi of the Flying Film Festival (FFF) for a quick update on how the Festival came to be this season.

(PTP) How did the pandemic affect the festival this year?

(FFF) Luckily the festival did not suffer as a result of the pandemic. The festival takes place every two years, and this year’s edition will be the first one since the pandemic started. SWISS has remained very supportive and made it possible to launch the festival as planned.

Please share with our readers the process/es you use to select films for the festival.

For each edition, we get in touch with a number of high-profile programmers who have wide exposure to the industry in order to discuss our vision and get their inputs on interesting titles released in the past two years. After we collect a good number of candidate films, we select 13-15 titles. We look for films that have a strong background work and we do our best to select movies that are very diverse. By doing so, we can share with the audience of SWISS an overview that communicates the richness and variety of the world of documentary, while also being engaging for people who are new to the genre.

How has the festival evolved since its start—this is the third one-yes?

This is the fourth editions. I think that the festival has become more mature, we are better organized, and we also managed to get the attention of a number of external supporters, such as the association Ciné Brunch – Regards D'ailleurs, which provides the award for the second placed.

Do you have any anecdotes about how past festivals have impacted the filmmakers whose work have been showcased by SWISS Air Lines?

This initiative is impactful in two ways. From the filmmaker’s point of view, it gives the opportunity to get in touch with a potential audience which is quite large: all passengers on SWISS long-haul flights traveling in the months of December and January. As an example, two years ago we got more than 25.000 views. Many of the filmmakers featured in previous editions have continued a brilliant career. From the point of view of the documentary industry, we believe that the festival is an important entry point to bring more people closer to this genre.