Slovak director Tereza Nvotová’s Father has won the 21st Zurich Film Festival’s Golden Eye for Best Film in the Swiss event’s main competition devoted to first, second and third features.
The drama follows a work-stressed father who forgetfully leaves his two-year-old daughter in a car all day in the middle of a heatwave.
The film originally world premiered in Venice’s Orizzonti and has since been selected as Slovakia’s entry to the Best International Feature Film category of the 98th Academy Awards.
The jury was presided over by U.S. director and producer Reinaldo Marcus Green, with its members also including German actress Leonie Benesch, Italian producer Carlo Cresto-Dina, Iranian director and producer Ali Asgari, and film curator and cinema operator Nicole Reinhard.
“This film tells the story of an ordinary family facing extraordinary circumstances. Its central character is neither a villain nor a hero, but a flawed human being caught in a single, devastating mistake,” read the jury statement.
“The film shows how that mistake can shatter what we love most, and yet it is, at its heart, about compassion, hope, and the resilience of the human spirit. We were deeply moved by the craft and the humanity of this film.”
The jury also awarded special mentions to French director Alice Douard’s Love Letters and Taiwanese-American filmmaker Shih-Ching Tsou’s Left-Handed Girl, which is Taiwan’s 2026 Oscar entry.
In other key prizes, Zurich-based filmmaker Moris Freiburghaus’s I Love You, I Leave You won Best Documentary, in a first for a Swiss documentary.
Freiburghaus captures musician and friend Dino Brandão’s battle with mental illness after a trip to his father’s native country of Angola raises questions about his own sense of identity.
“In capturing his best friend’s battle with manic episodes over the course of a year, Moris Freiburghaus’ bold directorial debut gives us an unflinching look at mental illness and the unshakeable bonds of friendship and family,” said the jury, presided over by director and producer Matthew Heineman (Cartel Land, The Savant).
The documentary jury also gave special mentions to Yrsa Roca Fannberg’s The Ground Beneath Our Feet, capturing scenes of life gently transitioning to death in an Icelandic nursing home, and Namir Abdel Messeeh’s Life After Siham, in which the Egyptian-French filmmaker processes the death of his beloved mother.
The ZFF Critics’ Jury Award went to Damien Hauser’s Kenyan sci-fi love story Memory of Princess, which world premiered in Venice’s Orizzonti sidebar, while there was a special mention for I Love You, I Leave You.
Freiburghaus’s documentary also won the Audience Award.
The awards ceremony on Saturday evening wrapped a buzzy 21st edition in which a host of stars were also feted with honorary awards across the 10-day event, with Dakota Johnson, Benedict Cumberbatch, Claire Foy and Wagner Moura receiving Golden Eye Awards; Russell Crowe, a Lifetime Achievement Award; Colin Farrell, a Golden Icon, and Noah Baumbach, A Tribute To… Award.
Career Achievement Awards also went to Swiss producer Anne Walser and Oscar-winning Icelandic composer Hildur Guðnadóttir, while Neon founding CEO Tom Quinn received the industry-focused Game Changer Award.
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