15-year-old Emma-pregnant after a rape-defies her repressive rural Protestant community to carve a path of self-determination, transforming trauma into a catalyst for emancipation while confronting the moral hypocrisy of the village and the spectre of World War II around her.
Born in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland, Marie-Elsa Sgualdo earned a bachelor’s degree in directing from HEAD and a master’s degree in screenwriting from INSAS. She directed her first fiction short film Vas-y je t’aime in 2009, which was presented at Locarno, and screened at approximately ten other festivals, winning the Best Student Film Award at the Schweizer Jugendfilmtage. In 2010, she followed up with Bam Tchak, which received the Swiss Award at the Bern Short Film Festival. She then directed On the Beach (2012), which was selected at over forty festivals and received multiple awards, including the Bayard d’Or for Best Short Film at the Namur International Francophone Film Festival. Her next short film, Man kann nicht Alles auf einmal tun, aber man kann alles auf einmal lassen, an autofiction she made in 2013 using archival footage, had its world premiere at the Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes and was selected at around fifty festivals. Alongside her work as a director, Marie-Elsa teaches film and spent several years as a teaching assistant in the ECAL/HEAD master’s program in cinema. She is also a co-founder of the Terrain Vague collective, which brings together several young filmmakers from French-speaking Switzerland. Silent Rebellion is her debut feature film.
Salaud Morisset
