‘September 5’ Director Working on Berlin-Set Historical Drama

Some of the main breakouts of Swiss cinema in 2026—and the few years that precede it—share one striking commonality: they are either entirely in English or feature large chunks of English. Think Petra Volpe’s Locarno-winning “Frank & Louis,” Damien Hauser’s festival darling “Memory of Princess Mumbi,” Denis Rabaglia’s buzzy “Butterfly Stroke” and, of course, Tim Fehlbaum’s lauded historical thriller “September 5.” 

On the date that names his award-winning film, Fehlbaum joined “Quiet Land” director Ursula Meier and “Erosion” helmer Michael Koch at the Venice Production Bridge – where Switzerland is a country of focus – to discuss this very phenomenon in a panel titled: Beyond Borders: English as the New Language in Swiss Cinema? Moderated by Variety Italy and Middle East Correspondent/Rome Bureau Chief Nick Vivarelli, the discussion honed in on the benefits and challenges of shooting in English in Switzerland today. 

Fehlbaum revealed that his next project will take place in Berlin and be shot in both German and English. “It’s set in Germany, and it’s historical, but it also has an American perspective on it. It’s always a question of how much will be in German and how much will be in English. By changing one character to a person who doesn’t understand German, you suddenly have much more English, and it’s much easier to finance.”

Meier relayed her current experience producing “Quiet Land,” which is part of this year’s Venice Gap-Financing Market. The English-language film will star Bill Murray and Léa Seydoux, with a story set in Montana but shot in Alberta. The director is currently in pre-production, with plans to shoot next year. “For me, it’s interesting for my work to tell a bigger story, and everything in the U.S. is bigger,” she said when asked about the reasons for shooting in English.

“It was a great challenge for me,” added the writer-director of penning the script. “My English is not so good, and I had a year to work on [it]. We wrote the script in French, and then it was translated. We followed [the translation process] [very closely.]” 

The director added how much she “loves U.S. actors,” recalling working with Gillian Anderson on her Oscar-shortlisted “Sisters.” “It was so great to work with her,” she said. “I like how [American actors] embody characters. It’s very physical.” 

Koch recently had the experience of working with a major American actor himself, having just shot “Erosion” with lead Peter Sarsgaard. The drama will reunite the director with the non-professional actors of “A Piece of Sky” for a film observing the dynamics between a foreigner and the local Swiss farmers in a small mountain village. It was Fehlbaum who made the bridge between Koch and Sarsgaard, following their collaboration in “September 5.”

“For me, this choice to shoot with an English-speaking actor was, from the beginning, a creative choice,” emphasized the director. “It was, in a sense, the concept of the film, also. Unlike my previous film, which was shot with only non-professionals and chose a very specific mountain world from the inside, I wanted this time to turn it around and look with the eyes of a stranger to this world. It was clear from the beginning that it had to be the eyes of a foreigner. The second thing that intrigued me a lot was to put a famous actor like Peter together with nonprofessional actors from the Swiss mountains, which sounds like a really weird combination, but it was something I wanted to explore.”

The filmmaker interjected to say he does not believe English to be the new language of Swiss cinema, but that it is certainly “a part of it.” Working in a different language was a “very interesting experience” for Koch, who noted how, when verbal communication is limited, other creative forms of interaction arise. “This was the interesting thing to observe: how people from different worlds come together and share something beyond verbal communication.”

Having a major American actor as the lead also changed the financing process for Koch, who picked up on Vivarelli’s metaphor to say it felt like the film “felt more like a Ferrari” financing-wise. “It’s a bit more [money] you have to get, but it’s also easier. It went quite fast, I have to say. It was also possible because [Sarsgaard] really wanted to [make the film], otherwise, we couldn’t afford it.”

Fehlbaum made a key point when looking back at his experience of shooting several films in English: “It has to come from the story.” He recalled being told by producers he needed to make his feature debut, “Hell,” in English, as it was a post-apocalyptic sci-fi. “It was before Netflix, and people told me I couldn’t get it financed.” The director felt the choice didn’t make sense for the film, and trusted his gut. The results proved his choice correct, with the film doing very well domestically and internationally. 

For his follow-up, “The Colony,” Fehlbaum decided to shoot in English despite the script not quite calling for it. The lukewarm response to the film confirmed the director’s thesis that it only makes sense to make a film in English if the choice also makes sense diegetically. That was a very clear call with “September 5,” which was told from the point of view of American broadcasters in Munich during a hostage crisis in the 1972 Olympics.

The director also highlighted how English offers a much wider vocabulary to writers, especially those who are German-speaking. “The English language, compared to German, [has] three times as many words,” he said. “In scriptwriting, you always want [scripts] to be short. In English, it’s cool that you can use just one word when in German you’d have to write a whole sentence. For subtext, English is better. In German, [words are] very specific.”

But Fehlbaum warns writers and directors of the dangers of rushing to technology, especially AI, to take on the task of translating. Recalling a meeting with a translator who told him AI is taking on their positions on jobs such as translating scripts and dialogue on set, the director emphasized how great an experience he had with a seasoned linguist on “September 5.” “We first wrote [the script] in German and it was clear that we would get a translator on board. He not only translated [the script] but had a different perspective and made it much more American. It’s important to get authenticity.” 

As for the challenges, all three directors brought up the difficulties of having to communicate in their second language with actors when under the overbearing pressures of being on set. “I realized the language barrier is much bigger than I would’ve thought,” said Fehlbaum. But Koch offered a positive counterpoint: “There’s also a nice thing about that. Because then [actors] are really challenged to think about: what does he mean? So they start to participate in this process also.”

And there’s also the fact that Switzerland is a country already built on the idea of multiple languages, with German, French, Italian, and Romansh as the nation’s official languages. In that context, all three filmmakers agreed that, while English films are on the rise, the idiom is just another card on their table—and Swiss directors are eager to play their hands.