Ursula Meier on English-Language Debut ‘Quiet Land’

Swiss French filmmaker Ursula Meier (“The Line”) is prepping her long-gestating English-language debut, “Quiet Land,” a detective story-cum-romantic drama set in Big Sky country that she’ll be taking to the Venice Gap-Financing Market from Sept. 4 – 6.

The film tells the story of respected Montana Highway Patrolman Connor McCluskey, an officer in his early seventies who, armed with his trusty analog camera, is investigating two puzzling fatal car crashes. Following a medical evaluation, he is dismissed from the force. 

Concerned that Maggy Jones, a 70-year-old woman who owns land in the same area, may suffer the same fate, Connor continues his investigation on his own. Has he uncovered an inexplicable criminal plot, or is he slowly losing his mind? 

“Quiet Land” is the fourth feature from the acclaimed director Meier, whose previous films include “Home” (2008), which premiered at Cannes’ Critics’ Week, and “Sister” (2012), which won the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival. Her last film, “The Line,” competed for the Golden Bear at the 2022 Berlinale, where it was praised by Variety’s Peter Debruge as a “volatile yet sensitive portrait of a woman ordered to keep her distance from her family.”

Meier’s latest is inspired by the work of Swiss police photographer Arnold Odermatt, who over a career spanning more than 40 years documented car accidents in striking, black-and-white analog photography.

Speaking to Variety from her home in Geneva, Meier said she’s long been “fascinated and captivated” by Odermatt’s arresting work. “There is a great power in the photographs. And also in the landscape. It’s very calm, surrounded by mountains,” she said. “The space is very important, too. There is nobody [in the frame].

“It opens a lot of place for the imagination [to go]. It works like a movie,” she continued. “You see the photograph, and you picture what happened before. You imagine the ‘script’ of the crash. This idea crossed my mind and stayed with me.”

In a director’s statement provided to Variety, Meier described being gripped by the idea of “turning that former police photographer into a fictional character, transposed onto American soil.

“What if his lifelong expertise in using photographic prints to investigate car crashes led him to believe that he’s uncovered a series of murders passed off as run-of-the-mill auto accidents?” she wrote. “Car accidents are all the same, be they in the Swiss Alps or the American Rockies. The primary difference lies in the larger-than-life scale of the American landscape, as if urging us to surpass ourselves.”

Speaking via Zoom, Meier opened up about how her long-running desire to make a movie in the U.S. got an assist from “X-Files” legend Gillian Anderson. 

“My desire to work with actors from an English-speaking background dates back several years, and my collaboration with Gillian Anderson and [Scottish actor] Martin Compston on ‘Sister’ only reinforced it,” she said. “I love what these actors bring to the table, their physical work, their approach to characters stripped of over-psychologizing, and their wholehearted commitment to understanding and doing them justice.

“And then I had this desire that, one day, I would make a film on American soil, telling an American story.”

The love affair deepened during the Oscar campaign for “Sister,” which was Switzerland’s official submission in what was formerly known as the best foreign-language film category, with Meier’s travels in the U.S. spurring a “desire to dream big — not just in terms of landscape, but also in storytelling.” 

“It’s about the question of truth. What is truth?” the director asked. “Especially now, I think the question is very important. This man dedicated his life to truth and justice. It’s a human story. It’s an investigation about [what it means to be] human.”

Though she initially conceived “Quiet Land” nearly a decade ago, Meier pressed pause on the project to begin production on her Golden Bear contender “The Line.” Now she’s fully thrown herself into researching her American crime story, even tagging along with the crash reconstruction unit of a highway patrol in North Dakota. 

“We talked about crashes, how to read skid marks,” said the director, describing the experience as a “great immersion” into the unit’s work. “The policeman was very nice. Very generous. It was fantastic.”

Casting on “Quiet Land” is underway, with two A-list talents already attached. Meier will reunite with long-time DoP Agnès Godard and editor Nelly Quettier, as well as lead producer Lionel Baier of Bande à part Films, who also shares a writing credit with the director. Émilie Georges will co-produce for Paradise City Films.

With the film set to go into production in fall 2027 in Alberta, Canada, and Switzerland, Meier is giddy about the prospect of painting on a broader canvas than ever before.

“A police investigation, a love story and above all, a highly personal emotional journey to the self. A meditation on what remains of us when we’re gone,” she said. “I feel free to go very deep into the love story. Maybe to shoot in this large space will give me more freedom. I don’t know. In my imagination, I don’t censor myself.”