Swiss film producers and financiers Karl Spoerri and Viviana Vezzani have been Sundance regulars for more than 15 years, but this edition is special.
The pair, who were driving forces behind the Zurich Film Festival (ZFF) up until 2019, are in Park City this year with Thelma, which is the first feature from their new company Zurich Avenue to make it into Sundance.
Josh Margolin’s action-comedy-drama, starring 94-year-old June Squibb as a L.A. grandmother who sets off on a friend’s mobility scooter on a mission to track down an Internet scammer, is proving one of the early hits of the festival. “On a personal level, it’s very meaningful because Sundance was always a big influence for us at the Zurich Film Festival from the start,” says Vezzani. “We always loved going as programmers so getting Thelma accepted at Sundance was a dream come true.” Former ZFF co-founder and artistic director Spoerri recalls their first trip to Sundance in 2008 as also being memorable because it was where they fired off an email to Oliver Stone asking whether be interested in financing for W out of Zurich. “It was a key moment.
We were in the fourth year of the Zurich Film Festival and starting to move into production financing,” he says of their first push into film producing and financing under the banner of Millbrook Pictures from 2008 to 2011.
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