Chris the Swiss is a 2018 Swiss animated documentary film written and directed by Anja Kofmel. It follows KofmelâÂÂs investigation into the death of her cousin Chris during the Yugoslav Wars. The film premiered in the Criticsâ Week section at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival and won Best Documentary Film at the 2019 Swiss Film Awards.
During the Yugoslav Wars, Swiss journalist Chris is found dead in Croatia while wearing the uniform of an international mercenary group. His cousin Anja Kofmel later investigates his death in an effort to understand his involvement in the conflict.
The cast includes:
Kofmel chose a hybrid documentary-animation format to depict the more speculative parts of Chris WürtenbergâÂÂs story. She worked on the film for six years with a team of 35 artists, and one second of animation required nine and a half hours of work.
At the 2019 Swiss Film Awards, the film won Best Documentary Film, Best Film Editing, and Best Film Score. It also won the Zürich Film Prize in 2018, the Award for Best Feature Film at the Animator International Animated Film Festival in 2019, and the Preis der Norbert Daldrop Förderung für Kunst und Kultur at the Deutscher Dokumentarfilmpreis in Stuttgart in 2019.
Stephen Dalton of The Hollywood Reporter said "Swiss director Anja Kofmel revisits the wild life and strange death of her war reporter cousin with an innovative blend of animation and documentary". Variety described the film as a âÂÂcompelling and artistic hybridâ of memoir and biographical documentary that âÂÂdoes not attempt to sand the troubled history it explores down to smoothnessâÂÂ. Filmdienst described the film as a striking hybrid of documentary and animation, with interviews and nightmarish black-and-white animated sequences.
The film premiered in the Criticsâ Week section at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival. It was later screened at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam in 2018; Anima, the Brussels Animation Film Festival, the Istanbul International Film Festival, and the Animator International Animated Film Festival in Poznaà  in 2019; and the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival in 2020.