“Frank & Louis” by Petra Volpe: Premiere at the Sundance Film Festival
Keystone-SDA
With Frank & Louis, Swiss director Petra Volpe has made her first English-language film – and it is an immediate success: the film will celebrate its world premiere in the “Premieres” section at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival.
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The Sundance Film Festival was founded by Oscar winner Robert Redford and is the largest US film festival for independent productions. For Swiss director Petra Volpe, it has always been a “cultural force” that she has admired from afar, she said in a press release issued by Swiss Films on Thursday.
The festival in Utah is the perfect place “for the audience’s first encounter with the film”, Volpe continued. Because the story of Frank & Louis is deeply American: rooted in the complexity of the penal system, crime, care, punishment and masculinity. But it is told from a non-American perspective. Sundance offers the space “to look at American stories from the outside – through an audience that is used to questioning familiar thought patterns”.
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The film is about Frank (Kingsley Ben-Adir), who is serving a life sentence. In prison, he takes on a job caring for elderly prisoners with Alzheimer’s and dementia. What begins as a self-serving attempt to gain early release develops into a deep bond with Louis (Rob Morgan), the man he is caring for. For Frank, this relationship is a glimmer of hope in an unforgiving place.
With the selection of Frank & Louis at the Sundance Film Festival and her previous film Heldin (Late Shift), which celebrated its world premiere at the last Berlinale, Volpe is about to take the leap across the Atlantic.
Switzerland is entering the race for the Oscar in the Best International Feature Film category with Heldin. On December 16, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will announce the shortlist of 15 films. On January 22, this list will be reduced to the five films for the final round. The 98th Academy Awards will take place on March 15, 2026.
Frank & Louis is due to be released in Swiss cinemas next autumn.
Adapted from German by AI/ts
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