Switzerland’s Federal Office of Culture (BAK) has awarded over $2.6m (CHF 2.5m) to five international co-productions in the latest round of funding from its film section.

The project committee allocated CHF 1m to Ruth Waldburger’s Vega Film for the Swiss-Belgian co-production of Ursula Meier’s new feature project L’enfant d’en Haut and CHF 850,000 to Séverine Cornamusaz’s second feature Swiss-French-Belgian project Cyanure.

Meier’s feature debut Home premiered in Un Certain Regard in Cannes in 2008 and won three prizes at the Swiss Film Awards in 2009, including for Best Film, while Cornamusaz’s feature debut Animal Heart had taken the top honour and the Best Actor prize at this year’s national awards ceremony in Lucerne in March.

In addition, a total of CHF 705,000 went to three projects by foreign directors with Swiss co-producers onboard: Belgian producer-director Hubert Toint’s Mirage d’amour avec fanfare; Belgian filmmaker Joachim Lafosse’s fifth feature Aimer à perdre la raison loosely based on the true-life case of infanticide when a mother Geneviève Lhermitte killed her five children; and German director Ann-Kristin Reyels’ new project Formentera about a young German couple’s holiday on the Spanish island paradise turns into a nightmare, which will be produced by Wüste Film Ost with Lucerne-base Zodiac Pictures (Bon Appetit).

Zodiac Pictures also received development support in this funding round for a planned 3D version based on Johanna Spyri’s two children’s classics with a screenplay written by Petra Volpe.