French filmmaker Marine Atlan’s coming-of-age drama La Gradiva has won the Reflet d’Or for best feature at the Geneva International Film Festival (GIFF), which closed its 2026 edition with an awards ceremony in the Swiss city on Saturday (November 7).
Atlan’s debut feature, which explores the turbulence of adolescence during a school trip to Pompeii and Naples, received the CHF 10,000 prize from a jury comprising filmmaker Marie-Elsa Sgualdo and four students from Swiss film schools.
The jury praised the film’s “remarkably realistic and profound writing” and highlighted its resonance with recent student movements worldwide.
Since winning the Grand Prix at Cannes Critics’ Week, La Gradiva has screened at more than 50 festivals worldwide, including Toronto, New York, BFI London and Busan, and has won awards at Melbourne, Deauville, Reykjavík and Chicago. The film has also earned four Gotham Award nominations and is on the European Film Awards shortlist.
Polish creators Wojciech Lepianka and Piotr Derewenda won the Reflet d’Or for best series for Variola Vera, a seven-part medical thriller set against the 1960s smallpox epidemic in Wrocław, Poland. Swedish supernatural crime thriller Summer Of 1985, directed by Björn Stein, received a special mention.
Bangladeshi filmmaker Abdullah Mohammad Saad’s dystopian series Annie picked up the Future Is Sensible Award, while Marina Klauser’s Der Engelmacher, examining sexual abuse within a Swiss religious community, received the Swiss Series Storytelling Award.
Organisers reported strong attendances and sold-out screenings, including La Gradiva and Virages, alongside fully booked immersive programmes and twice as many participating schools as in 2025. Box-office revenue rose approximately 30%, which the festival attributed in part to lower ticket prices and improvements to the audience experience.
The 2026 edition was developed by former artistic and general director Anaïs Emery, who departed in June. Emilie Bujès, appointed artistic director in August, supported this year’s event and will oversee her first full edition in 2027.
Next year’s 33rd Geneva International Film Festival will run November 5-13, 2027.
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