Director Mira Nair and screenwriter Fanny Herrero are among the big names heading to the 32nd Geneva International Film Festival. The organisers unveiled the programme on Thursday, and the festival will run from 30 October to 8 November with 113 works on the bill, 15 of them from Switzerland.
Nair, the Indian-American filmmaker who is also the mother of New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani, will receive the festival’s Prix Film & Beyond in recognition of her career. She already holds a Golden Lion from the Venice Film Festival. In Geneva she will sit down for an interview with Vinzenz Hediger, director of the Cinémathèque Suisse. Herrero, the French writer behind the series Dix Pour Cent and Drôle, will take part in a moderated discussion, with extracts from her work and the 2026 film sequel to Dix Pour Cent shown alongside it.
The scale of the line-up is notable. More than two thirds of the selected titles will have their Swiss, international or world premiere at the event. Forty titles are in competition across the feature film, series and immersive experience categories, as well as the Future is Sensible section. Geneva’s own scene is represented by Exit Void, a collective of independent filmmakers with roots in rap whose output spans short films, features and music videos.
The main Swiss hope is Les Indes, a Swiss-Spanish co-production directed by Pauline Julier and Nicolas Chapoulier.
It is one of ten international features competing for the top prize. The historical drama is set in the 17th century and follows a young Spanish nobleman who is sent to deliver a portrait of the Spanish Infanta to a still youthful Louis XIV. Beyond the competition, a non-competitive strand puts Taiwanese cinema in the spotlight, including Tung-Yen Chou’s 2020 short In the Mist and Craig Quintero’s virtual reality trilogy Just for You from 2025.
The festival will close with Arrested Memory, a 2026 Taiwanese-Japanese action comedy by the Japanese director Sabu about a police investigator who loses his memory. With a lifetime award for Nair, a talk with one of French television’s best-known writers and a home-grown period piece in competition, the Geneva event is set to bring a mix of international guests and local talent to the city over its ten days in late autumn. In total, this year’s edition brings together 113 works and 40 competition titles.
