* Zurich Film Festival 2021 *

gimme a beat with babymonster

First held in 2005, Zurich Film Festival established itself very quickly on the national and international film festival scene. The formula for its success it's probably a mix of an attractive location: international but small city of Zurich; great selection of movies and different programs/events like ZFF Masters, ZFF Talks, Zurich Summit, ZFF for Pupils, ZFF 72 and few others. The best way to explain Zurich Film Festival's success is to quote/paraphrase the sentence that I found in the industry booklet a few years ago. Basically, the organizers agree on a few basics for a successful film festival: "content is a king, collaboration is key and encounters among creative folks are essential". I am glad to confirm that even after this many years, organizers are still taking "these basics" seriously, while they are developing the festival further and most importantly, in the right direction. This was another year with Covid19, but the festival, again, handled it very well. There was a protection plan and this, in the nutshell, meant that the attendance was allowed only with a covid certificate (and photo id) and everywhere one went there were enough hand sanitizers. As a result, the 17th edition of Zurich Film Festival attracted 102'000 visitors and managed to screen 164 films, from 53 countries. The amount of visitors increased again and it was 50% of the amount from last year. This only confirmed that ZFF's motto: "Life is better with Movies" is more than appropriate, as the festival brought again a bit of normality into Zurich and people rushed to the cinemas to see the movies. This year I achieved my own personal goal and managed to see 32 movies and interview 3 female filmmakers. Luckily, Zurich is a small town so it was not a big deal to run from one location to another, but not all the cinemas were included and some were further out, so I had to be very well coordinated to get to see everything I wanted. And even if there were many fabulous events happening on the festival ground, I haven't attended/seen any of them. For me, Zurich Film Festival is all about watching the movies and my most enjoyable moment is when I am sitting in the dark room of the cinema getting fully immersed into the storyline. I've only stepped out of the dark cinema to attend two events from the ZFF Masters session, thanks to Hannah from ZFF's team: Conversation with Sharon Stone and ZFF Masters with Paul Schrader. And this was a great decision as I got a chance to see these two legends, as close as I ever will. Since Gimme A Beat is focused on female related subjects, as in previous years, through my review of the Zurich Film Festival I explored *female factor* of the festival and therefore I focused on either movies made by female filmmakers or movies showcasing female life, or movies that cover both topics. Festival uses hashtags to mark the movies so finding the movies I wanted to focus on was easy: I just followed #FemaleFilmmakers and #FemaleLife hashtags. I also used them in my reviews. And even though I had my focus, I've also managed to see more, and I was truly impressed with movie selection, great balance of different genres, aspiring filmmakers and (potential) blockbusters and an overall strong women presence, something very important to me. In addition and as in all previous years, the organization was impeccable, and team behind Zurich Film Festival was simply brilliant. People were not just being professional but also super nice, helpful and easy going. All of this while keeping us safe. Considering the amount of movies I've seen (32), I was not able to post reviews of all of them on Gimme A Beat page. Regardless, if you follow the search with the following hashtags: #zff #zff2021 #gimmeabeat you'll find the ones that I did review (14 until today). You can also find all of my highlights if you follow the search with the following hashtags: #zff #zff2021 #highlight #gimmeabeat (11 until today). I would still like to share