The Swiss fund visions sud est was initiated in 2005 by the Foundation trigon-film Baden and the Fribourg Film Festival, with the collaboration of Nyon’s Visions du Reel and the support of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation. In 2011, Locarno Festival has joined the fund as new partner.

The fund supports film productions from Asia, Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe, aims at making them visible worldwide and guarantees their distribution in Switzerland. In case a project is being supported, all rights for Switzerland are automatically transferred to visions sud est.

Visions Sud Vest want to encourage independent production and subsequent distribution in Switzerland and in Europe of full-length (with a duration of at least 70 minutes) cinema fictional films and documentaries in post-production (no short films, no TV films!) from the South and East. This support should furthermore play a ‘catalyst’ role for the film industry in the country of origin of the production.

All the projects for which financial support is requested must be proposed exclusively by a company based in a country from the South (Africa, Latin America and Asia) or from Eastern Europe (excluding EU members) and regularly producing films by filmmakers in these countries. Therefore, the main part of the project must be shot in these countries and – except in special circumstances – in the local or regional language.

There are two types of financial support:

– Support of the production of fictional films on the basis of documents attesting to the feasibility of the project (at the minimum 30% of the financing have to be already acquired before submitting a request).

– Support of the post-production of fictional and documentary films on the basis of a first cut and a finishing concept.

A fictional film project will be supported with a maximum of 50.000 CHF for production or a maximum of 20.000 CHF for post-production.

A documentary will be supported with a maximum of 10.000 CHF for post-production.

This support entails the global distribution rights for Switzerland.