Chris the Swiss is a lovingly crafted passion project, especially the animated
sequences, in which Kofmel re-creates the kind of dark fantasy imagery that her
10-year-old imagination conjured up on first hearing of her cousin’s death in a faraway
land. Poetically rendered in hand-drawn monochrome, these gothic dreamscapes are
inhabited by nightmarish figures of evil, robed in sinister swirls of feathery blackness.
[It] is a fascinating, moving elegy for doomed youth.
Stephen Dalton, The Hollywood Reporter
One of the strengths of Anja Kofmel’s part-animated documentary investigation into
the death of her cousin Chris in Croatia in 1992 is that it does not attempt to sand the
troubled history it explores down to smoothness.
Jessica Kiang, Variety
Like two hands belonging to the same restless individual, documentary and animation,
dancing a melancholic and desperate pasodoble.
Giorgia Del Don, Cineuropa
It is an exciting investigation, a reflection on the horrors of war, a thriller, an initiation
journey, interspersed with animation sequences of a frightening beauty.
Cécile Mury, Télérama
Chris the Swiss is one of the highlights of the Semaine de la Critique. Anja Kofmel
presents an animated documentary exceptional in its beauty, disturbing and terrifying
by its darkness.
Aurore Garot, Toute la culture
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