Fanny Desarzens and Laura Göncy
Photo: Noémi Desarzens
Fanny Desarzens was born on a hot Friday, 13 August 1993. She has lived in Lausanne for ten years but grew up in the countryside in the canton of Vaud. As a child, she spent most of her summer holidays in the mountains. In 2018, Fanny completed her bachelor's degree in fine arts at the HEAD in Geneva. After this experience in Geneva, she threw herself into literary work. Galel, her first book, received a Swiss Literature Prize in 2023 and the Terra nova Prize from the Schiller Foundation. Chesa Seraina, her second book, received the Prix Ève from the Académie Romande. Her next novel, Ce qu'il reste de tout ça, will be published in August 2024. Fanny Desarzens is currently working on various texts and projects, as well as her fourth novel.
Photo: Mathilda Olmi
Laura Gönczy, born in 1994 in New York (USA). Freelance director with Swiss and Italian citizenship, who grew up in Lausanne (Switzerland). She studied medicine in Lausanne (Bachelor's degree, 2015) and then in Bern (Master's degree, 2019). At the same time, she writes fictional short stories and develops video projects in the multidisciplinary art collective MALM and in the association Huit Pouces. Since 2021, she has been living between Berlin and Lausanne, devoting herself to screenwriting and directing feature films, while working as an editor and assistant director. Film adaptation ‘Chesa Seraina’
Film adaptation «Chesa Seraina»
It is autumn. Elena feels confined in her world, between her monotonous job in a cinema, her small studio and the feeling that she has achieved nothing in life. One evening, she turns on the film projector and the first image leaves her frozen. The burning house overwhelms Elena so much that she leaves the cinema. She sets off for the village of her childhood and throws herself headlong into a crazy project: renovating her house, which burned down when she was little.
Chesa Seraina is a feature film project created at DoubleFilm and participated in the Paradiesli artist residency (P.AiR.S). This collaboration between author Fanny Desarzens and filmmaker Laura Gönczy is a free adaptation that conveys the atmosphere and emotional journey of the book while creating a new work adapted to the medium.
In ‘Chesa Seraina’, Elena immerses herself in the material to create a new place, a new space of possibilities. With physical effort, she tries to create something meaningful while repairing what the flames have destroyed.
