Gianna Molinari and Robin Nidecker
Photo: Christoph Oeschger
Gianna Molinari, born in Basel in 1988, lives in Zurich. She studied literary writing at the Swiss Literature Institute in Biel and modern German literature at the University of Lausanne. She is co-founder of the art action group ‘Literatur für das, was passiert’ (Literature for what happens) and the authors' collective “Rauf”. Her first novel, Hier ist noch alles möglich (Here, Everything is Still Possible), was published by Aufbau Verlag in 2018. It won the Robert Walser Prize and the Clemens Brentano Prize and was nominated for the German and Swiss Book Prizes in 2018. Her second novel, Hinter der Hecke die Welt (Behind the Hedge, the World), was published by Aufbau Verlag in 2023.
Photo: Christian Knörr
Robin Nidecker was born in Basel in 1992. In 2016, he completed his film studies at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts – Design & Art. Since then, he has been working as an independent director and video artist for film and stage. Since 2014, he has worked as a live cameraman and video designer at Theater Basel, Schauspielhaus Zürich, Maxim Gorki Theater in Berlin and the Thalia Theater in Hamburg. His debut short film, co-written with Denis Wagner, premiered at the Gässli Film Festival 2023 in Basel, where he was nominated for ‘SRG - Best Director’ for two other works. He was named ‘Video Artist of the Year’ by the trade magazine ‘Theater heute’ for his cinematography in ‘Dämonen’ directed by Sebastian Nübling and Boris Nikitin at Theater Basel. As a founding member of ‘collective echo,’ he realized his first co-directed work for the stage, ‘Tales of the Club,’ which premiered in April 2024 at the Kaserne Basel. In his projects, he searches for the fantastic in everyday life and attempts to playfully expand and re-examine conventions and genre boundaries.
Film adaptation «Hinter der Hecke die Welt»
A village is afraid of disappearing. So it takes measures: the hedge, popular with tourists, is cherished and cared for, and the village coffers are regularly checked. Above all, however, they take care of Pina and Lobo, because children are the future of the village. But Pina and Lobo have not grown for a long time. While the village waits for the children to grow, Pina's mother watches the ice melt and borders shift in the Arctic.
In the Hedge project, we are developing possible approaches and ideas for a film adaptation of the novel ‘Hinter der Hecke die Welt’ (Behind the Hedge, the World) and are working on an exposé for a live-action feature film. We are interested, for example, in the complexity and the question of how the fragmentary nature of the text can be translated into film, how the surreal elements can be incorporated and what happens on a linguistic level with the dialogues and indirect speech.
