À bras le corps (Silent Rebellion)

Emma, a 15-year-old girl defies her rural and Protestant community while confronting the moral hypocrisy of her village and the spectre of World War II.

Born in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland, Marie-Elsa Sgualdo earned a Bachelor’s degree in directing from HEAD and a Master’s degree in screenwriting from INSAS. She directed her first fiction short film Vas-y je t’aime in 2009, which was presented at Locarno, and screened at approximately ten other festivals, winning the Best Student Film Award at the Schweizer Jugendfilmtage. In 2010, she followed up with Bam Tchak, which received the Swiss Award at the Bern Short Film Festival. She then directed On the Beach (2012), which was selected at over forty festivals and received multiple awards, including the Bayard d’Or for Best Short Film at the Namur International Francophone Film Festival. Her next short film, Man kann nicht Alles auf einmal tun, aber man kann alles auf einmal lassen, an autofiction she made in 2013 using archival footage, had its world premiere at the Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes and was selected at around fifty festivals.

Alongside her work as a director, Marie-Elsa teaches film and spent several years as a teaching assistant in the ECAL/HEAD Master's program in cinema. She is also a co-founder of the Terrain Vague collective, which brings together several young filmmakers from French-speaking Switzerland.

– With the collaboration of  Embajada de Suiza.

Year of Production: 2025

Time: 98’

Country: Switzerland, France

Language: French. Original version with Spanish subtitles

Director: Marie-Elsa Sgualdo

Cast:  Lila Gueneau, Grégoire Colin, Thomas Doret, Aurélia Petit

Production: Elena Tatti, Nicolas Wittwer

Script: Nadine Lamari, Marie-Elsa Sgualdo

Director of Photography: Benoit Dervaux

Production Companies:  Bex Productions, Hélicotronc, Offshore

International Sales: Salaud Morisset

Distribution: Outside the Box

Selected at the Venice Festival and at the Seville Festival.

Premiere in Madrid