The films of Swiss director Alain Tanner: ‘tailor-made for the age of Trump’

The work of the Swiss filmmaker Alain Tanner (1929-2022) is being rediscovered thanks to the restoration efforts of the Cinémathèque Suisse. Film critic Cici Peng reflects on how Tanner’s oeuvre is still relevant today. At the 77th Locarno Film Festival’s packed screening of Tanner’s Jonah Who Will Be 25 in the Year 2000 (1976), the Mexican director Alfonso Cuarón spoke about the enduring effect Tanner’s films left on him as a young film student – especially Jonah, with its profound discussion on the possibility of political resistance: not in grand gestures, but in small everyday actions. Cuarón named his first son Jonah after the film’s titular figure and speaks about a film he wrote, closely modelled on Tanner’s masterpiece, but was never made. Yet, he insists it was the most joyful film to write. The restoration of Tanner’s films by the Swiss Film Archives (Cinémathèque) comes at a particularly prescient time. In 2017 the film critic John Powers wrote in Vogue that “Alain ...