UK Premiere
2024: A Swiss Odyssey 2024：瑞士漫游
Short film Competition 1
Year of Production 2025
Production Countries/Regions
Germany Switzerland China Ukraine
Duration 16 mins
Genres Drama Fantasy
Dialogue Language(s)
Swiss German German English
Subtitle Language(s) English
Director(s)
Florian Rudolph
Yueqi Wu
Kyrylo Alferie
Director’s Bio
We are FYK, formed by three filmmakers and friends in Berlin: Florian Rudolph (Switzerland), Yueqi Wu (China) and Kyrylo Alferiev (Ukraine).
Flo is studying directing in Film University Babelsberg. He focuses on documentary filmmaking and has a soft heart for mushrooms and beetles.
Kyrylo is a student from Kyiv National University of Theatre, Film and Television. He majors in fiction filmmaking and Gaspar Noé’s movie and makes really great Varenyky.
Yueqi is doing a PhD in the Shakespeare Institute in UK and using Shakespearean acting techniques to pretend that she understands German.
This is the second short film in our ‘Researcher’ docufiction trilogy. The first one ‘Apocalypse Later’ follows a Chinese researcher conducting location scouting for the construction of a post-apocalypse shelter in a Village in East Germany. ‘Apocalypse Later’ was selected by several international festivals, including Internationales Filmfest Bad Saarow am Scharmützelsee (Germany), London International Festival of Science Fiction and Fantastic Film (UK), FIRST Fantastic Film Festival (China)... It has also won the Best Short Film award in Daydream Fantasy Youth Film Festival (UK).
Synopsis
A Chinese researcher walks into a Swiss village with a documentary film crew. She is investigating the connection between the local Carnival tradition and extraterrestrials.
Festivals & Awards
2025 19th FIRST International Film Festival
2025 24th Neuchâtel International Fantastic Film Festival
2026 7th HiShorts! Film Festival
Scriptwriter(s)
Yueqi Wu
Producer(s)
Florian Rudolph, Yueqi Wu, Kyrylo Alferie
Executive Producer(s)
Florian Rudolph, Yueqi Wu, Kyrylo Alferie
Key Casts
Yueqi Wu
Curators’ note
A Chinese researcher travels to a small Swiss town to investigate a possible link between the local carnival and extraterrestrial life. What begins as a seemingly earnest inquiry quickly veers off course, as this “documentary” slips into playful deviation. Improvised conversations spread throughout the film, weaving together anthropological observation and absurd humour. Seen through Yueqi’s eyes, aliens are gently released from apocalyptic science fiction, turning out to be lonely beings in the universe, in search of connection.
Director’s Statement
This is the second short film in our ‘Researcher’ docufiction trilogy. We are exploring an experimental filmmaking that breaks the boundary between documentary and fiction. Except for the ending, the rest of the film is unscripted and is based on the real experiences of us three in the village. We as fictional characters with a fictional mission interact with real residents in real situations. Our film jumps between social experiments and huge jokes until the reality joins in.
While most sci-fi productions take sides between aliens as threat or as messiah, we propose a third option: a lonely soul sending out a party invitation to the universe. While the carnival is invented to accommodate our collective imagination of mysterious forces, aliens help us to discover our attitude to the unknown. In the end, they all dissolve into a Dionysian celebration.
