Golden Years

2023 Berlin & Beyond Film Festival Audience Award Best Feature Film

Statement by Director Barbara Kulcsar: “I feel very honoured and am beyond happy to recieve this award. Coming from the audience it is especially fulfilling to me, as the audience is the main reason for me to make films. Sharing the story and the experiences that the characters have, sharing moments of truth and pain, but also of laughter and joy: That, for me, is the power of cinema. Making ‘Golden Years’ was from it’s beginning a very joyful experience so I would like to share this award with all the people being involved in it’s making, especially with the main actors Esther Gemsch and Stefan Kurt, the screenwriter Petra Volpe and the producers Lukas Hobi and Reto Schärli. Thank you so much!”

In Person at the Festival: Petra Volpe, Screenwriter

Alice and Peter are celebrating their retirement and are looking forward to a new phase in their lives. Then Alice finds out that her best friend Magalie, who dies completely unexpectedly, had been having an affair in France for 15 years. The confrontation with the finiteness of life plunges Peter into an existential crisis: to the great chagrin of Alice, who is a bon vivant, he becomes a total health fanatic. When Peter invites Heinz, Magalie’s widowed husband, to join him on a cruise, which Alice hopes will breathe new life into a marriage, their harmonious retirement is over.

Presented in collaboration with the Consulate General of Switzerland in San Francisco
US Distributor: Music Box Films, Chicago