(MENAFN- Swissinfo) Set against the quiet cruelty of wartime Switzerland, Silent Rebellion (À Bras-le-corps) is a haunting portrait of complicity, conformity, and a young girl's fight for agency in a society that demands silence. Marie-Elsa Sgualdo's powerful debut, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival, confronts the ghosts of neutrality, as she and lead actress Lila Gueneau tell Swissinfo. This content was published on October 5, 2025 - 10:00 7 minutes Christopher Small, in Venice

1943. Two girls pick mushrooms in a Swiss forest near the German border. They hear voices, the rustling of leaves.“We didn't cross the border, did we?” one girl whispers to the other in a panic. German soldiers arrive, accompanied by a ferociously barking German shepherd.

As they lay eyes on the girls, the men exchange words: they must have crossed into Switzerland and should avoid trouble. As the soldiers continue on in the other direction, the girls watch as a row of feeble Jewish prisoners are led through the bare trees, clutching their possessions and pondering what is sure to be a miserable fate back in Germany.

Swiss director Marie-Elsa Sgualdo's Silent Rebellion – known in French as À Bras-le-corps – is set in a world defined by total war: one collapsing into nihilistic destruction, in which such horrors can pass by at any moment, and the reaction of most ordinary people is to avert their eyes in shame and fear.

Marie-Elsa Sgualdo (left) directing Lila Gueneau in“Silent Rebellion”. Box Productions Complicity and conformity

Premiering to acclaim at the Venice Film Festival in the section Venice Spotlight, Sgualdo's elegant but unforgiving wartime portrait is one of Swiss complicity and conformity, and yet it's only obliquely about the Second World War.

Through the intimate story of a 15-year-old housekeeper, Emma (Lila Gueneau), raped by an upper-class friend of the family she works for, the film asks tough questions: how was it that, during those years, a society-wide acceptance that neutrality was the highest of virtues was able to survive even in the face of such obvious evils and injustice?

This extended from tacit participation in the Holocaust to the destruction of women's inner lives through unthinking adherence to Protestant conservatism.

“We wanted to speak about women that we know and who live around us – real human beings,” Sgualdo tells Swissinfo in Venice on the terrace of her hotel.

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“In developing this story, it was important to work from testimonies from the 1940s, understanding better how it was then. That was one of the reasons to set this film in the Switzerland [of that era]. Living in a neutral country during a devastating war, this complexity was echoed in [the character of] Emma. For her, being neutral is very difficult.”

After discovering she's pregnant, Emma first tries to pretend it's not happening and then, begrudgingly, turns to those around her. Uniformly, she's advised to conform: to accept what has happened, to become a mother, to marry first her rapist, who turns her down, and then a plain village boy who'll willingly accept the child as his own – none of which she wants. In other words, she is told by everyone to ignore an evident injustice.

Loss of values and empathy

As seen in the film, Emma is“somewhat ahead of her time”, Sgualdo notes.“We had originally thought she would be a nurse [in the story], but at that time, girls from the countryside couldn't even have a drink. It was out of the question she would be a nurse. For them, it was difficult even to dream, but some people had dreams they nevertheless tried to realise.”

In showing how stifling and destructive this social conformity was, particularly during the war years, Sgualdo is scathing about the culture of quiet acceptance and the rigid social systems that once led Swiss residents in the countryside to turn Jewish refugees back over to the Nazis – as well as to pressure girls like Emma into lives of miserable silence and domestic imprisonment.

“Silent Rebellion” is Marie-Elsa Sgualdo's first feature film, but her previous four short films were shown in over 50 film festivals around the world. Pierre Daendliker

“We in Switzerland lost a lot of values and our capacity for empathy. It was really like a switch,” Sgualdo says, reflecting on the period's relationship to the present.“Everything we can do today to stay alive and remain human is linked to that period. Sometimes we are very cold to tragic news – a mirror of the Europe of today, in a way.”

Silent Rebellion never spills over into melodrama; Sgualdo keeps a tight hold on the narrative through measured, meticulous editing. In its restraint, Sgualdo's style is more expressive of the film's ideas than wide-open sentimentalism.

“[À Bras-le-corps] means to take something in your arms and hold it close – whether a person, an idea, or a problem – and hold on until a solution is found,” she says.“Making this film was a long, difficult process. Sometimes I could not move forward. I had to defend Emma and her story from distractions. But as in the film, some things must be defended.”

Re-enacting a dark past

Lila Gueneau, the 20-year-old breakout French actor who plays Emma, describes immersing herself in the role under Sgualdo's close guidance.

“I didn't do historical research on my own – we simply talked a lot on set about every detail. Sgualdo explained how girls at this time were unable to express themselves as they wished,” she says.

In moments like the scene where she is raped, Gueneau is able to express an extraordinary range while keeping her body and the muscles of her face under tight control, suggesting someone for whom a vocabulary of outsize emotions has been long forced inside.

“It was intense. We did many takes, working very precisely to [help me] embody a woman from this period. And it was personal: understanding how somebody like me had to behave 80 years ago was enlightening, to say the least.”

“A girl like me, but 80 years ago”: Lila Gueneau in a scene from“Silent Rebellion”. Pierre Daendliker

The film is dark and unforgiving. In it, wartime Switzerland doesn't come off well. A priest, played by Grégoire Colin, breaks down at the altar when his calls for brotherhood and solidarity are booed and jeered. Everyone is destroyed by this forced silence.

“I'm no historian,” Sgualdo says.“But I learnt about the collaboration with Germany and the aftermath efforts to change public perception. The war was awful, and we're lucky not to have suffered directly what others did. That's a harsh struggle for us Swiss. At the same time, after the war, Switzerland became very rich, something we rarely talk about.”

Despite the weight of its themes, the film ends in a moment of radiant joy and community.“That final scene was very important,” Sgualdo explains.“Women celebrating, no men, no baby, just joy. Life is hard but we must stick together.”

The inspiration came from her grandmother, a watchmaker who hosted weekly neighbourhood gatherings despite hardship.“Music, joy, and happiness cannot be taken away. Totalitarians may try to crush society, but people resist with joy. We must fight for the right to remain alive.”

Edited by Virginie Mangin and Eduardo Simantob/gw

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