Swiss silence, wartime shame, and one girl’s fight against patriarchy

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. 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 ...