A soundtrack with picture
Anka Schmid's film «Melodie» uses very different people to show the power and happiness that can be found in singing.
There are movies that you see. And there are movies that you hear. Anka Schmid's latest work Melody clearly belongs to the second category. «A soundtrack with a picture», you could also call it. First screened in the Sounds category at the Zurich Film Festival on September 28, 2025, and in regular cinemas from March 2026, it is much more than a music documentary: it is a poetic mosaic about how singing can become a lifeline, ritual, resistance, consolation and a sense of belonging.
The protagonists are as diverse as their voices. There is the Black woman Joanna Kora, who transforms her experiences from the Black Lives Matter movement into song and, as a music teacher and lead singer in the Go and Sing choir, inspires hope and enthusiasm with every note. The Appenzell dairymaid who protects not only her cows, but also herself, night after night with the Alpine blessing. The hip-hopper from Ticino, torn between anger at the lack of support for alternative youth culture and her deep roots in her homeland. The Kurd, whose voice was not taken away by seven years in prison and who now sings songs to his young daughter in Switzerland so that she, as a Kurd without a country, does not remain without culture. And the last death singer on a Greek island who, after the loss of her husband, finds support and purpose in life through song alone - and asks the anxious question: Who will sing her lament when she herself is no more?
Singing is more than sound
Schmid tells these stories without pathos, carried by the music and the faces of the singers. The camera captures the radiance, the tiredness, the passion. But the real centerpiece is the soundtrack. Sound engineer Reto Stamm largely dispenses with electronic distortion, conveying the voices pure, undistorted, in all their physicality. You can hear pauses in breathing, friction, imperfections - and that is precisely what makes the film so real.
At the end, when young women from the women's strike fill the square singing and drumming, the circle closes: singing is more than just sound. It overcomes boundaries, brings strangers closer together than any argument. Schmid's film shows that we can meet in the joy of singing, regardless of origin, language or skin color. A documentary that not only stays in the ear, but also in the heart.
Melody. Anka Schmid, Written and directed by. Frenetic-Films. In cinemas from March 5, 2026.
