A naive girl's love for Switzerland is put to the test in this satiric comedy. Irina is a woman from Russia who all her life has always been fascinated by Switzerland and longs to live there some day, though her notion of Swiss life has more to do with Heidi and old movies set in the Alps than reality.
Acting
Elena Panova's wide-eyed chaos agent energy.
Direction
Schmid's operatic mockery of Swiss self-image.
Costume
Irina's escalating costumes as performance art.
Director
Daniel Schmid
Elena Panova
Irina
Geraldine Chaplin
Charlotte De
Martin Benrath
Alt-Divisionär Sturzenegger
Ulrich Noethen
Dr. Alfred Waldvogel
Hans Peter Korff
Nationalrat Tschanz
Ivan Desny
Rudolf Stauffacher
Stefan Kurt
Claude Bürki
Peter Simonischek
Fritz Ochsenbein
Iván Darvas
Direktor Vetterli
Marina Confalone
Benedetta Hösli
Joachim Tomaschewsky
Alt Bundesrat von Gunten
Carola Regnier
Fahrerin Invalidentaxi
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
The title references the 1812 retreat from Russia, a humiliating military disaster—here applied to one woman's invasion of Swiss privilege.
Geraldine Chaplin learned Russian phonetically for the role; her character's French-Swiss-Russian linguistic mess mirrors the film's own identity confusion.
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