This year Pink Apple will grant the «Pink Apple Award» for the first time in history. This cash prize of 3000 Swiss Francs will also be awarded to a filmmaker for his or her complete oeuvre in coming years. This year’s prize goes to Lionel Baier from the French speaking region of Switzerland, to whom we will dedicate a homage. Born in Lausanne in 1975, he has been responsible for the programme of the Cinéma Rex in Aubonne since 1992.

In 1999 he shot his first short film, «Mignon à croquer». Since 2002, Baier has been head of the film department at ECAL in Lausanne. The autodidact appears in most of his films as narrator, as fictional figure or as himself, which gives his works an incomparable touch. References to his personal experiences can particularly be detected in his early gay films. All three of the films shown in the homage - «La parade» (2002), «Garçon stupide» (2004) and «Comme des voleurs» (2006) – function similarly.

The documentary «La parade» about the first Gay Pride in Sion won the Pink Apple Audience Award in 2002 and made Baier famous in Switzerland. With his portrait about Marianne Bruchez, he actively contributed to equal rights for homosexuals in Switzerland, and also created an important contemporary document. In «Garçon stupide», by contrast, he focused on a socio-cultural phenomenon that every digitally connected gay man today seems to take for granted: the presence of dating platforms and the search for quick sex online. Baier portraits the young Loïc on his way to accepting himself, and thus his film is more up-to-date than ever.