The Paris-based sales agency Urban Sales, led by Frédéric Corvez, has acquired the international sales rights to "Small Talk," a doc-fiction film about Switzerland's last surviving finishing school. The film will have its world premiere at the Locarno Film Festival, where it was announced as part of the Filmmakers of the Present strand, and the agency will bring it to market during the event. The acquisition matters as a fresh example of a distinctive, socially probing Swiss film attracting international backing ahead of a major festival launch.

Directed by Geneva-based Mateo Ybarra and produced by Madeline Robert — both prominent figures in the Swiss documentary scene through their roles at Visions du Réel — the film follows Charlie, played by French actress Hélène Bares, a woman of humble origins who enrols on a six-week course at the real-life Villa Pierrefeu above Lake Geneva. The €30,000 ($35,000) fee means her fellow students are drawn almost entirely from the global social elite, and much of the film observes how they gently coach her to fit in. Ybarra frames the school's "polishing" as a quiet form of violence operating through care, and uses the setting to interrogate gender, class and power. The Locarno Film Festival runs 5–15 August.