News

Jen Ries receives Chur Work Grant 2025

22. July 2025

The city of Chur is awarding the 2025 work grant in the amount of CHF 10,000 to Jen Ries. She will use the contribution to develop a screenplay for Jörg Schneider's fairy tale "The Magic Organ".

Since 2024, the City of Chur's work grant has been open to all genres. The city of Chur not only wants to support authors, composers and screenwriters, but also visual artists, musicians and theater and dance professionals in their creative processes.

A total of 15 applications from all disciplines were submitted for this year's work grant. At the end of June, the city council decided to award the 2025 work grant to director and author Jen Ries, who lives in Chur. As part of the work grant, Ries will be working on a screenplay for Jörg Schneider's fairy tale "The Magic Organ", which could later be used as the basis for a Swiss children's film.

"'The Magic Organ' has been my favorite fairy tale since my childhood and touches me with themes such as social exclusion, the power of friendship and the healing effect of music - even today," says the author. She sees her work as a "cultural contribution rooted in the rich Swiss storytelling tradition."

Swiss author and director Jen Ries, born in 1989, grew up in Basel and made a name for herself as a freelance photographer for 15 years. She has traveled the world for national and international clients - always with an eye for characters and their stories. This visual curiosity led her to film. Since 2018, she has been working for the production company schau. in Chur as a director, writer and art director. As co-author, she wrote the screenplay for both seasons of the RTR series "L'Ultim Rumantsch" and was recently responsible for the postcard films for the Eurovision Song Contest 2025 as creative director.

Note: This text was translated by machine translation software and not by a human translator. It may contain translation errors.