Johanna prefers to be alone. Outfitted in her round glasses, band t-shirts, and small jean shorts, she zips to her job—on the assembly line for a luxury watch brand—early in the morning with a small scooter-moped that’s more bicycle than motorcycle. She’s clearly a bit of an outsider, but Johanna pays no care. Quickly, we are introduced to her charmingly oddball world, spotlighted in docufictional form in Summer Drift (Virages, 2026), where the very memorable Johanna Schopfer plays herself in a semi-fictionalised story. This is the first feature film of Swiss filmmakers Céline Carridroit and Aline Suter, shot over the course of four summers in gorgeously grainy, vibrant 16 mm—as a world premiere in the 2026 Cannes ACID sidebar, it has become a festival standout.
After unearthing her old 1970 yellow Volkswagen Beetle from a cramped garage, we soon learn why Johanna left her beloved car to rust. Her love for the intricacy and tangibility of her precious vehicle is vibrantly brought to life with an all-immersive sound design by Xavier Lavorel (with the participation of several others) through a focus on the revving, creaks, and groans of the machinery. Through a series of comic strip-style illustrations that silently interrupt the story, Johanna has, herself, documented the transphobia and misogyny she faced while at meets, leading her to quit racing for good a few years ago. The stakes suddenly grow immensely high: bringing the car back to its former glory and racing it is an existential issue for Johanna. Beyond the sapphic energy innate in fixing up a car, this is our protagonist’s redemption arc.
The warm, effervescent queerness of Summer Drift can be felt at least three ways: its story and characters, a subversion of its urban context, and its form. First, we are privy to the ways in which Johanna navigates life in Geneva as a trans woman with partly Colombian heritage from her mother’s side. This becomes particularly apparent when, facing off with the turned-up noses of her coworkers, she makes up tall tales about her background, telling others she’s married to a tall Mexican man named Benicio with two kids from a former relationship, explaining that her breasts are so perky because she’s never given birth. In reality, she is married to her wife (Virginia Villegas Pasche), who is from Mexico—and they’ve been together for 15 years. Johanna presents these fake facts with such an awkward unflappability that one can’t help but giggle along with her as she does so, under her breath.
Second, Carridroit and Suter queer the traditional lens on Geneva, offering us an insider’s look at the more alternative side of the city. Beyond the shiny veneer of the designer goods, financial centre, and diplomatic tedium, the two lovingly capture Geneva—high-rises, roads, transit—with a visceral but welcoming texture. Through the composition of the city in frame (cinematography by Victor Zébo in collaboration with Aurore Toulon), along with its retro-esque colour grading, the film evokes scenes from Jacques Tati’s Playtime (1967) and Traffic (1971). Yet, instead of a critique of the rote apparatus of the urban, the filmmakers reappropriate the chaos and machinery of the city into something more cordial and less mechanical. We repeatedly return to Johanna’s home near La Fontaine des Tours de Carouge, a set of monumental concrete fountains from which life seems to spring, day and night.
Third, Summer Drift, is, as the title suggests, more about drift than directional travel. Although the film is linear, witnessing resolution is not the name of the game. The film divorces itself from a conventional look at a protagonist’s journey of success or failure, with more personal moments also occupying a significant portion of Johanna’s path to confronting her fears. Along for the ride is her exuberant best friend, Rocco (Rocco Senatore), a longtime Genevan from Naples, and the Portuguese independent comic book store owner, Leticia (Leticia Ramos), who together lend Johanna an even stronger connection to the city’s queer and alternative scene. The two keep her grounded and uplifted, rounding out her world that is already, admittedly, fully populated by her enchanting awkwardness. They are also a beautiful reminder of the multifaceted, multicultural nature of Geneva, all the way through the film’s end scene that documents a tradition of the city’s political activist and direct-action scenes.
It’s tough to find a film as of late that is able to bring together a variety of different perspectives on queerness in such a thematically complex yet concise manner. With its specificity of story, and one based heavily on Johanna’s own life events, Summer Drift conjures up a feeling of life as lived to its fullest without the forcefulness of conformity. It shines far beyond its component parts—no car wordplay intended—even with its small-scale means. If there’s one thing for certain, Carridroit and Suter have created queer cinema, par excellence.
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Watch a clip from the film here:
