General Sutter

In Washington in June 1866, a year after the end of the American Civil War, the Swiss emigrant General Sutter sits for a portrait by Frank Buchser and recounts the story of his life. The film portrays Sutter as a controversial figure.

The cast includes:

• Hannes Schmidhauser as John August Sutter
• Wolfram Berger as Frank Buchser
• Werner Bachofen
• Rahman Deshongh
• Raul Subia

Key scenes from Sutter’s life were filmed on location in the United States and Switzerland. The film was made in collaboration with historians in California and Switzerland.

John August Sutter, the subject of the film, was associated with the founding of California and the California gold rush. In recent years, his legacy has been reassessed because of his role in slavery and violence against Indigenous people.

The film had a pre-premiere in Basel on 19 August 1999. An SRF report on the event said that the film's idealized portrayal raised questions about the Sutter myth. It opened in German-speaking Switzerland on 23 April 2000 and recorded 899 admissions, all in German-speaking Switzerland.

The film premiered in August 1999 and had festival screenings including the 52nd Locarno Film Festival in 1999 and the Solothurner Filmtage in 2000.