The 2026 Zurich Film Festival is officially underway with a Golden Eye Award bestowed upon the ever-suave Tom Hiddleston.
The event has opened with the European premiere of Hiddleston’s latest feature, Tenzing, which co-stars Willem Dafoe. It follows the true story of Nepalese-Indian Sherpa Tenzing Norgay (played by Genden Phuntsok), a gifted mountaineer who, together with New Zealand alpinist Edmund Hillary (Hiddleston), became the first person to reach the summit of Mount Everest in 1953. Dafoe plays Colonel John Hunt, the leader of the British expedition team. Thinley Lhamo plays Tenzing’s wife Dawa, and Caitríona Balfe co-stars as expedition secretary Jill Henderson.
Both Dafoe and director-writer Jennifer Peedom joined Hiddleston for the screening. The British star was photographed collecting the honor in the Swiss city on Thursday night, dressed —as always —pretty impeccably. He was recognized for his iconic role as Loki in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, as well as standout performances in the likes of The Night Manager, War Horse and Midnight in Paris, and an impressive stage career too.
Speaking at a sit-down session ahead of the ceremony, Hiddleston reflected on the “larger than life” experience of being a part of the MCU. “The difference [with Marvel] was in the scale of the resources, the size of the crews, the size of the sets. It was so larger than life,” he said about joining one of the most successful franchises in film history. He described his early memories of playing the character in 2011’s Thor as “a very vivid, happy, immediate, fast friendship with Chris Hemsworth [playing Thor] that had both of us feeling like we were the two luckiest guys in the world.”
He continued about the friendship with his on-screen brother: “We were immediately bonded. It was a shared excitement about being invited to make a film like this. Marvel Studios had made one film at that time —which was Iron Man, which we both loved —and we were being directed by Kenneth Branagh, Anthony Hopkins was playing our father, Rene Russo was playing our mother, and we had extraordinary resources. We had an amazing, brilliant creative stunt department where we would train for sequences of dizzying choreography. We both loved movement and these opportunities.”
Hiddleston remained professionally tight-lipped about the hotly anticipated Avengers: Doomsday, only uttering the unrevealing words: “It is coming.”
On making Apple’s Everest drama Tenzing, Hiddleston admitted that he has been “compelled” by the globe’s tallest mountain for as long as he can remember. “What moved me so much about Jen’s screenplay and the premise and the promise of her film, which she sent to me three years ago with a beautiful letter, was that it was to put Tenzing Norgay at the center of his own story, to reframe that narrative from a different perspective and bring him into the foreground.”
Hiddleston said that he loved how the film reveals a spiritual connection between Norgay and the mountain: “Not a mountain to be conquered,” he said, “but a goddess to be revered, a mother into whose lap he might climb. I think Hillary was really open to that depth of feeling,” said the star. “They did this extraordinary thing. […] They achieved the impossible, like stepping on the moon. After that, their lives were changed forever; summiting Everest became possible, and thousands and thousands of people have done it since.”
The Hollywood Reporter‘s Angie Han wrote in her review of Tenzing out of Telluride: “It’s a subtle but lovely reframing of Norgay and Hillary’s historic climb, from an act of conquest to one of pure, spiritual love. But it’s not quite enough to free Tenzing as a whole from the usual sturdy-but-staid biopic formula. With its good-hearted heroes and pretty (but rarely breathtaking) landscapes, the Apple release is plenty likable, but also plenty forgettable.
The 22nd Zurich Film Festival runs Sept. 24-Oct. 4, and will also honor John Turturro and Julianne Moore with their respective Golden Eye and Golden Icon awards.
The fest’s feature film competition jury will be presided over by James Bond director Cary Joji Fukunaga, while filmmaker Sine Plambech will head up the documentary competition jury. Among the starry galas are Club Kid, Bunker, Ink, I Play Rocky and Possible Love.