Dakota Johnson to Receive Prestigious Golden Eye Honor at Zurich Film Festival

Dakota Johnson will open this year’s 21st Zurich Film Festival where she will receive the Golden Eye honors for “her role in Splitsville and her outstanding career”.

Johnson will present the relationship comedy film Splitsville with director, actor and producer Michael Angelo Covino on Opening Night — a project she not only stars in but also produced. Additionally, she will offer insights into her work at a ZFF Masters conversation.

Dakota Johnson achieved international fame in 2015 with the role of Anastasia Steele in the blockbuster trilogy Fifty Shades of Grey, for which she received the People’s Choice Award. Since then, she has appeared in works ranging from arthouse cinema to major international productions. Under the direction of Luca Guadagnino, she starred in Bigger Splash (2015) and Suspiria (2018). She starred alongside Johnny Depp in Black Mass (2015), impressed under Maggie Gyllenhaal’s direction in The Lost Daughter (2021), and captivated audiences in Cha Cha Real Smooth (2022), which won the Audience Award at Sundance.

In the new film Splitsville by Michael Angelo Covino, Dakota Johnson plays the character Julie. When her friend Ashley (Adria Arjona) tells her husband Carey (Kyle Marvin) that she wants a divorce, he seeks comfort from Julie and Paul (Michael Angelo Covino). The couple shares their secret to a happy marriage: an open relationship. But when Carey and Julie cross the line, everything spirals into utter chaos. Splitsville is a fast-paced indie comedy full of absurd twists and subtle humor, charmingly spotlighting the pitfalls of modern love. A dream of an opening film!

“Dakota Johnson is one of the most fascinating actresses in modern cinema. She gives her characters great credibility through her honesty, and you can always sense how much she cares for them. She impresses with her subtle expressiveness, uncompromising choice of roles, and her ability to embody both audience favorites and demanding character studies,” says Christian Jungen, Festival Director of the Zurich Film Festival. “The fact that she is opening our festival and presenting the comedy Splitsville, which she also produced through her company TeaTime Pictures, is a great honor and a wonderful gift to the Zurich audience.”