Directing
Annette Frei Berthoud grew up in Härkingen. She studied history and ethnology at the University of Zurich from 1972. In 1978, she began working as a screenwriter and TV producer for Swiss television. In 1984, she married journalist and translator Jean Michel Berthoud. The couple have two children.
Her licentiate thesis at the University of Zurich dealt with the labor movement and women in Switzerland at the turn of the century. In connection with her research, she met the socialist women's rights activist Anny Klawa-Morf. This encounter led to the 1982 documentary film "Ich ha nie ufgä" (I never gave up), which was broadcast on Swiss television, and the book "Die Welt ist mein Haus. Das Leben der Anny Klawa-Morf" (The World is My Home: The Life of Anny Klawa-Morf), which was published by Limmat Verlag in 1991.
Annette Frei Berthoud followed her licentiate with a doctoral program. Her dissertation, entitled "Rote Patriarchen. Arbeiterbewegung und Frauenemanzipation in der Schweiz um 1900" (Red Patriarchs: The Labor Movement and Women's Emancipation in Switzerland around 1900), in which she explored the extent to which socialists at the beginning of the 20th century had championed women's rights and what place women had been assigned in the labor movement, was published in 1987. She completed her doctoral studies in 1988 with the title Dr. phil.
Since 1993, she has been working as a screenwriter and producer for NZZ Format, the television program of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, for which she has made more than 100 films. In 2012, she founded Berthoud Media GmbH, a film production company, where she works with her son and her husband Jean Michel Berthoud.
