INTIMACY COORDINATORS SWITZERLAND
WHAT IS AN INTIMACY COORDINATOR?
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Intimacy coordinators are specialists in the performative and simulated portrayal of intimacy; they are experts in risk assessment, consent, movement and choreography, and work creatively. Intimacy coordination disrupts power dynamics on set and provides specialist guidance for intimate scenes, supporting and developing these scenes throughout the entire production process of an audiovisual project, from pre-production to post-production.
Read more about what Intimacy Coordinators
do and don't do, and what the foundations of intimacy work for stage and screen consist of.
WHO WE ARE
At IC Switzerland we are experts at coordinating intimate scenes. All our team members have years of training and experience and hold certificates from SAG-AFTRA accredited training programmes. We work hard to continue our education in order to work to the highest international standards and hope to make intimacy coordination and its many benefits more widely known in Switzerland.
Désirée Wenger (she/her)
Intimacy coordinator
Désirée is a director, writer, theatre educator, and Intimacy Coordinator. She studied French and English literature and linguistics at the Universities of Zurich and Lausanne, and holds a Master of Arts in Theater Directing from Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts in London, completed in 2021, where she wrote her thesis about Intimacy Direction for Intimate Violence. After her studies, she worked as assistant director at Schauspiel Bern, and as a choreographer and theatre teacher at KinderJugendTheater in Zurich, while training as an intimacy coordinator with Theatrical Intimacy Education (TIE), Principal Intimacy Professionals (PIP), National Society of Intimacy Professionals (NSIP) and Intimacy Directors and Coordinators Professionals (IDC). Since 2023 she is under the mentorship of Michela Carattini (KIS) and has completed her SAG-AFTRA accredited training programme with Key Intimate Scenes (KIS). Her latest work as IC includes the Swiss-British co-production Butterfly Stroke (feature, Turnus Films and Zephyr Films) and the world premiere of the play Kill Your Darlings (Blueprint Masquerades).
Emma Murray (she/her)
Intimacy coordinator
Emma is a New Zealand performer and choreographer living in Bern, Switzerland. After graduating from the New Zealand School of Dance in 1992 she danced as a soloist with the Royal New Zealand Ballet Company, before moving to Europe in 1997. She danced with Konzert Theater Bern for 8 years, leaving in 2008 to establish herself as a Swiss based choreographer and performer. She was appointed Associated Artist at the Dampfzentrale Bern from 2013-2015 where her work is regularly co-produced. Since 2013, she has been the recipient of support from the City of Bern and ProHelvetia Switzerland. In 2020, she obtained a Masters Degree at the University of the Arts in Bern, Switzerland in Contemporary Art practice. From 2023 until 2025, she has been training as an intimacy coodrinator with Theatrical Intimacy Education (TIE) and IDC Professionals, before completing her sag-aftra accredited training programme with IPA.
Michela Carattini (she/her)
Intimacy coordinator and Head Trainer, Key Intimate Scenes
Michela Carattini is a SAG-AFTRA-accredited intimacy coordinator, and Head Trainer at Intimacy Coordinators Switzerland (IC Switzerland) and Key Intimate Scenes (KIS) Australia. Her intimacy coordination credits include the Amazon hit series NINE PERFECT STRANGERS (starring Nicole Kidman, Tiffany Boone, Melissa McCarthy, Michael Shannon and Samara Weaving), the Berlinale-selected SBS hit series WHILE THE MEN ARE AWAY (starring Michela De Rossi and Gemma Ward), the critically acclaimed films BLAZE (starring Simon Baker and Yael Stone) and BIRDEATER (starring Shabana Azeez), and she has overseen intimacy direction for celebrated stage productions such as WHITEFELLA YELLA TREE and for the ROYAL NEW ZEALAND BALLET.
She was part of the team which drafted Australia’s National Intimacy Guidelines, and is a consultant on the Austrian National Intimacy Guidelines and the Swiss National Intimacy Guidelines. She has provided advanced training and instruction for a number of international conferences and curricula, including at the inaugural International Conference for Intimacy Coordination (ICIC) at Berlinale, for the Bundesverein Intimitätskoordination & Kampfchoreografie (BIK), the Australian Film & Television Radio School (AFTRS) and the Spanish-language curriculum for Intimact Spain for trainees in Latin America and Spain. Michela co-founded the Arabic Intimacy Coordination Resource Group (AICRG), the Australasian Intimacy Coordination Network (AICN), and developed an Australia-specific, Indigenous-led IC training curriculum - currently one of the three SAG-AFTRA accredited intimacy coordinator training programs outside of North America and the UK. She has worked in the screen and stage industries for three decades, with a focus on cultural competence and mental health. She received her BA in Psychology from Columbia University and her Masters in Criminology from Sydney University Law School, working for just under a decade across three countries as a caseworker and counselor specializing in violence against the less powerful and culturally and linguistically diverse clients.
