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Ricky is released from a mental hospital, and knows exactly what he wants to do. He hunts down Marina, a porn film star he once had sex with, and tries to convince her to be his wife. She is a bit reluctant, so he ties her up. Will this approach endear him to her?

Lesya has committed a crime of passion which brings her a seven-year sentence in one of Odessa’s women’s correctional facilities. She has just given birth to her first child, and now she is entering a world populated only by women: inmates, nurses and wardens, women of all ages, wives and widows, daughters, sisters, pregnant women, and women with children too. If not for the color of the uniform, it would sometimes be hard to tell who is who.

Paris, in the early 1990s: a group of young activists is desperately tied to finding the cure against an unknown lethal disease. They target the pharmaceutical labs that are retaining potential cures, and multiply direct actions, with the hope of saving their lives as well as the ones of future generations.

Chile, 1976. Carmen heads off to her beach house to supervise its renovation. Her husband, children and grandchildren come back and forth during the winter vacation. When the family priest asks her to take care of a young man he is sheltering in secret, Carmen steps onto unexplored territories, away from the quiet life she is used to.

Cocó is eight years old and no longer wants to be called by her birth name, Aitor. But on summer vacation with her family in the Basque country, her wish is ignored by almost everyone, especially her traditional grandmother. Her mother Ane tries to be there for her child despite her own challenges, but Cocó only really is met with understanding by her unwavering great-aunt, who is a beekeeper. This gives Cocó the self-confidence she needs to stand up for her own identity and its acceptance. "20'000 especies de abejas" is a touching feature film debut in which women from three generations deal with questions of identity. Director Estibaliz Urresola Solaguren manages to show the complexity of family and identity in a sensitive way. The film is carried by Sofía Otero, who was awarded the Silver Bear for Best Actress at this year's Berlinale for her portrayal of Cocó.

On the way from Berlin to Portugal in her rusty '303' camper van, young biology student Jule picks up hitchhiker Jan. While having intense conversations about the society, the world and the nature of man, they try not to fall in love.

In the week leading up to their 45th wedding anniversary, the Mercers’ get news that causes a crisis in their marriage. The remains of a woman have been found in the Swiss Alps; the body is Katya, Geoff’s former girlfriend, who died in an accident on the glacier 50 years ago. Geoff’s wife Kate is unnerved as she realises that her husband still clings to memories of the dead woman, worrying that she was never more than “second choice”. When Kate looks through stuff Geoff has stored in the attic, she discovers his secret … Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay deliver confident performances in this story of how a crack in faraway, seemingly permanent ice can shatter the tectonics of a marriage that appears completely intact on the surface. With few words and almost imperceptible gestures, they reveal Kate and Geoff standing at the edge of an abyss. The actors’ nuanced portrayals of an ageing couple questioning a relationship that has lasted almost half a century, and struggling to reassure themselves of its future, were rewarded with Silver Bears for acting at the 2015 Berlin International Film Festival.

The Odd-Job Men tells the story of a week in the life of Moha, Valero and Pep – workers in a small plumbing and electricity company in the outskirts of Barcelona: they are the guys who enter your home and fix what's broken. Moha, the youngest, is on a one-week trial period with the company. He is shy but does surprisingly well with customers. Moha is set to replace Pep, who is about to retire. However, Valero is not at all comfortable with Pep retiring. He doubts Moha has what it takes, or that customers will accept a Moroccan worker. Maybe six days are not enough to make somebody change, to make him overcome his prejudices. Maybe it's not enough time to make a new friend. But it's possibly enough to discover that we have to live together: one small step for a plumber, but a giant leap for mankind. «Ultimately, «6 Días en Barcelona» is a film that addresses one of the most pressing challenges of our time: how we can understand each other.» - Neus Ballús, director of this profound comedy.

A flight from Berlin to Paris. Business as usual in the cockpit of an Airbus A319 before take-off. Co-pilot Tobias Ellis (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) expertly goes through the routine flight preparations. The take-off is smooth as usual. But then, suddenly, screams can be heard from the cabin. A group of men, the 18-year-old Vedat amongst them, try to enter the cockpit. A fight between crew and terrorists ensues, and a psychological struggle between saving individual lives and preventing even greater harm is under way. The cockpit door becomes a battle zone and Tobias finds himself in the position of having to decide between life and death... A gripping chamber play that takes place in the cockpit of an airplane and celebrated its premiere at the 2019 Locarno Film Festival.

Two happy families, a quiet beach and a house in the hills above the Adriatic Sea. It could be so perfect. But when teenager Finn has a breakdown it brings turmoil not only to the friendship between the families but also to the relationship between his parents Helena and Adam. In his second film, Swiss director Samuel Perriard portrays the gradual transformation of a couple, sensitively narrated and with strong atmospheric images - impressively embodied by Julia Jentsch and Florian Lukas. Eight days in August that change everything, and one last summer before a new chapter is opened.

Bigna, a twenty-eight-year-old scientist, is used to having everything under control, but her sex life is enshrouded in secrecy. Thirty-three-year-old Frank searches for meaning in a haze of drugs and feeds on other people’s affection. Two opposites who meet by chance and become obsessively entwined in a passionate affair.

Jonathan Katz strongly believes that candidate Bernie Sanders is the only hope for the United States of America threatened by Donald Trump. Sanders is a voice outside the establishment and has put new values and priorities into his political agenda. Pushed forward by his enthusiasm, Jonathan joins the thousands of women and men that rally around the caucuses supporting Senator Sanders.

In the Guerrasio family Chiara, her sisters and their parents maintain a harmonious relationship. The family, relatives and friends throw a lavish party for the oldest sister's 18th birthday, but when Chiara sees her father, Claudio, and her cousins leave the party abruptly in a black car, the 15-year-old becomes suspicious. When he is still not home the next morning and she gets no answers to her questions, the bright teenager begins her own investigation. Her search takes her into the dark underbelly of the Calabrian mafia where she faces a momentous decision that will decide her own future. A film told in captivating, nocturnal images by director Jonas Carpignano.

Pio is growing up in a coastal town in southern Italy amongst the badly respected Romany community which he is part of, local Italians and African refugees. When his father and brother are arrested, the 14-year-old finds himself in search of a new role model. Although Ayiva, a migrant from Burkina Faso, does not exactly conform to the racist views of Pio’s family, they soon become best friends, and Pio finds a new identification figure in him. Two years after his refugee drama MEDITERRANEA, Jonas Carpignano takes us back to his real-life home of Gioia Tauro where he captures how peripheral groups fight their ground with his skilfully animated camerawork and documentary precision. A CIAMBRA is a charming portrait of one of many Italian youths.

An orange Chevrolet Impala drives across a cemetery towards an abandoned shipwreck in the middle of a desert landscape. It is the 22nd of January, 1965. The day before, the Iranian prime minister was shot dead in front of the parliament building. Inside the wreck, a banished political prisoner has hung himself. The walls are covered in diary entries, literary quotes and strange symbols. Can they help Police Inspector Babak Hafizi in his investigations? Will they shed any light on why there is always an earthquake whenever somebody is buried in this desert cemetery? Assisted by a sound engineer and a geologist, Hafizi begins his investigations on the ancient island of Qeshm in the Persian Gulf. Fifty years later, their entire evidence, along with intelligence tape recordings, are found in a box, the contents of which attest to the fact that the inspector and his colleagues were arrested. But why? In his new film, Mani Haghighi once again creates a grotesquely absurd experimental set-up. His playful reenactment of mysterious events revolves around a real-life episode - but also imagines a truth of its own.

In the spring of 1945 as Nazi Germany collapses, Swiss ambassador Heinrich Zwygart flees bombed-out Berlin after serving eight years in the capital of the Reich. This is the end of a dreadful mandate, during which he had to make fatal compromises to preserve the neutrality and security of his country. While he tries to reunite with his estranged family in his unscathed home country, the arrival of peace puts Zwygart in a delicate position. How could the Swiss policy, which was more than favorable to Germany, be justified at a time when the Allies and the Russians are liberating Europe and question the behavior of the Swiss Government during the war? For Switzerland to end on the winning side after the war, someone will have to pay. Haunted by his past, struggling to secure a future, but driven by his ambition Zwygart feels the trap closing in on him. He made it through the war, but will he survive peace? Lead Michael Neuenschwander was nominated for Best Actor at the 2023 Swiss Film Awards.

Messies – a balancing act between ingenuity and overload. Are you master of chaos or is chaos master of you? The film offers a multifaceted insight into the everyday lives of four messies. We embark on a trip through their jam-packed treasure chambers, discover their ingenious inventions, their dangerous tinkering and have a look around in their vast archives. We witness the conflicts they have with their relatives, neighbours and institutions that result from their being different. An intimate view of an irritating yet fascinating phenomenon.

Rahim is in prison because of a debt he was unable to repay. During a two-day leave, he tries to convince his creditor to withdraw his complaint against the payment of part of the sum. But things don't go as planned.

First presented and highly debated at the 1980 Venice Film Festival, this film became the legacy of the late Glauber Rocha, who noted: "A idade da terra (The Age of the Earth) is the decomposition of the narrative sequence without losing the infrastructural discourse that is supposed to materialize the most representative signs of the Third World. The film offers a symphony of images and sound or is an anti-symphony that puts the essential problems into the background. This film can only be classified in this way: He is my portrait next to the portrait of Brazil." As someone writes on Imdb, the film is not ideal for an audience that is afraid of experimental and controversial works. Anyone who appreciates Glauber Rocha and his radicalism understand this film as a single rebellion that was to become Glauber Rocha's last rebellion: The committed and enraged Brazilian, who had a major influence on "Cinema Novo", died in 1981 from the consequences of a lung infection.

A film based on Jacques Chessex' novel of the same title; featuring André Wilms as Chessex and Bruno Ganz as Arthur Bloch, Swiss Jew killed by Swiss Nazis.

The Film of the King is a film within a film. Influenced by travel accounts of his time, the Frenchman Orélie Antoine set off for southern Argentina around 1860. Once there, he had himself proclaimed king of Araucania and Patagonia what led to his expulsion from the country by the Argentinian government. More than one hundred years later, Carlos Sorín turns this absurd venture into the story of a film director who wants to make a film abut it and fails in light of certain circumstantial adversities. Out of the film about the adventurer emerges the adventure of a film.

Reza (35), having distanced himself from the urban quagmire, leads a simple life along with his wife and sole child, somewhere in a remote village in Northern Iran. He spends his days working in his gold fish farm. Nearby, a private company with close links to the government and local authorities, has taken control of nearly every aspect of the regional life. Its shareholders, accumulating wealth, power and economic rents, have been pushing local farmers and small owners to dilapidate their belongings, farms and estates, to the benefit of the Company's in influential network and its monopoly. It is under their pressure that many villagers have themselves become local rings of the larger network of corruption. Meanwhile, Reza strives to resist coercion and preserve his farm. Soon though, he will realize that he can no longer stand up to this powerful, yet hidden, coercive web of corruption. Giving up, he decides to sell his property and move away. The Company however, decides to raise the stakes.

22-year-old nurse Frédérique (Isild Le Besco) may have had enough of life, but dying isn’t much easier either. After gathering all her courage, with her gun poised at the ready, she suddenly hears a child scream. The bullet destroys Marco’s knee and the 13-year-old boy is taken to the very hospital that Frédérique works in. She tries to avoid taking care of him but slowly notices that Marco is very similar to her: suspicious, aggressive, and uncommunicative. He also hits those who get close to him, and Frédérique welcomes his hateful outbursts as a just punishment. In "A Parting Shot", Jeanne Waltz tells the story of two egocentrics whose shared journey through life leads them to see things in a new light. The film premiered at the Berlinale in 2007 and Waltz won the Swiss Film Award for Best Screenplay in 2008.

Emma (11) has a perfectly normal family until one day it turns out her dad, Thomas, is transgender. As Thomas becomes Agnete, both father and daughter struggle to hold on to what they had, while accepting that everything has changed.

In a remote Alpine village isolated from the outside world, young love is put to the test. Anna comes from the village and has a daughter from an earlier relationship, while Marco is an outsider from the flatlands hired by the mountain farmers to work the rugged land. Together they experience the joy of new love and the closeness of family. But when Marco suddenly starts losing control over his impulses and behaving erratically, a new tension rises in the community. Through the changing seasons and the harshness of life, Anna fights to preserve a love she believes can outshine even death. Awarded Best Fiction Film at the 2023 Swiss Film Awards.

Julie is a single parent while also working in a luxury hotel in Paris. When she finally gets an interview for a job she has long hoped for, a nationwide strike breaks out, bringing the public transportation system to a standstill. Julie's fragile equilibrium is shaken and a desperate race against time begins for her. Eric Gravel's sophomore feature premiered at Orizzonti at the Venice Film Festival, where it won Best Director and Best Actress.

Summer 1943, Piedmont, Italy. Milton loves Fulvia who plays with his love: she only likes the depth of his thought and the letters he writes to her. One year later, Milton has joined the Resistance and fights beside other partisans. He learns during a conversation that Fulvia was secretly in love with his best friend Giorgio, a partisan like him. Milton decides to go find Giorgio in the Langhe region of Italy with all its misty hills...But Giorgio has just been arrested by the Fascists. "O, NOW FOREVER FAREWELL THE TRANQUIL MIND, FAREWELL THE PLUMED TROOPS AND THE BIG WARS. THOU HADST BEEN BETTER HAVE BEEN BORN A DOG THAN ANSWER MY WAKED WRATH." SHAKESPEARE

Simin wants to leave Iran with her husband Nader and daughter Termeh. She has already made all the necessary arrangements. Nader, however, is having second thoughts. He is worried about leaving behind his father, who is suffering from Alzheimer’s. For this reason he decides to call off the trip altogether. As a result of Nader’s decision, Simin decides to sue for divorce at the family court. When her request is rejected, however, she refuses to live with Nader, moving instead into her parents’ home. Termeh decides to stay with her father, hoping that her mother will soon come back to live with them.Nader finds it difficult to cope with the new situation - not least because it turns out to be so time-consuming. And so he hires a young woman named Razieh to look after his father. This young woman is pregnant and has accepted the job without her husband’s knowledge. One day, Nader arrives home to find that not only has his father been left alone, he has also been tied to a table! When Razieh returns, a blazing row ensues, the tragic consequences of which not only shatter Nader’s life, but also the image his daughter Termeh has of her father.

In 1944, four-year-old Argyris Sfountouris survived a brutal massacre committed by the German occupying forces, in which he lost his parents and thirty more relatives. The Greek orphan was sent to the Pestalozzi Children’s Village in Trogen, Switzerland and obtained a Ph.D in maths and astrophysics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich. Now a 66-year-old man of winning charm and melancholy cheerfulness, Argyris has forever been tackling the horror he had to go through as a little boy. He has not tried to come to terms with it emotionally. Rather, he has tried to learn to live with it and to do his utmost to prevent it from happening again. An intimate, reflective film about the quest for peace and the almost insurmountable difficulties linked to true reconciliation – an open-ended journey.

Filmmaker and activist Amandine Gay was listed under ‘X’ as a child in France, abandoned by her mother to grow up in a white family. ‘A Story of One’s Own’ pass the mic to five people who, like herself, carry in themselves the experience of being adopted. Separated not only from their unknown biological parents and countries of birth but also from the story about themselves.

The three sisters Reyhan (20), Nurhan (16) and Havva (13) all live with their father in a remote village in central Anatolia. One after the other they were sent away to town to work as housemaids, but each of them has now returned. The last of the sisters to do so is Nurhan. She beat the local doctor’s son because he wet his bed every night. When Reyhan returned home pregnant, her father hastily married her off to the shepherd, Veysel. One day, the inebriated Veysel rises up against the village elder; his actions have dramatic consequences. Even if the dream of a better future does not come true for any of these young women and they always seem to be getting into arguments with each other, they nonetheless steadfastly stick together. While they wait for the snow-covered roads to become passable again, father and daughters pass the time with stories. Emin Alper, who grew up in the Anatolian mountains himself, unfolds his fairy tale in haunting images. He portrays a society in which neither women nor men have a chance to break their predetermined cycle, and yet he still leaves room for hope.

1981 - Morocco – The month of Ramadan. With her seven-year-old son, Mehdi, Amina moves in with her father-in-law, Ahmed. Mehdi’s father is in prison but the boy believes that he has gone to work in France: his mother and grandfather maintain this illusion for his sake. At school, Mehdi has the privileged task of looking after the teacher’s chair. His relationship with the village, his friends and the world revolves around this object.

An international smash hit and the world's most popular film about klezmer music, A TICKLE IN THE HEART captures the story of the Epstein Brothers (Max, Willie and Julius) klezmer legends on a joyous and hilarious international tour. The Epsteins are natural performers, and their sense of life, music and family as they tour through places they loved (from Poland to Brooklyn to Florida) is as life affirming and intoxicating as the joyous music they play.

A Touch of Sin focuses on four characters, each living in different provinces, who are driven to violent ends. An angry miner, enraged by widespread corruption in his village, decides to take justice into his own hands. A rootless migrant discovers the infinite possibilities of owning a firearm. A young receptionist, who dates a married man and works at a local sauna, is pushed beyond her limits by an abusive client. And a young factory worker goes from one discouraging job to the next, only to face increasingly degrading circumstances.

A lady fugitive on the run from corrupt government officials is joined in her endeavors by an unambitious painter and skilled Buddhist monks.

Rio de Janeiro, 1950. Eurídice, 18, and Guida, 20, are two inseparable sisters living at home with their conservative parents. Although immersed in a traditional life, each one nourishes a dream: Eurídice of becoming a renowned pianist, Guida of finding true love. In a dramatic turn, they are separated by their father and forced to live apart. They take control of their separate destinies, while never giving up hope of being finding each other. A tropical melodrama from the director of Madame Satã.

Just like a veil, dense fog hangs over a wet coastal road in Iceland. A car slips out of the curve and crashes down the slope into the depths of the sea. Ever since Ingimundur lost his wife, there is little which brightens his mind. Only his granddaughter knows how to elicit a smile from the loner. What is left of his energy, the retired police officer puts into the renovation of his house, where he leads a secluded life. When a box with his late wife’s remaining possessions appears, Ingimundur is plagued by doubt. How well did he really know her? Was she hiding something from him? Caught between anger and grief, he begins to get to the bottom of his growing mistrust, and what started as a suspicion soon becomes an unpredictable obsession. Set against the backdrop of the spectacularly sublime Icelandic coastal landscape, A WHITE, WHITE DAY is an intense drama that reflects the emotional storms of the grieving protagonist in the magnificent images of the landscape.

The a-ha hit "Take on Me" is one of the most widely played songs of the last century. More than three decades later, this documentary follows the group over a four-year period and tells the story of how three young men realized an impossible dream.

This captivating exploration of Alvar Aalto, the defining figure in Scandic design and one of Europe's greatest modern architects, focuses on his remarkable and loving partnership with wife, Aino. Theirs was a profoundly humanist vision that put people at the centre of design, and ranged from work in furniture design through to huge architectural projects. They mixed with, and influenced, major figures of modernist art and design including Le Corbusier, Gropius, Moholy-Nagy, and Frank Lloyd Wright. Come on a cinematic tour of their iconic buildings all over the world, from a library in Russia, a student dormitory at MIT, an art collector's private house near Paris, to a pavilion in Venice. Narrated by experts in the field and featuring never before seen archive footage, Aalto tells the love story of an extraordinary couple with a great passion for human scale architecture.

A city with its problems. A gang of abandoned children provide for themselves and pose as heroes. The police are on their backs day and night. They are enterprising, energetic, and full of fresh vitality. Despite the fact they are rejected by their parents and ignored by the world, they form among themselves a powerful example of solidarity. Ablakon is something of a different order. He is an adult delinquent and a swindler. Posing as a businessman, he has deceived a countless number of people. When he and his accomplice return to the village, his extravagant behaviour is mistaken for a sign of success. Following his example many young people leave for the city. But they will soon understand their mistake...

Samet, a young art teacher, is finishing his fourth year of compulsory service in a remote village in Anatolia. After a turn of events he can hardly make sense of, he loses his hopes of escaping the grim life he seems to be stuck in. Will his encounter with Nuray, herself a teacher, help him overcome his angst?

After having spent many years in Germany, Ahmad returns to his native Iran for a holiday. His friends from his student days organise a three-day break on the Caspian Sea. One of the party, a fun-loving woman named Sepideh takes the matter in hand. Unbeknown to the rest of the group, she has also invited a young woman named Elly, who is a nursery school teacher at her daughter’s kindergarten. Ahmad has just emerged from an unhappy marriage and is now divorced from his German wife. He would very much like to begin a new life with an Iranian woman. His friends are aware of his desire and it gradually dawns on them that this is why Sepideh has asked Elly to accompany them on their trip. The others all begin to lavish their attentions on Elly, singing her prai - ses unequivocally. But then, on the second day of their holiday, something happens and Elly disappears. All at once their light-hearted mood evaporates. The friends begin to agonise about the whys and wherefores of Elly’s disappearance, bringing to an abrupt end the sense of harmony that once pervaded their get-together. They contact Elly’s parents, but when they learn that they have no news of Elly’s whereabouts their anxiety begins to turn into panic. Carefully, the friends begin to go over the conversations of the previous day and their phone calls to Elly’s relatives, trying to identify a moment that could give them a lead. Finally, they blame Sepideh for having invited Elly in the first place and ruining their holiday. During the course of just two days, their opinion of Elly has turned about face. Until, on the last day of their holiday, the truth emerges.

About Endlessness sees writer-director Roy Andersson surveying the human condition with equal parts striking clarity, tenderness, and deadpan existential wit.

Sohee is a high school student focusing on a job training education. Hoping for a good job, Sohee starts an job training at a subcontracted call center, but she faces big pressure of greedy company. It is too hard for high school student to bear this situation and it leads to her death. Detective Oh Yoo-jin, who has something in common with Sohee, becomes in charge of this case. She starts to follow traces to reveal the causes of her death.

Five highly original musicians from different countries form the Accordion Tribe. Together they aim to reinforce the original power of the long disdained instrument. The film follows the energetic soundscapes and their performers on a journey through Europe. An extraordinarily intensive documentary on the communicative, connecting power of music.

The movie tells the story of Laerte (Lázaro Ramos), a talented violinist who after failing to be admitted into the OSESP Orchestra is forced to give music classes to teenagers in a public school at Heliopolis. His path is full of difficulties, but the transforming power of music and the friendship arising between the teacher and the students open the door into a new world.

Abla runs a modest local bakery from her home in Casablanca where she lives alone with her 8 year old daughter Warda. Their routine of housework and homework is interrupted one day by a knock on the door. It is Samia, a young woman looking for a job and a roof over her head. The little girl is immediately taken with the newcomer but her mother initially refuses to allow a pregnant stranger into their lives.

Buenos Aires, November 2001. Argentina is embroiled in crisis, with the Peso plunging deeper and deeper. Julio Färber (Diego Cremonesi), the charismatic bandoneon player of the "Vecinos de Pompeya," a five-piece working-class tango band, is trying to keep his head above water, but every month he is earning less and less from their gigs as well as from the traditional shoe shop he inherited from his father. At the very moment he takes the decision to leave his beloved Buenos Aires forever, it clearly appears that life is conspiring against him: overnight, the government freezes all bank accounts in the whole country, preventing Julio from purchasing the flight tickets and sparking violent protests throughout the town. And Mariela (Marina Bellati), a witty young woman and feisty cab driver, bumps into his car at full speed, damaging Julio's last possession of value before stealing his heart. "Adiós Buenos Aires" is German Kral's feature film debut and was inspired by the real and tragic events that shook Argentina at the end of 2001.

Thurgau painter Adolf Dietrich's paintings have found their way out into the world - as far as the Museum of Modern Art in New York. But Dietrich himself stayed in his village all his life and painted what he loved and what preoccupied him: Neighborhood children, bouquets of flowers, pets, the view from his parlor window into the neighbor's garden, onto the village street and the view from his garden onto Lake Constance. In this documentary, Friedrich Kappeler meets people who still knew the Berlinger painter: his nephew, various models, an employer and collectors. Most of them were already very old in 1991, but when they talk about Dietrich, they light up and laugh. Kappeler has clearly found a connection with the contemporary witnesses and takes us on an entertaining journey through the landscape of Untersee and the wonderfully photographed paintings. A journey on which we learn a lot about the painter, but also about the living conditions of the time.

Lea Tsemel, a Jewish-Israeli lawyer, defends Palestinians: from feminists to fundamentalists, from nonviolent demonstrators to armed militants. As far as most Israelis are concerned, she defends the indefensible. As far as Palestinians are concerned, she’s more than an attorney, she’s an ally. «Advocate» follows Tsemel in real time, including the trial of a 13-year-old boy — her youngest client to date.

The Chinese make everything and the Malagasy fix everything. The people of Madagascar pride themselves on producing things out of nothing: tires transformed into shoes, oil lamps made out of light bulbs, wheelbarrows fashioned from scrap metal. You see ingenuity, not underdevelopment, in their practices. A return to a conservationist lifestyle that encourages recycling, fraternity and self-reliance is entirely of the moment and makes perfect sense in the midst of a global economic crisis. Will the world pay attention? Filmmaker Nantenaina Lova venerates the family business, the clever artisan, the resourceful craftsman and those who possess the ability to create using everyday objects. The Malagasy Way is a poetic, proverb-packed lesson in creativity and resistance that offers fresh logic on how to live. By cultivating lifes treasuressharing, ancestral knowledge, a good soul and the sweetness in bitternessthe Malagasy hope to teach the Western superpowers a thing or two.

A small holiday house by the baltic sea. The days are hot and it hasn’t rained in weeks. Four young people come together (Thomas Schubert, Langston Uibel, Paula Beer and Enno Trebs), friends old and new. As the parched forests around them begin to ignite, so do their emotions. Happiness, lust and love; but also jealousies, resentments and tensions. Meanwhile the forests burn. And before long, the flames are there. Christian Petzold’s «Roter Himmel» was the winner of the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize at this year’s Berlin International Film Festival.

In Hirokazu Kore-eda's After Life, a group of people, recently deceased, arrives at the outskirts of heaven. There they spend a week deciding which of all the memories from their lives they most want to spend eternity in, and heavenly counselors help them in the process. The dead souls help each other come to terms with what was most important to them while they were alive. Shot in a realistic yet slightly dreamy light, this touching and humanistic look at life and death carefully avoids being overly sentimental: a masterpiece.

Set in the port town of Dover, Mary Hussain suddenly finds herself a widow following the unexpected death of her husband. A day after the burial, she discovers he has a secret just twenty-one miles across the English Channel in Calais.

A little-known, passionate tale of a revolutionary hero returning to civilian life after the liberation from Dutch colonial rule that took top honours at Indonesia’s Citra Film Awards, 1955. Lewat Djam Malam (After the Curfew) is a passionate work looking directly at a crucial moment of conflict in Indonesian history: the aftermath of the four-year Republican revolution which brought an end to Dutch rule. This is a visually and dramatically potent film about anger and disillusionment, about the dream of a new society cheapened and misshapen by government repression on the one hand and bourgeois complacency on the other. The film’s director, Usmar Ismail, is generally considered to be the father of Indonesian cinema, and his entire body of work was directly engaged with ongoing evolution of Indonesian society. He began as a playwright and founder of Maya, a drama collective that began during the years of Japanese occupation. And it was during this period when Ismail developed an interest in filmmaking. He began making films for Andjar Asmara in the late 40s and then started Perfini (Perusahaan Film Nasional Indonesian) in 1950, which he considered his real beginning as a filmmaker. Lewat Djam Malam, a co-production between Perfini and Djamaluddin Malik’s company Persari, was perhaps Ismail’s greatest critical and commercial success.

Despite a promising start to his career as a writer, Ryota accumulates disillusions. Divorced from Kyoko, he squanders the little money he earns from his private investigator work on the racetrack, until he can no longer afford to pay child support for his 11-year-old son, Shingo. Now, Ryota tries to regain the trust of his family and to make a place for himself in his son's life. It doesn't look good until a typhoon forces the whole family to spend a night together.

Nanook and Sedna are the last members of their ethnic group and live in a yurt on the snow-covered fields in the far north. Spring arrives earlier than usual, ice fishing is less productive than it used to be and airplanes make their way in the sky. Sedna also notices that Nanook is beginning to forget things. In beautiful pictures Milko Lazarov tells this calm story in gentle reference to the great pioneer of the documentary film Robert J. Flaherty with his Nanook of the North.

«Ailo's Journey» tells the fight for the survival of a small wild reindeer, frail and vulnerable to the challenges that punctuate his first year. Its awakening to the wild world is a real tale in the heart of the grandiose landscapes of Lapland.

«Ailo's Journey» tells the fight for the survival of a small wild reindeer, frail and vulnerable to the challenges that punctuate his first year. Its awakening to the wild world is a real tale in the heart of the grandiose landscapes of Lapland.

A story of love and frailty, Air Doll takes the essence of what it means to be human and distills it down to its purest form in this bittersweet love story that smoothly intertwines fantasy and reality. In a shabby, rundown apartment in an old part of Tokyo, a bright beacon of purity shines into being one day. Silent and motionless, the air doll that belongs to quiet and retiring middle-aged Hideo (Itsuji Itao) has never been anything out of the ordinary. Each evening after work, he chats with her over the dinner table, bathes her and makes love to her before turning in for the night. However, after he leaves the house one day, the air doll begins to twitch and move, miraculously coming to life. Like a newborn marvelling at the wonder of the world, she is awestruck at the beauty of everything around her. Tottering about in her tiny maid's uniform, she ventures outside the apartment with childlike curiosity. As she wanders through the city, the air doll is enthralled, talking to anyone she finds and trying to comprehend her own ephemeral existence. Though her life is only a few hours old, it changes forever when she walks into a video store and falls helplessly in love with the clerk, Junichi (Arata).

Jaffa’s Ajami neighborhood is a melting pot of cultures and conflicting views among jews, muslims and christians. Back and forth in time, and through the eyes of various characters, we witness how impossible the situation actually is …

Young Dr. Yasumoto (Yuzo Kayama) returns to Edo following three years of medical training in Nagasaki. Believing he will become a physician to Shogunate, he is badly disillusioned to learn he must work in the poorly-financed Koishikawa Clinic, which is headed by a Dr. Niide (Toshiro Mifune), known to most as Red Beard (Akahige). Everything in the clinic is repulsive to Yasumoto, and he becomes determined to get himself discharged. "Akahige - Red Beard" is an ingeniously crafted plea for humanity, a still topical appeal for a medicine (and science) that does not treat people as "cases", but serves them by working together and taking precautionary measures - and thus helps them. "Akahige" was Kurosawa's last film in which Toshiro Mifune appeared, and it is Kurosawa's last film shot in black-and-white.

Five fates of women from Tokyo's brothel district in the 1950s are the focus of Kenji Mizoguchi's last film, who devoted the majority of his works to the historical and social situation of Japanese women. The theme is shaped by socio-critical commitment, human sympathy and unspeculative openness.

Seven years after the death of a close friend, three middle-aged men plan to arrange a marriage for the dead man’s daughter. But 24-year old Ayako doesn't really want to marry; she would rather continue taking care of her widowed mother. So the three men decide that the best course is to marry off the rather comely mother, Akiko, before the daughter … preferably to one of them. This plants seeds of estrangement between mother and daughter, and the latter begins to seriously consider one of the proposed marriage candidates … «Good grief, it's all very complicated,» we hear at the height of the comic-melancholy imbroglio. Director Yasujiro Ozu tells us the story in the simplest possible, yet artful, way, in images tinged with softness, both in color and language. Late Autum is the third to last film by the great Japanese director and only one of four color movies in his oeuvre. In honor of the 50th anniversary of his death and the year in which he would have turned 110, the original negatives have been used for digital restorations done in consultation with former members of Ozu's crew.

The Sparrow fascinates with its parallel strands of action. The various ways of encountering a criminal trader, namely by a police officer and a journalist, are ultimately only traces that lead to the tip of an iceberg: the corruption of Egyptian society on the eve of the Six-Day War.

Mohamed Malas was born in 1945 in Syria's Kuneitra, not far from the border with present-day Israel, which destroyed the important Kuneitra traffic junction in the Six-Day War. Now Malas flashes back to the time between 1936 and 1967. In Al Leil he depicts the childhood of a boy who, as an adult, reconstructs the footsteps of his father, the times of constant absence. One day he hadn't appeared at all after having fought for democracy for years and hardly found time for his family, for his private life. The boy grew up with his mother. Through her, the boy also learns a part of his father's story.

Wandering aimlessly after losing his memory in a car accident, a man is taken in by the inhabitants of a farm in the Beqaa Valley in Lebanon, whose secret business is the drugs they manufacture in a laboratory on the closely guarded property. The presence of this nameless stranger has consequences for the clandestine community. Little separates beauty and horror here. A latent sense of danger pervades the vast swathes of sublime landscape. A catastrophe looms. Tensions also rise in the cramped quarters of the house. The identity of the man without a past becomes an increasing issue as doubts regarding his amnesia rear their head. Is he a doctor or a mechanic? An angel or a spy? Like a blank page, he lends himself to fantasies of all kinds and ultimately becomes a prisoner. At once concrete and otherworldly, with a powerful soundtrack and images of great intensity, the film shows a set of melancholy existences on the eve of the apocalypse. Alongside radio news reports on current political crises, it leaves ample room for poetry, painting and a love song, and thus questions the status of art in times of terror and war, that is, in the here and now.

Endo Anaconda meets Albert Anker where the artist comes closer than anywhere else – in the painter's studio in the village of Ins, one of the very few artist's studios from the 19th century that have been conserved in their original condition. In this space with countless “exhibits” from floor to ceiling, you can explore right down to the farthest corners what Anker loved, admired, longed for, what made him aware of transience and death and what he wanted to have before his eyes at all times.

For as long as they can remember, the Solé family has spent every summer picking the peaches in their orchard in Alcarràs, a small village in Spain’s Catalonia region. But this year’s crop may well be their last, as they face eviction. The new plans for the land, which include cutting down the peach trees and installing solar panels, cause a rift in this large, tight-knit family. For the first time, they face an uncertain future and risk losing more than their orchard.

The film is a study of the 20th century cult of personality - the myth, the lure and the corruption of the political hero who is a fusion of two characters. Drawing from the so-called Dilessi incident of 1870 (updated in the film to the dawn of the twentieth century), this Megalexandros is a bandit of the sort that typically plagued nineteenth century Greece. Wrapped in the spiritual cloak of yet another Megalexandros - a legendary Greek liberator and King Arthur-like figure whose tale originated in 1453 under Turkish domination and has come down through oral tradition over the centuries - he becomes a leader of mysterious charisma. He kidnaps a group of English aristocrats and takes them to a mountain village where he is attempting to establish an agrarian commune among a company of Italian anarchists. The socialist hero becomes a Stalin-like tyrant whose trademark silence only reinforces his power. The film is a true work of demythification - from the roots of myth to the false promises of the new century.

Antoine and Ariane had a long affair. Then she left him because of Alexandre and he went abroad. Today Antoine is back. Ariane is absent but a man opens the door for him... Ariane has also left him. But who is Alexandre? A film with a light and refreshing humor.

The mayor of Lyon, Paul Théraneau, is in a delicate position. After 30 years in politics, he is running out of ideas and is faced with a feeling of existential emptiness. To overcome this, Paul hires a young and brilliant philosopher, Alice Heimann. Then follows a dialogue between two diametrically opposed personalities who will turn their certainties upside down.

Alice Schwarzer has always been a polarizing force. As a well-known television personality, she has divided couples on the sofa in German-speaking countries and encouraged women to emancipate themselves. The film shows a side of Schwarzer that goes beyond the influential feminist and journalist we know from her autobiography.

Quebec, the 60s. Sylvette and Anglomard welcome their 14th child, Aline. In this modest family, music is king. When a producer discovers Aline and her golden voice, he has only one idea in mind: to make her the greatest singer in the world. Supported by her family, guided by Guy Claude’s experience and budding love for her, Aline will create an extraordinary destiny for herself. Freely inspired by the career and life of megastar Céline Dion.

Twenty-two-year-old Koli is studying at Tirana university. When he hears of his father’s death, he returns to his native mountain village in the north to attend the funeral. During a walk through the countryside of his childhood, someone takes a shot at him. In a state of shock, the young man discovers that he is part of a blood feud sparked by his grandfather sixty years earlier. He goes to see the family to whom, according to custom, he owes his life - and, in doing so, he makes the acquaintance of the murderer whom fate has determined will take it. Away from his modern urban environment, Koli suddenly finds himself in a world of ancient, inexorable rituals, from which he is unable to extricate himself even after his return to Tirana. How deeply entrenched in people are the traditions of their forebears? And to what extent are they able to accept them as part of their modern, superficial lifestyle? How far-reaching is the perception of one’s own destiny and affinity with one’s roots? Director Artan Minarolli dedicated his film drama to the eighty-six illegal immigrants who drowned off the coast of Italy during an attempt to flee their native country in March 1997.

Lebanon, July 2006. Israel is fighting Hezbollah. Even though Marwan is about to emigrate to Canada with his wife, Rana, he wants to take advantage of a brief ceasefire to get his father out of the war zone. But the fighting flares up again. Marwan, who becomes separated from the worried Rana, is forced to take refuge with two friends of his father in one of the few houses still standing. A desperate married couple join them. Suddenly, they hear the voices of Israeli soldiers above them, unaware of their downstairs 'neighbours'. As bombs rain down, the tension rises.

A whimsical tale about old age. Irma and Henry live the dream of eternal love, which might end badly. While Leopold and Alex get to know each other through a weird car crash, a jailbird can’t cope with his new freedom. Instead, he gains the heart of a beautiful flower lady. And Johann, the doctor, bursts into tears with every patient. Just one doesn’t like this: Death.

This film is no classic author’s portrait, but rather a documentary that through fiction brings Martin Suter’s novels to life and also brings us another step closer to the creator behind them too. «Most often, imagination says more than reality.» Suter weaves from story to story – stories that have been beautifully, cinematographically and impactfully captured, illuminating both his characters and their secrets, and above all his unique cosmos (so near and yet so far) – a world of opposites shaped by the search for stories. This film reveals everything – except the truth.

In the spring of 1912, Alma Mahler (Emily Cox), grande dame of Viennese society and newly widowed, embarks on an affair with the "enfant terrible" of the Viennese art scene, Oskar Kokoschka (Valentin Postlmayr). A passion erupts that threatens their very existence. Director Dieter Berner focuses on two icons of the early 20th century art world and and uses powerful images to tell the story of Alma Mahler's passionate affair with Oskar Kokoschka, the intensity of which takes the two eccentric artists to their limits and threatens their very existence.

“Höhenfeuer” is both a story of childhood and of a love affair: The deaf-born “Bub” and his sister “Belli” live with their parents on a remote farm in the mountains. The father intentionally resists the modern age: “I'd rather beat him to death than put him in a home”. After school Belli is not only a servant in her own home but also her younger brother's teacher. From early childhood, they have been an inseparable pair. They love one another. “Holy Mother of God, what sort of children have I?” wails the resigned mother, when the two children do things that are not “normal”. This is just the beginning of the story… Had the film been made 100 years ago – it would have been a saga.

A Nurse, a Paramedic, a Gymnast and her Coach have formed a service for hire. They stand in for dead people by appointment, hired by the relatives, friends, or colleagues of the deceased. The company is called Alps while their leader, the Paramedic, calls himself Mont Blanc. Although the Alps members operate under a discipline regime demanded by their leader, the Nurse doesn’t.

Dusk, alpine summer time. Through a milk funnel, the dairymen, rarely a dairymaid, call out the alpine blessing or Bättruef. Every day, in all weathers. They ask God and the saints to avert harm from the alp, as loudly as possible, because as far as their voice can be heard, the protective spell should also work. At the mercy of the forces of nature in the mountain world at night, the alpine farmers experience their own existence as part of a greater whole. They call out the Alpine blessing out of deep inner conviction.

Swiss-Japanese filmmaker Aya Domenig, the granddaughter of a doctor on duty for the Red Cross during the 1945 atomic bombing of Hiroshima, approaches the experience of her deceased grandfather by tracing the lives of a doctor and of former nurses who once shared the same experience. While gathering the memories and present views of these very last survivors, the nuclear disaster in Fukushima strikes and history seems to repeat itself.

Set in a small village in the Moroccan countryside, Alyam, Alyam tells a story culled from the lived reality of young men almost forty years ago while still remaining very much of the present day. A young man named Abdelwahed pins his dreams of a better life for himself and his family on travelling to France and finding work there. As the eldest of eight children, he becomes the principal caretaker and breadwinner for his family after his father passes away. He fills out forms and waits for his work permit to arrive. Meanwhile, Hlima, his recently widowed mother who’s reticent to let him go, tries in vain to dissuade him and enlists the help of Abdelwahed’s grandfather too. As the days flow by to the cadence of life in the countryside, marked by the hardships of farming, Abdelwahed waits. All he can do is wait. Straddling fiction and documentary, Alyam, Alyam is Ahmed El Maanouni’s first narrative feature, and the first Moroccan film ever to be selected at the Cannes Film Festival. Recently restored, the film’s splendor and finely crafted editing has become available once again for cinéphiles and new generations to discover.

Felix is on the edge. He has got just one thing on his mind: Valerie - his wife, who has recently left him. He returns to the place of their final break-up. Valerie's ex-lover Thomas is also here, but not for sentimental reasons. By chance the two men meet in a restaurant. By chance Felix discovers who he is facing. And then starts the inscrutable game.

Amal is 14 years old when she ends up on Tahrir Square during the Egyptian revolution, after the death of her boyfriend in the Port Said Stadium riot. During the protests, she is beaten by police and dragged across the square by her hair. This coming-of-age film follows her over the years after the revolution. As the film cuts between the unfolding current events and Amal’s rapidly changing life and appearance, we see her searching for her own identity in a country in transition. Amal is fiery and fearless, sinking her teeth into the protests and constantly lecturing her mother, who works as a judge. A girl among men, she also has to fight for respect and the right to take part, both in the street and in the rest of her life. In Egypt, even for a young woman like Amal-her name means "hope"-the choices open to her for her future are limited.

Cuno Amiet lived from 1868-1961, yet seen today many of his pictures have a contemporary edge. Amiet was a Swiss pioneer of modern painting along with Ferdinand Hodler and Giovanni Giacometti. The film visits three highly individual Amiet collectors in Dallas, Geneva and Studen, near Biel. Surrounded by Amiet’s works they tell us what part these paintings play in their lives.

In 1840s England, acclaimed but overlooked fossil hunter Mary Anning (Kate Winslet) works alone on the rugged Southern coastline. With the days of her famed discoveries behind her, she now searches for common fossils to sell to tourists to support herself and her ailing mother. When a wealthy visitor entrusts Mary with the care of his wife Charlotte Murchison (Saoirse Ronan), she cannot afford to turn his offer down. Proud and relentlessly passionate about her work, Mary initially clashes with her unwelcome guest, but despite the distance between their social class and personalities, an intense bond begins to develop, compelling the two women to determine the true nature of their relationship. Director Francis Lee, as in his earlier film «God's Own Country» which won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival in 2017, takes up the theme of love between people who are attracted to each other despite (or perhaps because of) different social classes and personalities.

Georg and Anna are around 80, cultivated music professors in retirement. The daughter, also a musician, lives abroad with her family. One day Anna has a seizure - it is the beginning of a test for the love of the two.

Tokyo, cherry blossom time. Like every day, Sentaro is standing in his tiny bakery when the elderly Tokue passes by. She wants to start as a temp. Sentaro reacts negatively - until he tries Tokue's "An", a traditional sweet bean paste. This is so indescribably good that the baker immediately throws all concerns overboard and hires the woman. Soon a friendship develops between Tokue and Sentaro, who both have a secret. And the business blossoms - because the "An" preparation is not just a job for Tokue. Rather, it shows her deep connection with nature and her respect for life...

A Roma family living far away from the urban centres of Bosnia- Herzegovina. The father Nazif salvages metal from old cars and sells it to a scrap-dealer. The mother Senada keeps the house tidy, cooks, bakes and cares for their two small daughters. One day, she feels a sharp pain in her abdomen. At the clinic she is told there is something wrong with the baby she is carrying: "They say it’s dead." She is at risk of septicaemia and they must operate immediately. But Senada has no medical insurance; since the operation will cost much more than the family can afford the hospital’s head refuses to treat her. A race against time and Senada’s mounting sense of hopelessness begins ... Danis Tanović weaves these dramatic events, his protagonists’ economic hardship and fear of death into a wintery tale. The fact that the non-professional cast are re-enacting an episode from their own lives contributes greatly to the film’s sense of authenticity and social realism. At the same time, the film demonstrates one Roma family’s extraordinary courage and unerring will to survive.

Sandra, a German writer, lives with her husband Samuel and their visually impaired son Daniel in a remote mountain chalet in the French Alps. When Samuel falls to his death in mysterious circumstances, the investigation cannot determine whether it’s suicide or foul play. Sandra is ultimately arrested for murder and the trial puts their tumultuous relationship and her ambiguous personality under the microscope. As her young son takes to the stand, doubt starts creeping in between them. "Anatomie d'une chute" won the Palme d'Or at the 2023 Cannes International Film Festival. Justine Triet has created a captivating drama that gets to the bottom of the dynamics of a relationship in a multi-layered play with facts, possibilities and truths.

Between goats, cows and the Alps, Fabiano (38) becomes a father. But the idyll is deceptive: he tries hard to make the alpine cheese the way his drop-out parents did in the 70s. In addition to debts, feelings of guilt also gnaw at him. Last year, a Macedonian moonlighter had a fatal accident. Since then, his death has never let Fabiano go. How can he and his girlfriend Eva build a life together with their offspring under such difficult circumstances? Set against the imposing and oppressively quiet backdrop of the Ticino Alps, Aldo Gugolz’s film turns out to be an exciting tightrope walk between a criminal case and a sensitive portrait of a young farmer.

Merab has been training since a young age at the National Georgian Ensemble with his dance partner Mary. His world is suddenly turned upside down when the charismatic and carefree Irakli arrives and becomes both his strongest rival and desire. In this conservative setting Merab finds himself having to break free and risk it all.

Andrea, a small-town policewoman, has decided to move on from her unhappy marriage with the help of a transfer to a higher position in the police department of the next bigger city. As she drives home after a birthday party, she has no chance of stopping when her not-yet-divorced husband suddenly appears in front of her car, drunk. Unable to break, she runs him over and kills him. In a state of shock, Andrea flees the scene. Still, that night, being called to duty as the local police officer to the crime scene, she discovers to her horror that someone else has accepted responsibility for the accident: Franz, a religion teacher and recovered alcoholic, is convinced that he ran over the victim, and so is everyone else in the village. While Franz starts drinking again, Andrea applies herself to the task of eliminating all traces of her guilt... In his second feature film, Josef Hader blends humour with melancholy as he takes a look at sad, drunken men and a woman with a plan.

An expansive Russian drama, this film focuses on the life of revered religious icon painter Andrei Rublev. Drifting from place to place in a tumultuous era, the peace-seeking monk eventually gains a reputation for his art. But after Rublev witnesses a brutal battle and unintentionally becomes involved, he takes a vow of silence and spends time away from his work. As he begins to ease his troubled soul, he takes steps towards becoming a painter once again.

A small coastal town in China has half-hearted ambitions to make more of its touristic potential. In one of the many, more or less interchangeable hotels along the beach, 12-year old Wen is the victim of and receptionist Mia a witness to a crime. Mia came to the town illegally and is frightened of reporting what she saw to the authorities. But she's not the only one who fears the consequences of what happened, and the net draws ever tighter around Mia and Wen. Vivian Qu's delicate neo-noir drama concentrates on the perspectives of the complex female figures to expose patriarchal structures.

16-year-old Bella and Vipulan are part of a generation convinced its very future is in danger. Between climate change and the 6th mass extinction of wildlife, their world could well be inhabitable 50 years from now. They have sounded the alarm over and over, but nothing has really changed. So they've decided to tackle the root of the problem: our relationship with the living world. Over the course of an extraordinary journey, they come to realize just how deeply humans are tied to all other living species. And that by saving them... we're also saving ourselves. Humans thought they could distance themselves from nature, but humans are part and parcel of nature. For man is, after all, an Animal.

Anina Yatay Salas is a pensive redhead who really does not like her name. Each part is a palindrome, which means it reads the same both forwards and backwards. Her schoolmates are always teasing her about this, especially Anina’s arch-enemy Yisel. When these two get into a playground fight one day they are sent to the school head who disciplines them with a nerve-racking punishment: they are both given a sealed black envelope which they are not allowed to open for an entire week. Haunted by nightmares, the days drag by endlessly for Anina. She and her inquisitive best friend try to devise all sorts of ways to discover what is inside the envelope. Gradually, Anina begins to realise that not only does Yisel share her fate: she also has much bigger problems to contend with than Anina. Tentatively, the two rivals begin to get to know each other. Narrated by the voice of the young protagonist, the film is able to follow Anina’s thought processes and provide an insight into her emotional world. Anina’s day-dreams are not always about her troubles and woes - they also reflect her awakening feelings of love.

9-year-old Anna goes to school and spends her free afternoons with her dolls. One day, however, everything turns out differently: when she copies herself in the school's photocopier, it spits out a second Anna. An exciting game of mistaken identity begins!

Glarus, november 1981: the little daughter of a distinguished family finds in her milk at breakfast some pins. The maid Anna Göldin arouses suspicion, a woman of complex sensuality. Both, master and daughter, are under a spell. Anna Göldin is at once dismissed. After that, the daughter is for weeks spitting out 106 pins and her left leg is getting paralyzed. Anna Göldin is getting accused, having bewitched the child. She is fetched back to Glarus. And she can heal the child. Therefor she produces evidence of being a witch. During torture she admits all accusations. On June 18, 1782 she is put to death. Anna Göldin ist he last woman in Europe, who is convicted as a witch by an official high court.

Which should take precedence - passion or duty? How do we choose? And who gets to judge? These are eternal questions, remorselessly thrust upon us by life. Anna Karenina made her choice, leaving her son Sergei to grow up struggling to understand why his mother took such a tragic and terrible path, and Count Vronsky haunted by the memory of the woman for whose death he still blames himself 30 years later. In 1904, in the aftermath of one of the battles of the Russian-Japanese war, Sergei Karenin and Alexey Vronsky find themselves thrown together in a remote Manchurian village, where fate offers them a chance to return to the events long past and, finally, to find the answers both have long been seeking.

Los Angeles, today. Henry is a stand-up comedian with a fierce sense of humor. Ann, a world-renowned opera singer. Under the spotlight, they form a wholesome and glamorous couple. The birth of their first child, Annette, a mysterious little girl with an exceptional destiny, will turn their lives upside down.

February, 1974. When she accidentally becomes pregnant, Annie meets the MLAC - Mouvement pour la Liberté de l'Abortment et de la Contraception - which performs illegal abortions in plain sight. Absorbed by this unique movement, she finds new meaning to her life through the fight to pass the abortion law.

Another History tells Swiss history between 1910 and 1991 from a female perspective. In her three-part documentary, Tula Roy presents interviews with politically active women as well as contemporary witnesses and uses visual and audio documents to illuminate the struggle of women for their rights, their left-wing movements, labor struggles and anti-fascist commitment.

In Anselm, Wim Wenders paints a portrait of one of the most innovative and important painters and sculptors of our time: Anselm Kiefer. A cinematic journey through the creative work of a man whose art explores human existence and the cyclical nature of history, inspired by literature and poetry, history, philosophy, science, mythology and religion. For more than two years, Wenders followed Kiefer’s path, linking the stages of his life and the essential places of his work, in a career now spanning more than five decades between Kiefer’s native Germany and France, his current creative home.

The few thousand kilometers that separate Patagonia from the South Pole are a fascinating and hypnotic journey for explorers. Some even speak of an addiction, 'the Antarctic bite'. "La Marche de l’empereur" (2005) director Luc Jacquet has been experiencing it for 30 years. His new film is a visually striking adventure, offering us images beyond words, an ultimate tribute to a vanishing continent.

The young, upbeat teacher Antoinette is looking forward to her summer vacation with her secret lover Vladimir, the attractive father of one of her students. But nothing comes of it: Vladimir spontaneously books a donkey trekking in the Cevennes with his family. Antoinette decides to follow him on the Stevenson Trail, taking her straw hat, a pink rolling suitcase and Patrick, the donkey who accompanies her. The stubborn animal demands all her patience, yet turns out to be a good listener and leads her to completely new, refreshing insights about life and love.

The action of the movie takes place in the sertao, the desertified Northeast backlands of Brazil, that is traditionally beyond the rule of law, and that was the site of some of most enduring folklore. The sertao is the region of myth, encapsulated by the historical world of progress symbolized by the highway. The tale employs the cast of folklore characters: the colonel of the ranch; his mistress; the colonel's sidekick; the colonel's enforcer; local bandits (typical of the gangs that grew up in the region either as enforcers or as rural poor abandoned by a patron who lost a local battle); a group of millenialists (similarly, typical of groups of disenfranchised rural poor); the local teacher, a dependent of the colonel. «Antonio das Mortes» is a character at at war with himself.

The second part of Satyajit Ray's famous Apu trilogy, this Indian drama focuses on young Apu, who lives with his mother, Sarbajaya (Kanu Bandyopadhyay), and father, Harihar (Pinaki Sengupta), near the Ganges River. When Harihar dies suddenly, Apu and Sarbajaya move to a small village to be near relatives. Eventually, she reluctantly allows her son (now played by Smaran Ghosal) to attend school in Calcutta. As Apu acclimates to life in the city, Sarbajaya struggles with his absence.

Facing the consequences of a violent uprooting, Mateo Sobode Chiqueno has been recording stories, songs, and testimonies of his Ayoreo people since the seventies. In an attempt to preserve fragments of a disappearing culture, Mateo walks across communities in the arid and desolate Paraguayan Chaco region, and registers on cassettes the experiences of other Ayoreo who, like him, were born in the vast forest, free and nomadic, without any contact with white civilization, until religious missionaries forced them to abandon their ancestral territory, their means of subsistence, their beliefs and their home.

Cloistered in a Saigon hotel room, young Captain Willard (Martin Sheen), unshaven and drunk, is roused from his prostration by a summons from the American General Staff. General Corman entrusts him with a mission that must remain secret: to eliminate Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando), a military officer with somewhat expedient methods who is rampaging across the Cambodian border. To celebrate the 40th anniversary of "Apocalypse Now", Francis Ford Coppola is dedicating a never-before-seen version of his cult film to fans, restored by himself and his team.

Amidst a worldwide pandemic that causes sudden amnesia, middle-aged Aris (Aris Servetalis) finds himself enrolled in a recovery program designed to help unclaimed patients build new identities. Prescribed daily tasks on cassette tapes so he can create new memories and document them on camera, Aris slides back into ordinary life, meeting Anna (Sofia Georgovasili), a woman who is also in recovery. Through images deadpan, strange and surreal, Greek writer-director Christos Nikou posits a beguiling reflection on memory, identity, and loss, exploring how a society might handle an irreversible epidemic through one man’s story of self-discovery. Are we the sum of the images we compile and display of ourselves, or are we something richer, and deeper?

The story of three men of Turkish descent who grew up in Switzerland but never got a Swiss passport. After run-ins with the law they are deported to the country where their parents originally came from, a place they hardly know. Not only do the men find themselves in a country where they feel like complete strangers, they also have to cope with life in a society that is moving quickly toward a dictatorship. The film explores different concepts of cultural and national identity.

Pretty Zehra and handsome Olgun spend most of their young lives working in a service station cafeteria near a lonely highway. Their monotonous work shifts are broken up only by sparks of naive expectations of a brighter future. Everything seems transient about their surroundings. The once important industrial area is now a faceless place of economic waste and unemployment. Most of the area's occupants have all escaped to the big city in search of opportunity. But Zehra, Olgun and their friends still remain, caught somewhere in between the past and an uncertain future. Zehra dreams that love will take her away from her meaningless job and life at home with her strict old-fashioned mother. She becomes fascinated by an older truck driver, Mahur, who spends much of his time on the road. As Zehra's desire for Mahur turns into a tragic first love, her rebellious friend Olgun becomes more and more frustrated, stuck at home, not yet a young man on his own. Zehra and Olgun will experience a bittersweet rite of passage, leading to both suffering and awakening. But as they say goodbye to their childhood innocence, love and hope will help them to move forward.

Temporality and age are inherent in every object and creature and, depending on one’s outlook, may transcend to infinity. Schaub explores, together with the architects Peter Zumthor, Peter Märkli and Alvaro Siza Vieira, the artists James Turrell and Cristina Iglesias and drummer virtuoso Jojo Mayer, the magic of sacred spaces, defined here as far more than church buildings. Who owns spirituality?

Set on the eve of Tunisia’s Jasmine Revolution, the first feature from director Leyla Bouzid follows an up-and-coming underground band as they are pulled in all directions by creative energy, authoritarian oppression, and rebellion. As I Open My Eyes (À peine j'ouvre les yeux) gives us a look at Tunisian youth on the eve of the Jasmine Revolution as they are pulled in all directions by conflicting forces: disenchantment, fear, creativity, rebellion against dictatorship, rejection of conservatism, and the courage to pursue their desires. Farah (Baya Medhaffer) is a young woman at a crossroads. Her medical-school application has just been accepted, and nothing could please her mother, Hayet (Ghalia Benali), more - but Farah's passion is for music, and her underground band is just beginning to get noticed. Their music blends rock with daring lyrics that have the raw poetry of spoken word. Soon enough, the police are alerted to the band's subversive performances and begin to harass them, and when Farah is detained and interrogated, she realizes that one of her friends is a snitch. (tiff)

College student Asako falls in love at first sight with Baku after meeting at a photography exhibit. Romance sparks between the two but doesn't last long when Baku suddenly disappears from her life. Two years later, she spots a man that bears a striking resemblance to him. Even though it is only his physical similarities to Baku that attracted her to him, she doesn't say so and starts dating the soft-spoken young man called Ryohei.

Young dancer Qiao falls for powerful mob boss Bin. After protecting him during a rival gang’s ambush, she ends up in prison. Upon release, some five years later, she seeks out Bin to restart their old life. But is that still possible? Their violent relationship develops from 2001 to 2017, which allows director Jia Zhangke to chronicle contemporary China – from mining ghost towns to entire villages sacrificed for new dams.

A documentary portrait chronicling the incredible life of Dr. Ruth Westheimer, a Holocaust survivor who became America's most famous sex therapist. As her 90th birthday approaches, Dr. Ruth revisits her painful past and her career at the forefront of the sexual revolution.

A documentary portrait chronicling the incredible life of Dr. Ruth Westheimer, a Holocaust survivor who became America's most famous sex therapist. As her 90th birthday approaches, Dr. Ruth revisits her painful past and her career at the forefront of the sexual revolution.

Astolfo, a retired professor evicted from his apartment, decides to move into an old noble but decrepit palace, the last remnant of his family patrimony in a remote village of Abruzzo, where he hasn’t been for decades. Soon enough, as a newcomer, he befriends a vagabond, a retired chef and a young handyman. A group of four live harmoniously at his place when he comes across Stefania, a charming and generous woman of his age. Astolfo falls in love and struggles with feelings he thought belonged to the past. Encouraged by his loyal group, Astolfo makes a brave step and learns delightedly that it’s never too late to fall in love.

Withdrawing to the area around Arles and Auvers-sur-Oise to escape the pressures of Parisian life, Vincent van Gogh (Willem Dafoe) is treated brutally by some, and more kindly by others. The owner of the local restaurant feels for him and gives him a notebook for his drawings. Others are afraid of his dark and unpredictable mood swings. Even the artist and his close friend Paul Gauguin (Oscar Isaac) finds him too stifling and leaves him. Only his loyal brother, art dealer Theo (Rupert Friend) continues to support Vincent, even if he doesn’t succeed in selling a single painting. With moving insights into his life’s ups and downs, this film is a fascinating journey into the body and soul of Vincent van Gogh.

Along the Atlantic coast, a soon-to-be-inaugurated futuristic tower looms over a suburb of Dakar. Ada, 17, is in love with Souleiman, a young construction worker. But she has been promised to another man. One night, Souleiman and his co-workers leave the country by sea, in hope of a better future. Several days later, a fire ruins Ada’s wedding and a mysterious fever starts to spread. Little does Ada know that Souleiman has returned.

Marina is 23 and lives together with her father in an industrial village on the Greek coast. She finds the human species to be peculiar, almost daunting, if it weren't for Bella, her only and very unconventional friend. Marina derives her first sexual insights from the animal documentaries of Sir David Attenborough - "Attenberg", as she calls him. Bella, on the other hand, shows Marina a completely different approach to her own sexuality. This leads to bizarre moments in Marina's approach to an unknown table football player, as well as in discussions with her sick father. Her dad, an architect unimpressed by the twentieth century, prepares for his self-determined "exit" from life. He considers this epoch to be overestimated and does not want to surrender to his cancer. Using these two men and their friend Bella, Marina examines the last mysteries of the human fauna.

To catch a train that left without them and has their kids on board, a father (Jérôme Commandeur) and a grandfather (André Dussollier) start a wild goose chase. While the adults are trying to one-up each other to catch the night train, the kids are doing their best to wreak havoc on the train.

The story of a donkey Balthazar as he is passed from owner to owner, some kind and some cruel but all with motivations beyond his understanding. Balthazar, whose life parallels that of his first keeper, Marie, is truly a beast of burden, suffering the sins of humankind. But despite his powerlessness, he accepts his fate nobly.

Louis (Grégoire Ludig) just found the corpse of a man in front of his apartment building. Taken in for custody by Captain Buron (Benoît Poelvoorde), he finds himself on the wrong end of a surreal interrogation. But how can you prove you are innocent when the cops are crazy? Cult director Quentin Dupieux returns with a retro seventies whodunit comedy set during an all nighter at a police station.

Kai, a brokenhearted young man from Taipei, yearns to be with his girlfriend, who's left for Paris. He spends his days working at his parents’ noodle restaurant and his nights trying to learn French at the local bookstore, where he meets Susie, a sweet but lonely girl who works there. Afraid of losing his girlfriend, and in need of money to get to Paris, he accepts a dubious offer from a local gangster - deliver a mysterious package to Paris. It’s the beginning of a wild night for Kai, at the end of which he realizes that leaving both Susie and Taipei will only take him further away from true love.

Adrien, a 70-year-old mountain farmer from the Valais, proposes a trip on the Trans-Siberian Railway to his friends. The taciturn mountain men board the train, but they never really let go. Without cards and white wine, nothing works. Only Adrien makes it as far as Beijing: For the stubborn farmer, the long journey ultimately becomes a journey to himself, to his own feelings.

With his father in prison and his brother abroad for work, young Rakib works as the lone housekeeper in an empty mansion belonging to Purna, a retired general whose family Rakib’s clan have served for centuries in a rural Indonesian town. After Purna returns home to start his mayoral election campaign, Rakib bonds with the older man, who becomes a close mentor and father figure, and finds his calling as Purna’s assistant in work and life. When Purna’s election poster is found vandalised one day, Rakib doesn’t hesitate to track down the culprit, kicking off an escalating chain of violence.

After five years studying in Paris, Arash has not adjusted to life there and has decided to return to Iran to live. Hoping to change his mind, his two friends Hossein and Ashkan convince him to take a last trip through France.

While hitchhiking from Sofia to Ruse, Kamen meets Avé, a 17-year-old runaway girl. With each ride they hitch, Avé invents new identities for them, and her compulsive lies get Kamen deeper and deeper into trouble. Reluctantly drawn into this adventure, Kamen begins to fall in love with the fleeting Avé.

Sara and Jean have been in a loving, stable relationship for ten years. They are happy. He is her rock, someone she can hold on to. When they first met, Sara was in a relationship with François, Jean’s best friend. One day, Sara sees François on the street. He does not see her, but she is overwhelmed by a sensation that her life could suddenly change. François does indeed get in touch with Jean to suggest that they work together again. Before long, things are in danger of spiralling out of control. "Avec amour et acharnement" is Claire Denis’s third collaboration with acclaimed writer Christine Angot, with whom she wrote "Un beau soleil intérieur", which also starred Juliette Binoche. In a performance that is just as brave and committed, the actor proves to be exceptionally supple as her body becomes the terrain for a captivating theatre of emotional opposites. Eric Gautier’s precise cinematography shows us contrasting images of fingers comfortably intertwined, but also Sara’s entire body in forward motion, erupting in deep, uncontrollable moans. Encircled by a wall of passionate flames, Denis’s protagonists appear to be under siege, seemingly oblivious to society and its inexorable tendency to separate all things into opposing categories.

Yvan De Wiel, a private banker from Geneva, is going to Argentina in the midst of a dictatorship to replace his partner, the object of the most worrying rumors, who disappeared overnight. Between hushed lounges, swimming pools, and gardens under surveillance, a remote duel takes place between two bankers who, despite different methods, are the accomplices of a discreet and merciless form of colonization.

75-year-old Giuseppe De Metrio has spent 30 years in Geneva, as foreign worker for the Broyer company. Upon retirement, he returned to Puglia, Italy, where his family had continued to live. His only grandchild, 7-year-old Carla, is blind. The whole family looks forward hopefully to the day when Carla’s sight can be restored by means of a cornea transplantation. After a heart attack, Giuseppe decides to wait no longer and returns to Switzerland to ask his former boss Mr. Broyer for the money necessary for the operation, as an old promise binds the two men. Intended as a 48-hour trip, Giuseppe and Carla’s visit in Switzerland becomes a journey that both grandfather and granddaughter never dreamt of.

The first feature film ever produced in Mail, Baara (The Porter) is about a young man caught in the growing political and economic tensions of urban Africa. Balla Diarra is a worker in the capital city of Bamako who struggles to survive on his meagar income. After his friend is murdered by an unfeeling factory boss, he must confront increasingly violent choices. Set in a modern city rather than a mythical past or traditional village, Baara offers a portrait of African life not often seen on the American screen.

Bab El-Oued, a popular district of Algier, in 1989, a few months after the riots. Young Boualem works six nights a week in a French bakery. On the rooftop of his apartment building the fundamentalists have installed a loudspeaker which is now broadcasting the Imam's word and the fundamentalist's hateful propaganda and therefore preventing Boualem from sleeping. Unable to stand the noise any longer, in a fit of madness, he destroys the loudspeaker and throws it into the sea. But he's quickly filled with guilt and apprehension for what he has done. Desecrating the property of the mosque is a sin, and now he finds himself in a relentless pursuit. The blunder is taken as a pretext by the Islamists to put the district under their control...

The story of a blind dervish named Bab'Aziz and his spirited granddaughter, Ishtar. Together they wander the desert in search of a great reunion of dervishes that takes place just once every thirty years. With faith as their only guide, the two journey for days through the expansive, barren landscape.

The widowed, stubborn master baker Zürrer makes life difficult for his three adult children and only becomes conciliatory when his life takes the worst possible turn.

Emi, a school teacher, finds her career and reputation under threat after a personal sex tape is leaked on the Internet. Forced to meet the parents demanding her dismissal, Emi refuses to surrender to their pressure.

Every ten years, one of the largest public festivals in Switzerland puts the small town of Baden in a positive state of emergency. What motivates countless people to help shape the "Badenfahrt" and make an incredible commitment? The 78-minute documentary "BADENFAHRT - FEST VEREINT" shows the emotions of those who put the festival on its feet. The feel-good movie is a plea for volunteering, for diversity and shows what positive things can be achieved together.

A failed author, a wife in hiding, a clandestine gay IT-specialist meet in an Iraqi café in London. Incited by a radical Sheik, the author's nephew attacks them and turns their lives upside down.

Noriko, still single at the advanced age of 28, lives contentedly in an extended family household that includes her parents and her brother's family. An uncle's visit prompts the family to find her a husband.

Six-year-old Yusuf has just begun attending primary school where he is learning how to read and write. His father, Yakup, is a beekeeper. He goes about his trade deep inside the woods where he hangs up his bee hives in the treetops of the highest trees. The mountain forest is a place of deep mystery to Yusuf and he derives great pleasure from accompanying his father there. One morning Yusuf tells his father about a dream he had the night before. Yakup turns on him curtly telling him never to share his dreams with others. The same day, Yusuf is asked to read out a text in front of the class. He suddenly begins to stutter and he is laughed at by the rest of the class. One day the bees suddenly disappear, throwing into question the family’s means of earning a living. Yakup decides to set off for the remote mountains. But no sooner has he left, than Yusuf stops speaking. His mother Zehra, who works on a tea plantation, suffers a great deal on ac count of her son’s sudden loss of speech, but is unable to persuade him to speak. The days pass - and still Yakup does not return. Mother and son begin to worry. Yusuf goes to his grandmother’s place in a neighbouring village where he spends the magical night during which the prophet’s arrival is celebrated. When he hears the story of the prophet he is convinced that his father, with whom he identifies the holy man, will come home again. Yusuf and his mother set off on a fruitless search for signs of his father’s whereabouts after which Yusuf decides to continue the search for his father on his own. His is a journey into the unknown. Will the dream he had be - come reality?

On the Tibetan grasslands, Darje and Drolkar live a serene and ordinary life with their three sons and the grandfather. A condom sparks a series of embarrassment and dilemma, breaking the harmony of the family. What matters more in the circle of life and death, soul or reality?

The beautiful woman Melé is a bar singer, her husband Chaka is out of work. The couple that lives in Bamako, the capital of Mali, is on the verge of breaking up... In the courtyard of the house, where they live together with other families, a trial court has been set up. African civil society spokesmen have taken proceedings against the World Bank and the IMF, whom they blame for Africa's woes... Amidst the pleas and the testimonies, life goes on in the courtyard. Chaka does not seem to be concerned by this novel Africa's desire to fight for its rights.

When backpackers visit a small village in remote northern Laos in search of a traditional experience, the inhabitants of the village discover the attractions of the West. Two worlds meet at the crossroads of their respective desire; the one longing for authenticity, the other for modernity. In this micro-cosmos, their encounter leaves no one unchanged and tells a poetic story of friendship and how we relate to each other in a rapidly changing world.

North of Senegal, in a small remote village. Banel and Adama are fiercely in love. Longing for a home of their own, they have decided to live apart from their families and that Adama won’t accept his blood duty as future chief. When Adama informs the village council of his intention, the whole community is disrupted. The rain that’s supposed to come doesn’t come. Banel and Adama will learn that where they live, there is no room for passions, let alone chaos.

Bruno - former bank director turned gardener - can't forget his past. He saves the life of the unemployed Stefano. However, in order to take revenge on his former business partner Ernesto, he draws the young Italian and his girlfriend Maria into his diabolical plan: a robbery of his bank. The thriller starring Bruon Ganz is set in Lugano and is the first official Swiss-Italian co-production.

Twenty-seven-year-old Noriko lives with her widowed father, a university professor, in a small house in the tranquil surroundings of northern Kamakura. He is completing a scientific manuscript, aided by his assistant, Hattori. Professor Sonomiya is concerned for his daughter s welfare, and one day suggests she marry Hattori. Noriko only laughs at his suggestion because she is quite happy with her life and knows that Hattori is already engaged. Her aunt Masa, the professor s sister, is the next person to try out her matchmaking skills, and she talks Noriko into meeting Mr Satake. Although Noriko quite likes him, she rejects all thoughts of marriage because she doesn t want to leave her father all alone. When she meets Professor Onodera, an old friend of her father s, in a museum one day and he tells her that he has just remarried, Noriko can hardly disguise her dismay. One of Ozu's favorite themes is the opposing desires of and friction between members of a family even though they feel deep affection and loyalty to each other. Inevitably, these interactions within a family, and particularly the problems which arise between parents and children, will result in some sort of separation. For Noriko it is the separation of marriage, in other Ozu stories it may mean being employed away from home or death. While Ozu is saddened by these events, he also recognizes that they are unavoidable. This awareness of the inherent transience and sadness of human existence is what the Japanese call mono no aware." Beverley Bare Buehrer

IN BETWEEN captures the daily duality of three young Palestinian women in Tel Aviv, caught between hometown tradition and big city abandon, and the price they must pay for a lifestyle that seems obvious to many: the freedom to work, party, fuck, and choose.

If you were to ask a group of film experts which country is currently the least appropriate setting for a hilarious, truly wacky romantic comedy, the chances are that Saudi Arabia would come out on top. But their guesses would be wrong, as Barakah yoqabil Barakah provides more than enough evidence to the contrary. He’s a municipal civil servant from Jeddah whose origins are humble to say the least, while she’s a wild beauty, the adopted daughter of a rich couple whose marriage has suffered due to their lack of biological children. He’s also an amateur actor in a theatre company rehearsing a production of "Hamlet", while she functions as a crowd-puller for her stylish adoptive mother’s boutique and runs her own boisterous, widely-seen vlog. Fate brings them together - in an environment hostile to dating of any kind. But the two of them show breathtaking ingenuity to circumvent the system of tradition, etiquette and religious police - with the crucial help of a quirky midwife and a pink push up bra. Barakah yoqabil Barakah is a film for anyone who’s always wanted to know just what else is going on in Saudi Arabia

Rocha's film debut: The fishermen in a village in Bahia on the north coast of Brazil have to rent their net from a trader and give up 90 percent of the catch. What's more, the net owner keeps threatening to take their tools away from them. The black community, like two years later in "Deus e o Diabo na Terra do Sol", does not rebel; they endure exploitation by the white crook in the belief that one day the gods will help it out of their misery. Firmino, a young man with new ideas who has returned from the city to his village, rebels against fatalism. He cuts the fishermen's net, which belongs to the merchant, in order to persuade them to help themselves. Glauber Rocha, in his first work, draws not only the rhythm of his sequences, but also the essence of his narrative from the sometimes calm and sensual, sometimes excited and inexorable play of sea and earth. By describing the simple life of the slave descendants, he anchors his film in reality. The film resembles a free, unleashed poem and still grips today through the charisma of its images.

After the sudden death of the town's mayor, Pierre, an idealistic young doctor, is appointed to replace him. He intends to continue the policy of his predecessor, who dreamed of rehabilitating this working-class neighbourhood. Haby, a young French woman of Malian origin living in one of the dilapidated tower blocks, refuses to see her family being driven out of the neighbourhood where she grew up. Following his brilliant feature film debut "Les Misérables", which – among other awards – won the Jury Prize at Cannes, Ladj Ly is returning with another thrilling story. "Bâtiment 5" deals with the growing housing crisis and its consequences, prejudices and police assaults in the form of a haunting, multi-faceted story. A movie full of anger - but also full of hope!

A film from and about rural Europe capturing a timeless cultural event: a series of head-to-head fights of cows, not bulls, set in a valley in sunny Southern Switzerland. The fights are sudden snorting seesaws, explosions of mass and muscle, archaic and wild. We follow three concurrent story lines: an anxious farmer with his beloved contender, a neurotic unemployed reporter from Zurich come to find a story and a gang of adolescent boys on mopeds trying to catch a pretty girl's eye. This black and white film tries to capture the balance between fascinating tradition and modernity.

The revolution film par excellence, here in the German needle-tone version of 1930: The film presents a dramatized version of the mutiny that occurred in 1905 when the crew of the Russian battleship Potemkin rebelled against their officers. Battleship Potemkin was named the greatest film of all time at the Brussels World's Fair in 1958. In 2012, the British Film Institute named it the eleventh greatest film of all time.

Hushpuppy, an intrepid six-year-old girl, lives with her father, Wink in 'the Bathtub', a southern Delta community at the edge of the world. Wink’s tough love prepares her for the unraveling of the universe—for a time when he’s no longer there to protect her. When Wink contracts a mysterious illness, nature flies out of whack—temperatures rise, and the ice caps melt, unleashing an army of prehistoric creatures called aurochs. With the waters rising, the aurochs coming, and Wink’s health fading, Hushpuppy goes in search of her lost mother.

Astrid and her siblings count themselves lucky to be growing up on their parents’ parsonage farm in Vimmerby. Although their daily routine is shaped by strict religious values, their mother Hanna and father Samuel always manage to give them security and a sense of freedom. Astrid’s parents enable her to attend a secondary school that would normally be the preserve of wealthy bourgeois kids, and they do not get in the way of the 18-year-old when the owner of the local newspaper offers her a position as a volunteer in the editorial office. Not only does Reinhold Blomberg teach her to proof-read and write texts, he also falls in love with her. When she becomes pregnant, Astrid makes a momentous decision: she refuses to marry him and instead decides to take care of herself and her son Lasse on her own. In her film about the youth of the writer Astrid Lindgren (1907–2002), Pernille Fischer Christensen portrays a strong, independent young woman who breaks social norms and faces difficult decisions with courage. Alba August plays Astrid as both wild and thoughtful, a responsible young woman battling her own feelings of guilt.

Giulia Tonelli, principal dancer at the Zurich Opera House, returns from maternity leave. She has to fight to find her place and a new balance, between the competitive and extremely demanding world of an elite ballet company and her new family life. The documentary is an unprecedented immersion in the microcosm of a great opera house from 2019-2021, an intimate and committed look at the journey of a woman who reclaims her own body and herself to be back on stage. Laura Kaehr's film won the "Audience Award" at the Zurich Film Festival in 2022.

The 1960s in Indonesia were a period of dramatic political change and turmoil, with Suharto’s coup ousting Sukarno and leading to a violent anti-communist purge. Nana, a gentle, beautiful young woman, has been badly affected by the conflict. Her husband was kidnapped and taken into the forest. Although she managed to escape from the gang leader who wanted to force her to marry him, the incident cost her father his life and drove her into poverty. Several years later, she is living comfortably as the second wife of a rich Sundanese man, with a maid to help her adjust to her new environment. But Nana’s past re-emerges in her dreams. Kamila Andini’s elegant direction effectively adopts her protagonist’s point of view, integrating her trauma into the film’s narration. Played with subtlety by Happy Salma, the secretive Nana seems never quite certain about her husband’s death and her memories are, perhaps for her own good, not always complete. This ambiguity informs the film and, combined with lush cinematography and a deep sense of nostalgia, makes Nana an elegiac wonder. At its heart lies an unexpected female friendship that feels like a crucial lifeline among the sea of adversities caused by men’s brutality.

Eleven-year-old Chala (Armando Valdés Freire) lives with his addict mother Sonia (Yuliet Cruz). In order to provide for the two of them, he raises carrier pigeons and trains fighting dogs with a man who may or may not be his biological father. School provides a stabilizing force in Chala's life, thanks to his close relationship with his spirited sixty-something teacher, Carmela (Alina Rodríguez). When the boy is sent off to live in a "re-education facility" and Carmela mounts a campaign to have him released, she becomes the target of a witch hunt spearheaded by a school board administrator who regards Carmela's permissive beliefs as incongruent with the new Cuba. But the idealistic, strong-willed woman remains defiant and manages to recruit allies from amongst her fellow teachers, leading to a conflict in which one boy's future reflects the systemic dynamics of contemporary Cuba.

A three-year journey with actor Bruno Ganz. He plays various roles in various places, but he also plays Bruno Ganz – filming and directing friends. Again and again he works on the role of Dr. Faust, the figure who – speaking for us all – desperately wants to discover “what holds the world together at the core”. A thousand days of searching for one's own destiny, with despair as the only companion, and placing hope in the creative power of poetry.

Is it possible to talk with animals? The filmmaker explores the world of animal communication. She wants to understand her excited dog Bina. On her international journey she meets two horse teachers, an animal communicator, a biologist, an animal therapist and the founder of The Trust Technique. Salome discovers astonishing possibilities of animal communication, whether it's with her dog Bina, other dogs, horses, cats, dolphins, or a goat.

Young Irina, a Russian call girl, finds herself in a fairytale Alpine country. There, her clientele grows to include representatives from business, politics, the military and the media. As a reward for her services, she is to receive the coveted Swiss passport. But through a misunderstanding, she triggers the coup d'état planned many years ago by a forgotten patriotic organization: the Berezina Alarm. With unforeseen consequences for her and Switzerland.

The Kempf family lives on three different farms at different altitudes in the Schächen Valley in the Canton of URI. ten times a year they move from farm to farm with their livestock: up the mountain in the spring, down to the valley in autumn – and then up again in winter to farm their called “Pfaffen”, at an altitude of 1725 meters above sea level. This is where they feed their livestock the hav they have collected from the steep alpine slopes during the summer. The film is an intimate portrait of a family, with who the farmer's grandparents and his sister also live. Over the course of the year, the film director and the family developed a close relationship, close enough to render visible the problems of modern times in conjunction with this archaic lifestyle, problems which the farmers refuse to let get them down.

Boobs. Melons. Bazookas: American director Kristen Vermilyea has large breasts, neck pain, back pain and balance issues.
 Her decision to get a reduction triggers questions about identity, aging and bodies. Kristen departs on a series of wacky and humorous adventures before going under the knife.

Talented swimmer, motivated apprentice, cool buddy: Beyto is in the midst of life, with a bright future ahead of him. One would think. But when the only son of a Turkish migrant family falls in love with his coach Mike, an ideal world falls to pieces. In shock and ashamed, his parents only see one way out: Beyto must marry in order to save face and tradition. They lure him to their home village and plan his wedding with Seher, his childhood friend. Suddenly, Beyto finds himself in a disruptive love triangle: How can he get back to Mike without destroying Seher’s future? A subtle, summerly sensuous love story about three young people.

Philippe Abrams is director of the Salon-de-Provence post office. To make his wife happy, Philippe commits fraud in order to obtain a transfer to the Côte d'Azur. But he is found out: he is transferred to Bergues, a little town in the North instead. For the Abrams family – Southerners full of prejudices – the North is an awful, cold region inhabited by uncivilised people who speak an incomprehensible language, known as "cheutimi". Philippe moves there alone... The secret to the success of Dany Boon's hilarious comedy, which attracted more than 800,000 viewers to Swiss cinemas in 2008, lies in its pointed wit and subtle irony, which skillfully plays with clichés and regional identities. Boon, who himself comes from the northern region of France, has succeeded in making an unconventional, lively film about friendship; a global hym to local dialects.

How can one talk about feminist struggles in a tender way with an enlightened patriarch? Under the influence of a very personal poetic potion, Nadia Fares transforms the homage to her beloved Egyptian father into a chronicle of the situation of women in Egypt and in Switzerland. She explores the effects of patriarchal tradition as a mirror effect between Orient and Occident.

At the beginning of the 19th century the discovery of the wide-open spaces of the United States and its incredible wildlife was key in the political development of the country. Intent on painting all the birds of America, John-James Audubon became a central figure of America’s national identity. But as these birds started disappearing with the dawn of the industrial era, so did the original American dream. In this “river movie” along the banks of the Mississippi, political, environmental and human rights issues are interwoven with the tales, myths and ghosts of these now extinct birds.

The origins of the Colombian drug trade, through the epic story of an indigenous Wayúu family that becomes involved in the booming business of selling marijuana to American youth in the 1970s. When greed, passion and honour collide, a fratricidal war breaks out that will put their lives, their culture and their ancestral traditions at stake. «A film of both gangsters and spirits. A family film, an ensemble story of strong, intuitive, resilient and powerful women, who wait at home for unconscious, impulsive, fearful men, as they talk, they negotiate, they run around. Intuition vs reason, innocence vs vengeance, word vs honour. All in telling the great tragedy that would curse us forever. The great taboo that we are not allowed to discuss. Told, for once, in an intimate, personal way. Our own way. That soft breeze that seemed to come to refresh, and became the ravaging storm that showed us the true face of capitalism, its purest form. Our Jayeechi, our birdsong.» Cristina Gallego/Ciro Guerra

Birdwatchers (La terra degli uomini rossi) is a film set in Brazil, in the Matto Grosso do Sul. It depicts the breakdown of a community of Guarani-Kaiowa native Indians whilst attempting to reclaim their ancestral land from a local farmer.

Although sixteen-year-old Peter would rather lie by the swimming pool watching girls, he instead has to monitor customers in a supermarket to make sure they don't steal anything. He has problems at work, for example when he sees a suspicious customer in a supermarket but doesn't dare to talk to him. At home, he constantly receives teachings from his pedantic father; his girlfriend has laid eyes on someone else. With amateur actors and Jan Nemecek's poetic camera work, young Miloš Forman captures the authenticity of ordinary summer days in a small Czech town in the early 1960s. At the same time he expresses the feelings of awakening rebellion in the youth of the Eastern Bloc, just a few years before the Prague Spring. A seismographic film and a strong contemporary document.

Out of paranoid fear of a nuclear catastrophe, an elderly couple isolates themselves from the outside world in their small suburban villa. An apocalyptic retreat told with a pinch of humor that makes one shudder and at the same time smile every now and then. Will the couple find their way out of isolation again? A chef d'oeuvre that already shows the situation of being quarantined in 1970.

Etero, a 48-year-old woman living in a small village in Georgia, never wanted a husband. She cherishes her freedom as much as her cakes. But her choice to live alone is the cause of much gossip among her fellow villagers. Unexpectedly, she finds herself passionately falling for a man, and is suddenly faced with the decision to pursue a relationship or continue a life of independence. Etero must grapple with her feelings and decide how to find her own path to happiness. With "Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry", which premiered at the Cannes Directors' Fortnight in 2023 and won the Swiss Film Award for Best Feature Film in 2024, director Elene Naveriani tells the story of a woman who strives for her own freedom and has to fight against the social constructions in and around her. The film is based on the Georgian novel of the same name by Tamta Melashvili.

Inspired by the life of Blaze Foley, the unsung songwriting legend of the Texas outlaw music movement that spawned the likes of Merle Haggard and Willie Nelson, Blaze weaves together three different periods of time, braiding re-imagined versions of Blaze’s past, present and future. The different strands explore his love affair with Sybil Rosen; his last, dark night on earth; and the impact his songs and death had on his fans, friends and foes. The braided storyline terminates in an ending that acknowledges Blaze’s profound highs and lows, as well as the impressions he made on the people who shared his journey.

7 short films by 7 directors that revolve around the most beautiful thing in the world, the butterflies in your stomach, the clammy hands on the first date, all the unexpected things that can happen when you go on a blind date. Einfach so Christoph Schaub (Switzerland, 1997, 14 Min.) Angela has planned her blind date perfectly: She will arrive early at the restaurant, so she can get a good look of the stranger before he sees her. For reassurance she takes along her trusty companion, her dog Zacki. The stranger is late to arrive and a series of misunderstandings begin to create havoc... Fortunately she has Zacki by her side, who saves the day and finds her the man of her dreams. Le chevalier à la rose Blaise Biguet (Switzerland, 1997, 17 Min.) Sepp, a young farmer, doesn’t want to have anything to do with the Montandons daughter nor with arranged marriages. Against his parents’ advice, he signs up to a dating agency and decides to travel to Lausanne to meet Rosa, his first blind date. On the train his fellow passengers begin to take a strange interest in him... Little Sister Anka Schmid (Switzerland, 1997, 16 Min.) Lisa, a young, shy post office employee, lives life as a recluse. Matters of the heart have never been her strong point. Mona, her sister, places an ad in the newspaper for her. Lisa at first doesn’t approve of this intrusion into her private life, but then as 19 men respond to the ad, she is temped. Angélique Samir (Switzerland, 1997, 11 Min.) Allesandro can’t believe his eyes, when he sees his sexy, beautiful blind date walk into the café they had arranged to meet at. He feels too intimidated to talk to her and tries to slip off unnoticed. But Angelique is a woman who knows what she wants and doesn’t take no for an answer. She follows him through the streets of the city, right up to the roof of his house where Alessandro tries to hide away... Joyeux Noël Bianca Conti Rossini (Switzerland, 1997, 11 Min.) On Christmas Eve Annie, a young girl with a lively imagination, wonders who the stranger is her mother Lise has invited to join them for dinner. What if he’s the murderer who has been roaming the streets of the city, preying on single women ? Her mother becomes wary as well and panic sets in when the doorbell rings. Who’s this stranger trying to force his way into the house ? L'hacienda du bonheur Heikki Arekallio (Switzerland, 1997, 12 Min.) In her grey, sad council flat Silvia dreams of a life, like those of the glamorous characters in her favourite telenovela "L’Hacienda du Bonheur", which she watches every night with her two children Johnny and Pamela. In a bid to find a soul mate, that lives up to her fictional expectations, she decides to place an add in the local newspaper... Les voies du Seigneur Antoine Plantevin (Switzerland, 1997, 16 Min.) Sister Angelique is praying with all her might for Rinalde to arrive – a prisoner on leave who was meant to meet her, but hasn’t turned up yet. The Mother Superior, who walks in on her praying in the chapel, strongly advises her to be cautious of men; perverts who could take advantage of her innocence. Sister Angelique listens to her words of wisdom, but when she hears Rinalde’s motorbike pull up outside, she rushes out to greet him. May the Lord be with her !

Sandro is a forty-something teacher and still lives with his parents, who constantly meddle in his private life. He shows little interest in the blind dates his friend Iva pressures him to go on. On an outing to the Black Sea, he falls in love with the hairdresser Manana. When her husband Tengo is released from jail early, Sandro’s predicament takes on absurd dimensions. He gets caught up in wild family disputes and feels compelled to move Natia, pregnant with Tengo’s child, into his parents’ home. Wrong conclusions and misunderstandings are the driving force of this melancholy comedy, in which everyone meddles with everything but no one really listens, which only leads to yet further confusion. When in doubt, they all argue together with true ferocity, the situation invariably ending in intense outbursts. Levan Koguashvili’s second feature is thus in keeping with the best traditions of Georgian cinema. The narrative tone stays calm, as the events come thick and fast. Unsentimental, with various ellipses and allusions, and shot with wonderful colour compositions and an incredible feel for space, architecture and cityscapes, the film ultimately attains extraordinary profundity.

A revelatory, thrilling and emotional journey behind the scenes of Blue Note Records. Since 1939, Blue Note has been inspiring generations of musicians in search of individual expression. Through current recording sessions, rare archive material and in talks with Blue Note stars such as Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter and Ambrose Akinmusire, Sophie Huber tells of the dawn of jazz to Hip-Hop.

A fast-paced film about people whose feet are their primitive and powerful instrument of artistic expression. Beginning with “bödele” in Central Switzerland, this film journeys from tap dance and flamenco to Irish dance. The rhythmic stamping of the shoes is reminiscent of ethnic ritualistic folk dances. Evolving from the “dances of the folk” are show and competition dance. The film provides insight into passionate dancers and people who express joy, desire and sadness through rhythm with their feet.

Three people live in a remote Buddhist monastery near Mount Chonan: Hyegok, the old master; Yong Nan, a young man who has left his extended family in the city to seek enlightenment, and an orphan lad Haejin, whom Hyegok has brought to the monastery to raise as a monk. The story is mostly Yong Nan's, told in flashbacks: how he came to the monastery, his brief return to the city, his vacillation between the turbulence of the world and his hope to overcome passions and escape the idea of self. We also see Hyegok as a teacher, a protector, and a father figure, and we watch Haejin make his way as a curious and nearly self-sufficient child.

Janusz is not a man to be easily shocked. As coroner he undertakes precise research, analysing the crime scene in minute detail. Despite the extreme situations he comes up against, he works hard. Perhaps too hard. Yet when faced with his anorexic daughter Olga, still grieving for her dead mother, he feels helpless. Fearing that she might kill herself, he commits her to a clinic where Anna, a psychologist, carries out her duties. Years before, Anna lost her baby to cot-death and now sequesters herself and her big dog in a heavily barricaded flat and conjures up spirits who communicate with the living from beyond the grave. Małgorzata Szumowska works with elements of black comedy to tell of the difficulties people encounter when struggling to cope with the loss of loved ones. The film explores the fear of and yet longing for intimacy, self-harm due to mental anguish and escaping into the esoteric. A complex meditation on the loneliness of the heart and the conflict between the rational and belief in a supernatural universe.

Chef Andy (Stephen Graham) is under stress: his luxury restaurant has just been stripped of two stars, all the tables are overbooked because of the holiday season, and his former mentor, a culinary icon, has shown up unannounced accompanied by a respected food critic. If that wasn’t enough, the mounting pressure is slowly but surely bringing the mood of his team members, helmed by sous chef Carly (Vinette Robinson), to the boil. How long will Andy manage to keep it all together? Director Philip Barantini takes us on a breathless journey through the fascinating hustle and bustle of a gourmet kitchen where different minds collide. Shot in one single impressive sequence that condenses an evening at the restaurant into 94 minutes, "Boiling Point" casts its inevitable spell.

Boundary-pushing dancer Ida Rubinstein selects Maurice Ravel to compose the music for her next ballet. Ravel ends up creating his greatest success ever: Boléro. With Raphaël Personnaz, Doria Tillier, Jeanne Balibar, Emmanuelle Devos, Vincent Perez, Suzanne Clément and Sophie Guillemin.

One city, four people, many stories: Shai is new in Bombay. The young amateur photographer wants to explore her parents' home country with her camera. She meets the unapproachable artist Arun and spends a night with him. Her paths separate. And while Arun gets lost in the fateful video diaries of the unknown housewife Yasemin, Shai makes friends with the washer Munna contrary to all conventions. He leads her through the remotest corners of the pulsating and modern metropolis, falls in love and begins to dream of the impossible.

Life is no bed of roses for 52-year-old Juan "Coco" Villegas. He, who has been a gas station attendant for twenty years in Patagonia, finds himself jobless overnight. He first tries to survive by selling knives of his own making. But business is bad and he can't find real work. One day though, after fixing a vehicle on a farm, he acquires a beautiful Argentinian watch dog. From this blessed day on, things start shaping well at last...

A crazy referendum throws Switzerland into a state of emergency. By the acceptance of the initiative “No Bilangue” there should be from now on only one national language: French. Many German-speaking Swiss are therefore having a crisis. Including fifty-six-year-old Walter Egli, who works for the Federal Police and must ensure that the transition to monolingualism is carried out properly. Although he hardly speaks any French himself, he is sent to Ticino with a French-speaking partner to uncover a Ticino resistance group that is fighting the new law by all means necessary. Peter Luisi and Beat Schlatter have created a wonderfully contemporary hymn to multilingualism in the form of a comedy that has attracted over 350,000 viewers to Swiss cinemas. Luisi and Schlatter were nominated for the Swiss Film Award for Best Screenplay.

To celebrate the centenary of Jorge Luis Borges' birth, Tristán Bauer has created a very stimulating film essay: Skilfully, respectfully and poetically, he mixes archive documents, conversations and photographs of the writer's life, which reflect Borges' political stance, his problems with the Perón regime and his international successes. Tristán Bauer does not limit himself to a historian's work, he subtly reconstructs the writer's world: infinite fountains of the strange library of Babel, numerous corridors, circles, mirrors, stairs and hexagons.

Two brothers, 17-year-old Farrukh and 7-year-old Azamat, leave town to join their doctor-father, travelling cross-country through imposingly stark Tajikistan on a ramshackle cargo train. Their journey is punctuated by numerous experiences which carry them into the lives of strangers and through the endearing emotional odyssey of their own relationship. When they reach the father who initially does not recognize them, their hopes for a better life are crushed. Turning back on each other, the brothers resume their journey.

Bratsch, located in the Leuk mountains, is an Upper Valais village with a magnificent view of the Rhone Valley. Just one hundred people still lived in the village in 2015. Since the municipality merger with Gampel down in the valley, the school building has stood empty. Something was about to change. The film documents the development and changes in the village from the reopening of the school in autumn 2016 to the present.

The rich Bodenbauer practices factory farming, while his tenant Hans, does not like the idea of industrial animal farming. But he seems compelled to do so after Bodenbauer terminated a large piece of his land. The old veterinarian in the village encourages him not to give up easily.

It is love at first sight for fun-loving Robin Cavendish (Andrew Garfield) meeting the smart blonde Diana (Claire Foy) in 1950s England. Things appear to be going perfectly, until one day Robin is diagnosed with polio. Paralysed from the neck down, doctors give him just months to live. Against all medical advice and the fact that no polio patient has ever survived outside a hospital environment, Diana takes her husband home. Together they begin a battle, not only against the illness and its resulting constraints it causes, but also against the prejudices they experience. The pair set off on a journey with such dedication and zest for life that it is not only on their own lives that they begin to have an influence… Andy Serkis’ classically staged directing debut is based on the true story of the Brit Robin Cavendish.

This documentary takes a multi-layered approach to Saint Nicholas of Flüe. Rare witness accounts and quotations from his transmitted mystical texts, in particular the vision of the tower and the fountain, paint a portrait of a multifaceted and historically significant personality. Restored version.

At a time when audiences are filling up the cinemas to see the feature adaptation of Bruno Manser's Life in the Jungle, Christof Kühn's successful documentary BRUNO MANSER - LAKI PENAN from 2007, now digitialized for online streaming, is the perfect choice. With original film and sound recordings by Manser and interviews with his companions in the Borneo jungle, this documentary provides an authentic insight into the adventurous life of the Swiss environmental activist.

Revisit with the remaining original members of the Buena Vista Social Club and explore their contribution to the unknown history of Cub

Beyond the occasional news clip from Burma, the acclaimed filmmaker Anders Østergaard, brings us close to Burma’s video journalists who insist on keeping up the flow of news from their closed country despite risking torture and life in jail. Armed with small handycams they make their undercover reportages, smuggle the material out of the country, and broadcast back into Burma via satellite or offered as free usage for international media.

Deliveryman Jongsu is out on a job when he runs into Haemi, a girl who once lived in his neighborhood. She asks if he'd mind looking after her cat while she's away on a trip to Africa. On her return she introduces to Jongsu an enigmatic young man named Ben, who she met during her trip. And one day Ben tells Jongsu about his most unusual hobby... The film premiered at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival, where it competed for the Palme d'Or; it ended up receiving the FIPRESCI International Critics' Prize at the festival.

Emre, a young and dedicated prosecutor, is newly appointed to a small town hit by a water crisis and political scandals. After an initial welcome, he experiences an increasing number of tense interactions and is reluctantly dragged into local politics. When Emre forms a bond with the owner of the local newspaper pressure escalates under heated rumours.

During World War II, Antonio (Nino Manfredi), Gianni (Vittorio Gassman) and Nicola (Stefania Sandrelli) are activists fighting for Italy's liberation from Nazi occupation. When the war ends and their ideals must change, the three men take different life paths. Antonio and Nicola incorporate their beliefs into adulthood, whereas Gianni takes a more affluent job as a lawyer's assistant. When the group reunites after several decades, their discourse unearths hostility and unsettling realizations.

Max is a battle-weary veteran of the wedding-planning racket. His latest — and last — gig is a hell of a fête, involving stuffy period costumes for the caterers, a vain, hyper- sensitive singer who thinks he's a Gallic James Brown, and a morose, micromanaging groom determined to make Max's night as miserable as possible. But what makes the affair too bitter to endure is that Max's colleague and ostensible girlfriend, Joisette, seems to have written him off, coolly going about her professional duties while openly flirting with a much younger server. It's going to be a very long night… especially once the groom's aerial serenade gets underway.

Barbara Hug (Marie Leuenberger) is a young radical lawyer fighting Switzerland’s antiquated prison system in the 1980s. Walter Stürm (Joel Basman) is a charmer and chancer. Taunting the establishment with his outrageous thefts and media savvy he’s in and often escaping out of jail and becomes known as the Jailbreak King. When the two meet an unlikely alliance is formed.

Adam, a simple fisherman's son, joins the prestigious Al-Azhar University in Cairo, the epicenter of power in Sunni Islam. On the first day of classes, the Grand Imam at the head of the institution suddenly dies. Adam finds himself at the heart of a relentless power struggle between the country's religious and political elites.

Melodrama and thriller, social drama and love story in one, the masterly feature film by the Egyptian director Youssef Chahine, made in 1958, is located entirely on the station grounds. The old Madbouli is the owner of a kiosk at Cairo's main railway station. One day he finds a half-starved, poor man at the edge of the tracks. Madbouli feels sorry for the sad-looking, limping farmer Kenaoui and hires him as a flying newspaper salesman. At work, Kenaoui meets the beautiful Hanouma every day, who also earns her living at the station by supplying travellers with lemonade drinks. Kenaoui falls for the cheerful woman and makes it his goal to marry her. Lonely and in obsessive longing, he cuts out lightly dressed women from magazines in his hut at the edge of the train station in the evening, hanging his walls with them. Although he knows that Hanouma is already promised to the suitcase porter and trade unionist Abou Serih, one day he reveals his feelings to her and proposes to her. Her rejection, soaked with mockery and ridicule, drives Kenawi further into a rage-drenched obsession for Hanuma. Restored version.

Camille, a young idealistic photojournalist, goes to the Central African Republic to cover the civil war that is brewing up. What she sees there will change her destiny forever. - By adopting the lead character’s first name for the film’s title, Boris Lojkine’s approach shows all its humility. He applies the same dignified treatment to the tragic fate of a country and its inhabitants as he does to the true story of Camille, a young woman who observes and inhabits the world with rare intensity and tries desperately to account for the conflicts and drama in a Black Africa that the West would rather ignore.

Sebastián (Rodrigo De la Serna, THE MOTORCYCLE DIARIES) is a slacker who is not keen on getting a proper job, much to the disappointment of his wife. When Sebastián and his wife move to a new apartment, they constantly get wrong phone calls intended for a car service company. One day, Sebastián impulsively decides to answer the phone and pretends to be employed by the car service. Just like that, Sebastián has a new job and enjoys driving people in his beloved vintage Peugeot 505. He isn’t fond of one of his passengers, an elderly man named Jalil (Ernesto Suárez) who depends on Sebastián’s car services quite a bit; then one day, Jalil asks Sebastián to drive him almost 3000 kilometres, from Buenos Aires to La Paz, Bolivia. Sebastián agrees only for the money but as the two men take the long road journey, they encounter unexpected challenges which change their lives.

Peru, at the height of the political crisis of the 1980’s. Georgina is a young woman from the Andes whose newborn daughter is stolen at a fake health clinic. Her desperate search for the child leads her to the headquarters of a major newspaper, where she meets Pedro Campos, a lonely journalist who takes on the investigation. Based on a true story.

A mediocre musician dreams of becoming a rock star: Julius sets out to find legendary American guitar maker Elmore Silk, with whom he wants to make a deal. He follows Silk's tracks and meets important people from his past. A journey during which the "American Dream" is taken ad absurdum. Atmospherically staged road movie through the USA with a soundtrack by Tom Waits, Leon Redbone, Arto Lindsay, Joe Strummer and David Johansen.

In Lebanon, many parents can simply not afford to have their children officially registered. As a result, these undocumented kids do not exist in the eyes of the state and have no rights. That is the fate of young Zain. But Zain is a fighter: even at his young age, he is already supporting his family with various odd jobs. When Zain's parents plan to marry off his eleven-year-old sister Sahar, Zain does everything in his power to stop them.

Mahmoud and Fawzi have been living in the Zaatari Refugee Camp in Jordan. Though they both have no sense of what the future holds for them, they focus their energy together on their first love: soccer. Despite the dire circumstances in the camp, they practice day in and day out, believing firmly that playing professionally is their ticket to freedom. When Aspire Academy, one of the world’s leading sports academies, arrives to pick players for an international tournament in Doha, they quickly identify Mahmoud as a talent and fly him there, while Fawzi is left behind due to a technicality. Mahmoud is boarding a plane for the first time and is taking in the experience, while Fawzi is facing the difficult reality in Zaatari. Unexpectedly, the Aspire coaches decide to fly Fawzi in to join his team. The two best friends train and compete in the most important soccer matches of their lives, while their families in Zaatari watch via satellite. After the final match, they speak at a press conference. On behalf of the displaced people of Syria, they make clear that people need an opportunity, not pity. Three years later they grew to young men. They are still stuck in Zaatari, still troubled by fears of an insecure future.

Within the large halls of a big house by the sea, Sara and her nanny Yarisa have forged a friendship so intense that it seems like a fantasy. While Sara finds in Yarisa the affectionate mother she never had, Yarisa finds in Sara not only affection, but also the illusion of a more comfortable life, away from the financial dramas of her background. That fantasy becomes affected, though not destroyed, when Yarisa finds herself forced to deal with her past and her biological daughter Mallory. But a rainy night and a muddy road invaded by goats will be enough for chaos to ensue. Like Yarisa, the film also splits: between crime and emotions, between the sea and the muddy roads, between light and darkness, and between those who rebel and those who still dream of belonging. The illusion of a love above any social difference rips to shreds and, in one single movement, reveals the structures that render it impossible.

Forty years ago, during the uprising to overthrow the Shah’s regime in Iran, protestors set fire to movie theaters as a way of showing opposition to Western culture. Many cinemas were burned down. In one tragic case, a theater was set on fire with four hundred people inside, most of whom were burned alive. Forty years have passed and, in contemporary Iran, four individuals also decide to burn a cinema down. Their intended target is a theater showing a film about an unearthed, unexploded missile. Will past and present meet?

They don’t wear uniforms or carry weapons. They have no bodyguards, but their missions lead them to the most dangerous parts of the world. They are equipped with laptops, cameras and sound recorders. Despite impossible working conditions, they collect the evidence for indictments against those who ordered some of the most serious crimes of our time – committed in Darfur, Uganda, The Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic – they are the investigators of the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

Werner Herzog gains exclusive access to film inside the Chauvet caves of Southern France and captures the oldest known pictorial creations of humanity

There’s a horse thief at large on the outskirts of Bishkek high up in the mountainous region of Kyrgyzstan’s capital. Otherwise not a lot happens in this small community that does at least boast a cinema. This is where stories of the war in Afghanistan, Bollywood fairy-tales from India or films by ex-Soviet director Tolomush Okeyev open up a window on the world. This is also where projectionist and horse thief Centaur lives with his deaf wife and young son. Theirs is a simple life and yet one that increasingly seems to fall foul of the jealously and intrigues of others. Centaur believes that the people of Kyrgyzstan themselves descend from centaurs, mythological half-human half-horse creatures, and that horses are, as he says, the wings of humankind’. Unfolding in contemplative images, Kyrgyz director Aktan Arym Kubat’s film is an allegorical tale of humans, animals and nature trying to live together whilst caught between faith and superstition, modernity and tradition. As in his award-winning film The Light Thief Aktan Arym Kubat himself once again plays the leading role.

A small group of indigenous Bolivian soldiers, under the commandment of a retired German General, wander in the Chaco desert looking for the Paraguayan enemy that they haven’t seen for months, and that they will never find. The monotonous grey landscape of the forest confuses them. The lack of water and food pressures them and all of their decisions are wrong, weakening the group’s spirit and generating a violent and quarrelsome environment between all of them, officials and soldiers, to the point that they try and get rid of one another. They are overcome by despair and constant uncertainty.

After 20 years of marriage, Maria decides to leave her husband. She moves into room 212 at the hotel across the street, with a bird’s-eye view of her apartment, her husband and the life she shared with him. While she wonders if she made the right decision, many of the people in her life offer their opinions on the matter. They intend to let her know, whether she likes it or not, on what proves to be a life-changing evening.

Three women in a bus in Lebanon. They have the same destination: a men's penitentiary. The first woman wants to visit her husband whom she hasn't seen since their day of marriage. The second one has only one goal: to get her husband who has to serve a long sentence to sign the divorce papers and thus gain back her freedom. The third woman is afraid. She carries the gun that her husband, a prison guardian, has forgotten at home. A straight road seems to be leading them quickly to their destination: from Beirut centre to the Mermel prison in the desert. However, the journey becomes complicated. The sound of a stray bullet causes quite a stir and also indicates that dangerous and terrible things are going on in this country which is at civil war. There are rumours about a massacre. Groups of refugees are spotted. The journey of the three women continues, a journey to the inner self of the country.

Char is an island in the river that forms the border between India and Bangladesh. It is there that a boy named Rubel and his family live, along with others who lost their homes. The island emerged like a gift that the river gave to the people as a refuge after it tore away their native village when the water levels rose. But this gift is built on sand, a fleeting environmental reaction after the dam upstream was put into operation. Out of necessity, the people - much like the birds - have made use of this new terrain and built up a contraband business. Livestock, alcohol, rice, and other wares are smuggled past the border patrols with admirable finesse: a heroic battle for survival that provides Rubel with just enough to let him dream of a better future, although (or because) Char will be merely one stage in his life. Sourav Sarangi observed this soggy microcosm over a number of years, using various different cameras to capture heterogeneous, at times almost apocalyptic images on film. His story of a boy growing up is left with an open ending, mixed with an oddly wonderful feeling of amazement.

The film paints the portrait of an old man who decides to abandon his comfortable bourgeois way of life and live with a Bohemian couple. There he rediscovers his freedom to think and his joie de vivre.

The latest documentary by Tristan Bauer took 12 years to complete. It is a unique and invaluable historical document — a jewel not to be missed—that offers us a different, more intimate and personal, perspective on the life of Ernesto Che Guevara than other films about him that have emerged recently. Presenting brilliantly edited archival material, including private documents and intimate recordings that have never been made available to the public before (including recordings of Che reading poems by Vallejo and Neruda to his wife, intimate family gatherings on 8mm, a speech given by Che in French), Bauer allows us to see the iconic figure as a hero but also as the larger-than-life passionate and idealistic human being that he was.

In the middle of the Aegean Sea, on a luxury yacht, six men on a fishing trip decide to play a game. During this game, things will be compared, measured and blood will be tested. Friends will become rivals, but at the end of the voyage, when the game is over, the winner will wear the victorious signet ring: the "Chevalier".

The theme of Fredi M. Murer's contribution to the episode film Swissmade is "Switzerland after us". Murer's episode takes place in the year 2069. An "integrated citizen with a latent tendency to become an unintegrated citizen" is commissioned by the "Brain Center" to produce a film report about the unknown mission of a foreign being. The alien being is an extraterrestrial designed by H. R. Giger long before ALIEN with a built-in camera and tape, which travels across the earth in the year 2069 to explore current conditions. The film reporter is Murer himself. Without exception, the performers in real life were authentic 1968 activists, some of whom later made political or artistic careers. In addition to this: Murer's freaky "Chicorée" with Urban Gwerder and one of the most spontious and colourful film ends ever.

One of a string of late-career masterworks made by Kenji Mizoguchi in the first half of the 1950s, A Story from Chikamatsu (a.k.a. The Crucified Lovers) is an exquisitely moving tale of forbidden love struggling to survive in the face of persecution. Based on a classic of eighteenth-century Japanese drama, the film traces the injustices that befall a Kyoto scroll maker’s wife and his apprentice after each is unfairly accused of wrongdoing. Bound by fate in an illicit, star-crossed romance, they go on the run in search of refuge from the punishment prescribed them: death. Shot in gorgeous, painterly style by master cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa, this delicately delivered indictment of societal oppression was heralded by Akira Kurosawa as a “great masterpiece that could only have been made by Mizoguchi.

Rahima (23) and Nedim (14) are orphans of the Bosnian war. They live in Sarajevo, a transitional society that has lost its moral compass, including in the way it treats children of the people who were killed fighting for the freedom of their city. After crime-prone adolescent years, Rahima has found comfort in Islam and she hopes her brother will follow in her footsteps. Their life of bare survival becomes even more difficult after Nedim gets into a fistfight with the son of a local strongman and breaks his expensive mobile phone. This incident triggers a chain of events leading Rahima to the discovery that her brother leads a double life.

Coming of age in Barrow, Alaska - the northernmost community of the United States - has become a little more complicated for the local youth than it was for their ancestors who originally named this place “Ukpiagvik” (“where we hunt snowy owls”). They are the twenty-first century descendants of a culture that has endured for millennia on this isolated, but rapidly changing tundra. The harvest of the agvik (bowhead whale) remains the heart of their culture. "Children of the Arctic" is a year-in-the-life portrait of Native Alaskan teenagers navigating between both being modern American teenagers and the inheritors of an endangered culture.

CHINESE PORTRAIT investigates the current state of China, taking the audience on a journey to discover the complexity of the country through the path of one family. The film is entirely composed of fixed long shots and is narrated from the personal point of view of established Chinese director WANG Xiaoshuai. Tracing his ancestors’ movements both on his father and mother’s sides, Wang tracks the history of an ordinary Chinese family over the course of the tumultuous last century. Wang Xiaoshuai is our main character and guide throughout the film. He introduces us to people from all walks of life: from Beijing’s white-collar workers who work tirelessly in the grind of urban life, to rural ethnic minorities who have lived according to the same customs for generations.

«Let's make a documentary together,» Chrigu says. «At some point, I'll get out of it». The documentary tells the story of a young man who had big plans for his life. After an advanced stage tumor is discovered in him at the age of 24, he fights for his life. Jan Gassmann accompanies him with his camera. The result is not a film about death, but rather about life. Powerful and without false sentimentality as well as deeply touching authenticity.

Croatia, January 1992. In the midst of the Yugoslav Wars, Chris, a young Swiss journalist is found dead in mysterious circumstances. He was wearing the uniform of an international mercenary group. Anja Kofmel was his cousin. As a little girl, she used to admire this handsome young man; now a grown-up woman, she decides to investigate his story, trying to understand what really was the involvement of Chris in the conflict

«Chronicle of a Disappearance» unfolds in a series of seemingly unconnected cinematic tableaux, each of them focused on incidents or characters which seldom reappear later in the film. Among the many unrelated scenes, there is a Palestinian actress struggling to find an apartment in West Jerusalem, the owner of the Holy Land souvenir shop preparing merchandise for incoming Japanese tourists, a group of old women gossiping about their relatives, and an Israeli police van which screeches to a halt so several heavily armed soldiers can get off the car and urinate.

The shooting of this farming chronicle in the Gruyère region lasted a whole year, from July 1989 to July 1990. A year of work and festivities in the family of Conrad and Louise Bapst, their children and grandchildren, who live in La Roche (canton of Fribourg). In summer, part of the family goes up to the upper pastures with the herd, and, for the next three months, will move six times as the grass for the cows grows in higher and higher places. Down at the farm, the rest of the family bring in the hay, the after crop, and tend the vegetable garden.Then come the autumn and winter chores, feast-days, the sale of cheeses, voting for or against the Swiss Army, the meetings to discuss whether or not to join the European Union. A patient and human approach to an almost silent minority of Switzerland.

June 1944. Allied Forces stand on the brink: a massive army is secretly assembled on the south coast of Britain, poised to re-take Nazi-occupied Europe. One man stands in their way: Winston Churchill. Behind the iconic figure and rousing speeches: a man who has faced political ridicule, military failure and a speech impediment. An impulsive, sometimes bullying personality - fearful, obsessive and hurting. Fearful of repeating, on his disastrous command, the mass slaughter of 1915, when hundreds of thousands of young men were cut down on the beaches of Gallipoli. Obsessed with fulfilling historical greatness: his destiny. Exhausted by years of war and plagued by depression, Churchill is a shadow of the hero who has resisted Hitler's Blitzkrieg. Should the D-Day landings fail, he is terrified he'll be remembered as an architect of carnage. Political opponents sharpen their knives. General Eisenhower and Field Marshal Montgomery are increasingly frustrated by Churchill's attempts to stop the invasion. King George VI must intervene. Only the support of Churchill's brilliant, yet exasperated wife Clementine can halt the Prime Minister's physical and mental collapse. The untold story of Britain's most celebrated leader, uncovering the true nature of Churchill's herculean war-time status and his vital relationship with "Clemmie" - his backbone and total confidant...the love that inspired him to greatness.

Before dying, Nora devises a plan to make José, ex-husband, take care of her funeral. But she misses something-the only flaw in the plan, a mysterious photograph left under the bed, will lead to an unexpected outcome that will remind us that sometimes the greatest love stories are hidden in the smallest places.

Photo?, the clown calls the public from the ring of the circus. The delicious number like the even more famous soap bubble number and other Pic classics can be enjoyed in "Le Cirque de Pic". They form the heart of Thomas Ott's affectionate portrait film. Emil Steinberger tells how he was enthusiastic about Pic from the beginning and how he recommended the clown from St.Gallen to the Roncalli Circus director. Ott reviews Pic's career. Pic himself tells how varied and romantic the spartan life in the circus caravan was. Photos show that the subtle art of the clown cannot be separated from the person Richard Hirzel, who knows how to enchant with his empathic poetry. The portrait closes with scenes from the current programme "Comical Bones", in which Pic shines as the narrator. It is Emil once again who praises Pic's subtle and expressive facial expressions.

CITIZENFOUR is a real life thriller, unfolding by the minute, giving audiences unprecedented access to filmmaker Laura Poitras and journalist Glenn Greenwald’s encounters with Edward Snowden in Hong Kong, as he hands over classified documents providing evidence of mass indiscriminate and illegal invasions of privacy by the National Security Agency (NSA).

CITIZENFOUR is a real life thriller, unfolding by the minute, giving audiences unprecedented access to filmmaker Laura Poitras and journalist Glenn Greenwald’s encounters with Edward Snowden in Hong Kong, as he hands over classified documents providing evidence of mass indiscriminate and illegal invasions of privacy by the National Security Agency (NSA).

The 2017 Nobel Prize in Chemistry transforms Jacques Dubochet’s life. Passing from the shadows to the light, he is solicited from all sides. What can he do with this voice, which is now being heard by everyone? How to define the struggles to be fought? How to become a “Nobel Citizen”, with the objective of assuming responsibility as a researcher and member of the human community? A speech by Greta Thunberg turns everything upside down.

Clara, 40, is believed to have a special connection to God. As a "healer", she sustains a family and a village in need of hope, while she finds solace in her relationship with the natural world. After years of being controlled by her mother’s repressive care, Clara’s sexual desires are stirred by her attraction to her niece’s new boyfriend. This newly awakened force takes Clara to unexplored territory, allowing her to cross boundaries, both physical and mystical. Empowered by her self-discovery, Clara gradually frees herself from her role as “saint” and begins to heal herself.

Man was made to be happy for simple reasons and unhappy for even simpler ones – just as he is born for simple reasons and dies for even simpler ones... Isa and Bahar are two lonely figures dragged through the ever-changing climate of their inner selves in pursuit of a happiness that no longer belongs to them.

Leo and Remi are two thirteen-year-old best friends, whose seemingly unbreakable bond is suddenly, tragically torn apart. Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, Lukas Dhont's second film is an emotionally transformative and unforgettable portrait of the intersection of friendship and love, identity and independence, and heartbreak and healing.

The young Miloš Hrma, who speaks with misplaced pride of his family of misfits and malingerers, is engaged as a newly trained station guard in a small railway station during the Second World War and the German occupation of Czechoslovakia. He admires himself in his new uniform, and looks forward, like his prematurely-retired railwayman father, to avoiding real work. The sometimes pompous stationmaster is an enthusiastic pigeon-breeder with a kind wife, but is envious of the train dispatcher Hubička's success with women. Miloš holds an as-yet platonic love for the pretty, young conductor Máša. The experienced Hubička presses for details of their relationship and realizes that Miloš is still a virgin. The idyll of the railway station is periodically disturbed by the arrival of the councillor, Zednicek, a Nazi collaborator, who spouts propaganda at the staff without success. At her initiative, Máša spends the night with Miloš, but in his youthful excitability he ejaculates prematurely before achieving penetration and then is unable to perform sexually; and the next day, despairing, he attempts suicide. He is saved, and a young doctor explains to him that ejaculatio praecox is normal at Miloš's age. The doctor recommends Miloš to "think of something else" (at which point Miloš volunteers an interest in football), and to seek the assistance of an experienced woman. During the nightshift, Hubička flirts with the young telegraphist, Zdenička, and imprints her thighs and buttocks with the office's rubber stamps. Her mother sees the stamps and complains to Hubička's superiors, and the ensuing scandal helps to frustrate the stationmaster's ambition of being promoted to inspector. The Germans and their collaborators are on edge, since their trains are being attacked by the partisans. A glamorous Resistance agent (a circus artist in peacetime), code-named Viktoria Freie, delivers a time bomb to Hubička for use in blowing up a large ammunition train. At Hubička's request, the "experienced" Viktoria also helps Miloš to resolve his sexual problem. The next day, at the crucial moment when the ammunition train is approaching, Hubička is caught up in a farcical disciplinary hearing, overseen by Zednicek, over his rubber stamping of Zdenička's backside. In Hubička's place, Miloš, liberated by his experience with Viktoria from his former passivity, takes the time bomb and drops it from a semaphore gantry, that extends transversely above the tracks, onto the train. A machine-gunner on the train, spotting Miloš, sprays him with bullets, and his body falls onto the train. With the Nazi collaborator Zednicek, winding up the disciplinary hearing, dismissing the Czech people as "nothing but laughing hyenas" (a phrase actually employed by the senior Nazi official Reinhard Heydrich, the implicit retort to his jibe comes in the form of a huge series of explosions that destroys the train. Now Hubička and the other railwaymen are indeed laughing - to express their joy at the blow to the Nazi occupiers - and it is left to a wistful Máša to pick up Miloš's uniform cap, hurled across the station by the power of the blast. (wp)

This May in the town seems to be warmer and gloomier than the previous years. Still, everyone seems to be happy despite their small worries and lives closed for any surprises. However, this happiness is a little disturbed by the arrival of Muzaffer who has made up his mind to shoot a film in this town where he had passed his childhood. "Clouds of May" tells the story of Muzaffer, who returns to his native town to make a movie. His father, Emin, is bent on saving the small forest he cultivates on his property from confiscation by the authorities. His nephew, nine year-old Ali, who wants a musical watch. He has to carry an egg in his pocket for 40 days without cracking it, according to terms of an agreement made with his aunt, who has promised in return to convince Ali's father to purchase this much wanted item for his son. And Muzaffer's cousin, Saffet, who is a young town dweller whose affords are all doomed to failure by bad luck (or is it by his own rebelliousness) and who dreams of going to Istanbul.

The first real professional success for famed French actress Maria Enders was twenty years ago as the co-lead in writer Wilhelm Melchoir's play and subsequent movie "Maloja Snake", he who picked Maria, then an unknown, personally. She played Sigrid, an opportunistic eighteen year old in an emotionally dependent lesbian relationship with forty year old Helena, who was at a vulnerable stage of her life. Maria has turned down the play's upcoming London revival in which she would now play Helena, it remounted by director Klaus Diesterweg. Her reasons for turning down the role are many including: being at a vulnerable stage of her own life going through a painful divorce; remembering the suicide of Susan Rosenberg, the original Helena, following the original run of the play, the suicide purportedly mirroring what happens to Helena; and the painful memories of the production in still having hard feelings toward who was her older male costar, Henryk Wald, with who she had an affair at the time. Maria reconsiders and accepts the role when Wilhelm unexpectedly passes away, she hearing the news en route to the Zurich Film Festival where she was to accept an award on recluse Wilhelm's behalf. Maria begins to regret her decision, largely due to having to work with nineteen year old Jo-Ann Ellis as Sigrid, Jo-Ann a trained actress whose Hollywood lifestyle is making her self-destruct, this behavior which Maria, who hates the Internet and the Hollywood gossip on it, did not know before signing the contract. But what may be most difficult for Maria is the role opening up her own professional relationship and friendship with her younger American personal assistant, Valentine, the two who are staying at Wilhelm's mountain retreat in Sils Maria in the Swiss Alps, where Maria is preparing for the play and where many of the locations were inspiration for the play's themes

In the ruins of post-war Poland, Wiktor (Tomasz Kot) and Zula (Joanna Kulig) fall deeply, obsessively and destructively in love. As performing musicians forced to play into the Soviet propaganda machine, they dream of escaping to the creative freedom of the West. But one day, as they spot their chance to make a break for Paris, both make a split decision that will mark their lives forever.

Keira Knightley plays the writer Colette, who stunned French society in the 1920s with her scandalous novels. The film follows Colette's rise from peasant girl to darling of the Parisian demimonde. «Colette» provides a riveting glimpse into the young woman's life, exploring her artistic genius as well as the abusive relationship with her mentor, played by Dominic West.

A collection of six short films from legendary film producer and critic Freddy Landry and Milos Films. A fascinating overview of French-speaking Swiss film-making, from the early 1970s to the mid-1980s of the francophone part of Switzerland and in the production work of Freddy Landry, who played an important role in discovering and fostering young talent. "Les petites magiciennes" by Vincent Mercier and Yves Robert was awarded the Short Film Palme d'Or in Cannes. C’était un dimanche en automne (Claude Champion, 1970) Marie Besson (Claude Champion, 1974) Claire au pays du silence (Marcel Schüpbach, 1974) Drift (Michel Rodde, 1974) Accalmie (Jean-Marc Bory, 1975) Les petites magiciennes (Yves Robert, Vincent Mercier, 1986)

With his films, Georges Schwizgebel has created classics of contemporary animation. "With his fluid metamorphoses, he is a "painter of the big screen". The sweeping camera movements in his film paintings transcend spatial and temporal boundaries with astounding continuity", reads the jury statement for the Honorary Award of the Swiss Film Awards, which Georges Schwizgebel received in 2018. A collection of 18 works full of poetry: Le Vol d’Icare (1974) Perspectives (1975) Hors-Jeux (1977) Le Ravissement de Frank N. Stein (1982) 78 tours (1985) Nakounine (1986) Le Sujet du tableau (1989) La Course à l’Abîme (1992) L’Année du Daim (1995) Zig Zag (1996) Fugue (1998) La Jeune Filles et les Nuages (2000) L’Homme sans Ombre (2004) Jeu (2006) Retouches (2008) Romance (2011) Chemin Faisant (2012) Le Roi des Aulnes - Erlkönig (2015)

The examination of objects from everyday culture is a trademark of Peter Volkart, both in his art objects and in his films. Volkart stages mysterious journeys that venture into unfamiliar territory and penetrate the consciousness in a wandering way, as in "Terra incognita". Peter Volkart's short films have a magical sort of appeal: they have been shown at numerous film festivals in Switzerland and abroad and have won many awards. Suburban Wildlife (1982, 3 min.) Monsieur Sélavy (2008, 10 min.) Terra incognita (2005, 15 min.) Ja ja, nein nein (2009, 20 min.) Zimmer 606 (2012, 15 min.) Subotika. Land of Wonders (2015, 14 min.)

1973. Uruguay is governed by a military dictatorship. One autumn night, three Tupamaro prisoners are taken from their jail cells in a secret military operation. The order is precise: "As we can’t kill them, let’s drive them mad." The three men will remain in solitary confinement for twelve years. Among them is Pepe Mujica - later to become president of Uruguay.

Originally planned as a joint train trip with her lover, the shy Finn Laura embarks on the journey to the north of Russia to visit ancient rock paintings alone by herself. When she is assigned her sleeping compartment, she finds her new companion is a rather obnoxious and crude vodka-drinking, shaven-headed miner named Ljoha. Over the next few days, the disparate passengers are forced to get along with each other in the close quarters of the compartment. Only when Laura gradually gives up her dismissive attitude it becomes apparent that the two have much more in common than she ever imagined. Director Juho Kuosmanen (THE HAPPIEST DAY IN THE LIFE OF OLLI MÄKI) sends two outsiders on an amusing and deeply touching journey during which they are confronted - without kitsch - with the truth of their feelings.

In search of significance and social prestige, a billionaire businessman decides to make a film to leave his mark. To do so, he hires the best: a stellar team formed by famous filmmaker Lola Cuevas (Penélope Cruz) and two renowned actors, both enormously talented, but with even bigger egos: the Hollywood actor Félix Rivero (Antonio Banderas) and radical theater thespian Iván Torres (Oscar Martínez). Both legends, but not exactly the best of friends. Through a series of increasingly eccentric challenges set by Lola, Felix and Iván must face not only each other, but also their own legacies.

The theater group Valendas from the Safiental in the canton of Grisons adapts Friedrich Dürrenmatt's grotesque novel "Durcheinandertal". They consider the material suitable to represent their world theatrically. The novel tells the story of a foundation that is supposed to help a remote mountain valley to prosperity. The film accompanies the creative process up to the performance in front of an audience. The Safiental is considered a "space with little potential". It is time to depopulate such valleys and leave them to nature. This is the politically pointed debate. Director Bruno Moll has adapted the book for the stage and follow the creative process from rehearsal to performance in front of an audience.

When two friends collect money for the so-called “suffering in America” in the streets of Accra, is it for fun, political provocation, or a prophecy? Two Swiss filmmakers will answer these questions with the help of seven musicians from Ghana – M3NSA, Wanlov The Kubolor, Adomaa, Worlasi, Akan, Mutombo Da Poet, and Poetra Asantewa – who have written new songs and produced video clips especially for the documentary film Contradict. Tomorrow’s ideas and trends are emerging more decentralized than ever in a globalized world. What do global developments and shifts in values look like from the ground up in Ghana and the African continent? How do we want to confront and contradict those changes? Can new visions for the future become global realities?

Asli first sets eyes on Saeed in the mid-1990s at a fairground as he is anxiously stepping off a merry-go-round just before the ride begins. They get to know each other while spinning bottles at a party in their student hall of residence. Asli is fascinated by Saeed’s charisma and self-confidence. The two students marry secretly even though Asli’s mother is against the relationship. In a mosque in Hamburg, they promise to stay together and keep each other’s secrets. Caught between asserting herself, conforming to her traditional parental home and her self-sacrificing love, Asli tries to find her own way in life. Then Saeed disappears. His decision changes Asli’s life – before it shakes the whole world. Anne Zohra Berrached’s film comprises several layers that are all of equal importance. It is a love story, but it is also an exploration of cultural differences, truth and faith, trust and delusion. After Two Mothers and 24 Weeks, the director once again demonstrates her particular ability to reveal the private lives that exist behind the politics, as well as her great sensitivity when working with actors

“Mais im Bundeshuus-le génie helvétique” (“Corn in Parliament”) is a vertiginous journey down the corridors of the Federal Parliament building in Bern. Constructed as a feature film, it follows the adventures of a parliamentary committee established to create a bill on genetic engineering (Gen-Lex). This political thriller reveals both sides of the coin, namely that of those who have invested, economic interests and of those who fear the negative effects of this revolutionary technology. Amusing, tender, and humane, all the while clearly illustrating the limits of the system, the film functions as a tale of universal power.

Told through captivating imagery and visuals this long-awaited movie from a renowned Georgian filmmaker is an unusual psychological drama that demonstrates just how unnecessary dialogue can be for creating maximum audience effect. An old peasant and his innocent 16-year-old granddaughter sow corn on an island in the middle of the Inguri River dividing Georgia from Abkhazia. The intense bond between nature and the two individuals is disturbed, however, by the arrival of the border police.

A pious 20-year-old juvenile delinquent is sent to work at a sawmill in a small town; on arrival, he dresses up as a priest and accidentally takes over the local parish. The arrival of this young, charismatic preacher is an opportunity for the local community to begin the healing process after a tragedy that happened a year prior.

Empress Elizabeth of Austria is idolized for her beauty and renowned for inspiring fashion trends. But in 1877, "Sissi" celebrates her 40th birthday and must fight to maintain her public image by lacing her corset tighter and tighter. While Elizabeth’s role has been reduced against her wishes to purely performative, her hunger for knowledge and zest for life makes her more and more restless in Vienna. She travels to England and Bavaria, visiting former lovers and old friends, seeking the excitement and purpose of her youth. With a future of strictly ceremonial duties laid out in front of her, Elizabeth rebels against the hyperbolised image of herself and comes up with a plan to protect her legacy. A bold and timely reflection on a woman’s worth and agency in 19th century Europe, that pulls back the curtain on Empress Elizabeth (Vicky Krieps), revealing the modern aspirations and darkest secrets of this disruptive early influencer. Directed by Marie Kreutzer ("The Ground Beneath my Feet", Berlin 2019 Competition).

In Costa Brava, Lebanon, the free-spirited Badri family escape the overwhelming pollution and social unrest of Beirut by seeking refuge in a utopic mountain home they built for themselves. Unexpectedly, an illegal garbage landfill begins construction right next door. With it comes the very trash and corruption they were trying to escape. As the landfill rises, so do family tensions. The Badris are left with a choice: stay off the grid or leave their idyllic home and face the reality they fled, hoping to stay true to their ideals.

Suter is a lonely guy, constantly in motion, escaping his true self. During the day, he travels through Switzerland, creating new identities and incognito evaluating the quality of customer service in shops and hotel rooms, while at night, he secretly observes the life of another lonely person: Anna, a rebel struggling with complicated grief. But this fragile balance is soon destroyed, when Anna finds out about Suter’s dark secret.

The gripping story of two Kurdish soldiers, Asad and Rashid, who celebrate with their comrades the downfall of Saddam on 9th April 2003 before being ordered to take food supplies to another remote part of the country. As they hit the road, they come across a lost 7-year-old arab boy called Saddam crying at the side of a highway. They decide to save him and protect him until they find his parents. In the process one of them gets killed. Crossing the Dust is an absorbing portrait of the societal strains that began to emerge in the aftermath of the quest to topple the Saddam Hussein.

Through her child’s eyes, Patpro will go through three periods of the history of her indigenous people, in the heart of the Brazilian forest. Tirelessly persecuted, but guided by their ancestral rites, their love of nature and their fight to preserve their freedom, the Krahô never stop inventing new forms of resistance.

One of the highlights of Vera Chytilová’s filmography is the grotesque moral «Daisies» (1966). The surrealistic narrative about a pair of young women who decide to be as corrupt as the world around them does not arise from concrete socio-political realities. As a result, the biting account of conformity, petty-bourgeois narrow-mindedness, and the limits of light-heartedness has timeless qualities. Daisies marked the beginning of Chytilová’s collaboration with Ester Krumbachová, who contributed to the eccentric costumes and script. The collage-like visual component then gave a lot of space for experimentation to the cinematographer Jaroslav Kucera. It is still an original gem of Czech cinema of the 1960s, which infuriated the communist officials of the time.

Paul, a ships's mechanic on a cargo boat, goes ashore one day in Lisbon and makes the acquaintance of loneliness, of keeping silence, and of Rosa, a barmaid. A three-sided relationship develops between Paul, Rosa and Elisa, Paul's wife, who lives in a town on the Rhine. All of Pauls' money is stolen, he follows the tracks of the thief and gets stabbed. Nevertheless, an in spite of Rosa's departure and the distance that separates him from Elisa, Paul gradually recovers.

After a forty-year civil war, the radio in Chad announces that the government has decided to grant amnesty to all war criminals. Outraged by the news, Gumar Abatcha orders his grandson Atim (Ali Bacha Barkai), a 16-year-old youth, to trace the man who killed his father and to execute him. Atim obeys him and, armed with his father's own gun, he goes in search of Nassara (Youssouf Djaoro), the man who made him an orphan before he was born. It does not take long before he finds him. Nassara is running a bakery. Unexpectedly, the taciturn Nassara takes Atim under his wing as the son he never had and begins teaching him how to run the bakery. The emotionally conflicted Atim is drawn into the life of Nassara and his pregnant wife (Aziza Hisseine), before a finale that Variety described as "sharp, fast and unexpected."

Late at night, the psychologist Eliane Hess is called to the hospital to take care of Yves, an eight-year-old boy, who just has lost his parents and siblings in a car accident. Eliane is both shocked and curiously drawn to the traumatized boy. As time goes by, she loses the professional distance to the patient, and when Yves' relatives begin a heavy dispute about the boy's future, Eliane makes an unorthodox decision, that throws her life off track.

Inspired by a shocking true story, a tenacious attorney (Ruffalo) uncovers a dark secret that connects a growing number of unexplained deaths due to one of the world's largest corporations. In the process, he risks everything – his future, his family, and his own life - to expose the truth. Starring Mark Ruffalo, Anne Hathaway and Tim Robbins.

Propelled from society by tragic turns, the people of Darwin (population 35) must now find ways to coexist in a place without a government, a church, jobs, or children. The near-ghost town's survival depends on a fragile, gravity-fed waterline that descends from the mountains where top secret weapons are being tested. One "accidental" drop of a bomb, they half-joke, could wipe out their entire town. "Darwin" is a documentary film de Nick Brandestini about an isolated community at the end of a weathered road in Death Valley, California, and tells the story of a uniquely American place and yet a place that is unique even within America.

Ruza (Mirjana Karanović) left Serbia, her country, over thirty years ago and lives in Zurich. Her daily life is a string of repetitive moments until, one day, Ana (Marija Škaričić) arrives on the scene and upsets Ruza's painstakingly organized world. A subtle friendship develops between the two strongwilled women.

This documentary portrays one of the most important museums in the world, Vienna’s Museum of Art History. An extensive look behind the scenes at this fascinating institution employs a number of charismatic protagonists and the varied routine there to show us the museum’s special world.

The war in Congo has caused more than six million deaths over the last twenty years. The population is suffering, but the offenders stay with impunity. Many people see this conflict as one of globalisation's crucial econimic distribution battles because the country has major deposits of many high-tech raw materials. Milo Rau, one of Europe's most acclaimed theatre directors, succeeds in gathering victims, perpetrators, observes and analysts of the conflict for a unique civil tribunal in eastern Congo. The documentary film brings these spectacular court trials to life on the big screen and creates an unvarnished portrait of the largest and bloodiest economic wars in human history.

Can you find happiness in the big city? The young hat maker Natascha, who lives with her grandfather in a suburb covered in winter snow, has to commute by train from the village to Moscow to deliver her creations to the extravagant Irene's hat shop. For the administration, Irene claims Natascha to be her subtenant in order to be able to have more living space. The clumsy railway official woos the lovely country girl with his ravishing smile. But she enters into a fictitious marriage with the provincial Ilya in order to get him a room in Moscow. With an apparently worthless lottery ticket, which Irene's husband gives to Natascha, the entanglements become turbulent. Boris Barnet describes the contrasts between city and country and the new living conditions in Moscow in a stylish and socially critical way. Three great acting talents, Anna Stén, Iwan Kowal-Samborski and Vladimir Fogel, form the triangle of relationships. Originally ordered as a vehicle to advertise the State Lottery, the film made the studio rich and the natural talent director Boris Barnet famous as the founder of lyrical comedy.

Matthias is the illegitimate son of a factory worker. He lives as an indentured child labourer at his dictatorial aunt’s remote guesthouse. The only thing he knows in life are hard work and hard punches. After a sudden death in the family, the unhappy boy finds the opportunity to make his way to his mother. This 1941 literary adaptation is an almost forgotten jewel of Swiss film history that offers an impressive insight into Eastern Switzerland’s embroidery industry.

1956. During a visit to a cinema in West Berlin, East German high school pupils Theo and Kurt see disturbing newsreel footage of the uprising in Budapest. Back in Stalinstadt, one of the GDR’s flagship workers’ settlements, they have the idea of holding a minute’s silence in class for the victims of the Hungarian struggle for freedom. Neither the boys, nor their parents, nor the school’s administration are prepared for the minor and major reactions that their expression of solidarity unleashes. The school principal tries to dismiss the incident as juvenile mischief and deal with it internally, but the pupils find themselves snared in the political machinery of a state determined to make an example of them. Condemning their act as counter-revolutionary, the education minister demands that the pupils name their ringleader. They are faced with a decision that has dramatic consequences for their future. Director and screenwriter Lars Kraume has cast up-and-coming actors in the leading roles and established actors in supporting roles for his adaptation of Dietrich Garstka’s eponymous book in which Garstka recounts his own personal experiences and those of his 18 classmates. A moving chapter in German post-war history.

David, a young filmmaker, follows his idol, David Lynch, into the world of Transcendental Meditation (TM). He traces the footsteps of the founder of the movement, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, to whom even the Beatles at one time had made the pilgrimage. The Indian guru developed TM into one of the largest esoteric organisations in the world that, with their study programs, promises world peace and yogic flying.

A smokestack stubbornly pierces the sky. Trains rumble by down below. Lights come on in the buildings as night falls. There is a man behind the camera, looking for an image – of himself? Of the world? Of society? By day and night, in rain and snow, he stands filming at the window of his studio. Periodically we hear people leaving messages on his answering machine. They talk about the weather while on vacation and congratulate him on his birthday. His father dies, a child is born, the young family begins to fall apart. Time passes. Slowly the cityscape morphs into the inner landscape of the man behind the camera.

A heavy-metal-loving teenager’s holiday plans fall through at the last minute, meaning he must spend the summer with the person who annoys him most: his mum. The comic actor Simon Bird makes a fine directorial debut with a tender portrait of the relationship between a prickly teenager and his mother over one summer. Beautifully played by Monica Dolan and Earl Cave (son of Nick), the two veer from loathing to love and back again as they both struggle to identify how their lives will move forward. Gentle, wry and affectionate, it marks Bird out as an idiosyncratic new UK voice.

Five centuries ago, the anatomist Andreas Vesalius first opened up the body to the scientific world. Today, "De Humani Corporis Frabica" opens up the body to the cinema. We discover that human flesh is an unheard-of landscape that only exists thanks to the attention of others. Hospitals, places of care and suffering, are laboratories that connect all the bodies of the world. "De Humani Corporis Fabrica" combines the technical with the human gaze, opening up a strange, sometimes dizzying space. Closing your eyes if necessary is expressly permitted.

The robber Hotzenplotz robs the grandmother! Kasperl and Seppel want to catch him and get into the hands of the robber and the magician Zwackelmann, where they discover an enchanted fairy. Policeman Dimpfelmoser, clairvoyant Schlotterbeck and the dog Wasti cause further confusion. Will the friends manage to save themselves and the fairy?

Three friends strive to preserve their loyalty to each other in spite of a corrupt society. These young men live in Tétouan, an impoverished Moroccan city. Soufiane, the youngest, spends his days pilfering. Allal, the oldest, is trying to gain a foothold as a drug dealer. Malik falls in love with Dounia who works as a prostitute in a night club. The three friends part to make their own way in life, but before long it looks as though their futures will founder in a maelstrom of violence, greed, jealousy and betrayal. Seeing no other way out, they decide to get together and raid a jeweller’s shop. The film opens with Malik walking towards Dounia, silently laughing. Behind her, knots of video tape float up from a rubbish dump like paper dragons. Faouzi Bensaïdi gives his relaxed young actors plenty of room to manoeuvre. His work casts a spell on account of a visual style that is both laconic and pow- erful and demonstrates how each friend’s dream of happiness only serves to drive a wedge between them. Beneath permanently leaden city clouds they nonetheless find a way to treat each other with gen- erosity and trust.

Gabriel keeps his head above water with odd jobs. When his son Eric moves in with him, the money runs out. So they follow the well-meant invitation of the wealthy Maria to spend the holidays with her family. An encounter full of challenges.

Sixteen-year-old Pougbila is an exuberant dancer, which causes her peers to remark cattily on her seductive moves. At the same time a village child dies of unexplained causes, Pougbila tells her mother Napoko that she's been raped. However, she refuses to reveal the perpetrator. As child deaths mount, the villagers speculate that a witch is behind the tragedies. Under the pretext of protecting his daughter, Pougbila's father hastens to marry her to a nearby villager, ignoring Napoko's objections. After Pougbila leaves, village elders call soothsayer to find the witch who is causing the child deaths. The village soon becomes convinced that Napoko is the evil one and she's chased out of town. Forced to wander the countryside, Napoko seeks refuge in one of the shelters for women accused of witchcraft. Pougbila hears of her mother's fate and sets out to find her and confront the village elders with the truth.

A young mute woman is raped and becomes pregnant, with disastrous consequences within her family. The film also sketches the social/economic situation in urban Mali in the 1970s, particularly in relation to the treatment of women.

"Der andere Anfang" is the story of Theo who does not want to live the life that is expected of him. But it is also about the difficulties of imagining and realizing a life that contradicts what is already valid and normal. When designing the film, Friedrich Kappeler sought the opportunity to leave out what contributes nothing else to the narrative: in other words, language that is visualized verbatim and sounds that only provide background. "Der andere Anfang" is also what you always hope for, and what rarely happens when you only hope.

At the far end of Alaska, filmmaker Roman Droux fulfils a dream and travels to the land of grizzly bears together with bear researcher David Bittner. The two adventurers set off for the realm of the bears to a place where there is no trace of human civilization. Surrounded by crystal-clear torrents, they experience the care of a mother bear and impressive battles of giant male bears. Roman Droux brings pictures of breathtaking beauty to the big screen. A lively nature film for the whole family.

1922: For the first time, the lonely weather station on the Säntis summit is occupied by a married couple. The unemployed Joseph Manser marries the pregnant Lena overnight and thus gets the post. But the weather warden couple have an adversary who feels cheated out of the job - he wants to take command on the mountain and climbs after the two. A showdown ensues at the weather station. - The film is based on true events.

In this interesting World War I drama, Bruno Ganz gives a compelling performance as Jakob, an obsessive inventor who lives in a Swiss village. He receives unconditional support from his friend Otti (Walo Luond), but that is about all; the other villagers do not tolerate Jakob's eccentricities very well, and regard him as a crackpot. He perserveres in spite of this obstacle and finally invents a viable carriage that does not run on wheels but on a tread. Unfortunately for Jakob, the military have already come up with the same invention: the tank. The discovery finally breaks him, and he is quickly shuttled off to an asylum.

In this Swiss film noir a private investigator stumbles onto a case involving blackmail and an oversexed, under-aged girl. He finds the girl, and, tragically, becomes involved with her.

Emil has fallen in love with Larissa. But before the two can really get to know one another, Larissa dies unexpectedly. And Emil, who only wants to obscure the sad truth about Larissa’s death, is mistaken for her former boyfriend. Larissa’s family takes a sincere liking to Emil; her sister Nora even begins to take an interest in the young man who had apparently been with Larissa during the last weeks of her life. Emil is suddenly needed and finds he is able to console Larissa’s family. But the closer his relationship with Nora becomes, all the more difficult it becomes for Emil to live with his fabricated past.

The Swiss National Association for the Storage of Radioactive Waste plans to build a permanent waste