Friedrich Kappeler - Short films

Director Kappeler returns to the subject of his past film "Die Ballade des Schreiben" (1995), about poet Gerhard Meier. Now that documentary is viewed as an essential introduction into the poet’s work, a man who became a writer after 33 years working in a factory. Two years after the film Gehard Meier’s wife Dorli died, and in 2005 the now 88-year-old Meier published "Ob die Granatbäume blühen", possibly his most moving work so far. Kappeler’s new documentary expands the themes in his previous one with "Das Wolkenschattenboot". In beautiful, dense images, we experience a talented writer, a person who is true to himself and who conveys his calm and clear view of the world to us in wonderful, powerful language.

The image of the ever-laughing clown from Ascona is well known. He is recognised as a national figure. Performing on tours throughout the world has made him renowned. This film by Friedrich Kappeler is a portrait of a clown and a man still with full of ideas and action with almost 70 years.

Born in 1900, Varlin decided he had had enough of Switzerland at about the age of 20 and left for Berlin where he became a painter. He then moved to Paris, remaining there a dozen or so years despite the difficulty of earning enough money to keep body and soul together. When the owner of the gallery in which he usually exhibited his work died, Varlin returned to Zurich. But even in Switzerland he did not feel particularly welcome or at home in any way. The war over, his paintings seemed very much out of place in the cosy, unruffled world of post-war Switzerland. Varlin began to travel extensively, while continuing to paint. Eventually he decided to settle at Bergell in canton Grisons, where a significant portion of his work of later years, in terms of both quality and quantity, was completed. He died in 1977. Friedrich Kappeler gives voice to the Swiss painter Varlin, in encounters with his acquaintances and relatives, in his paintings and writings. In addition to well-known works such as "Die Heilsarmee" and portraits of Hulda Zumsteg, Max Frisch, Hugo Loetscher and Friedrich Dürrenmatt, we discover a man full of contradictions. A courageous and sharp-thinking artist on the one hand, an insecure and vulnerable emotional man on the other - a painter who used brush and paint to capture the splendor of everyday objects, but also the fragility of human existence.

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.

This is no ordinary documentary about the forest. Although there are foresters and charcoal burners and lots of greenery in the images, there is also a thought-provoking text by Robert Walser and a witty Schubert opera with Mathias Gnädinger as a hunter lying in wait for a pair of lovers. The result is a peculiar homage to the Swiss forest, to the quiet places where people tend to retreat, turning to their dreams, sufferings, joys, work or hobbies. An essay about the forest by Friedrich Kappeler, based on personal experience.

Three old photographers in the mid-1980s - from the patron of a family business spanning several generations to a city original documenting Zurich's nightlife with his Polaroid camera - shortly before the advent of digital photography. Friedrich Kappeler and his cameraman Pio Corradi, both trained photographers, portray their professional colleagues with great empathy, poetry and humor.

A father, a photographer by profession, would like to involve his son in the family business, but he hesitates and doesn't know what to do with himself. His homeland has become alien to him. In 1980, Swiss television commissioned seven filmmakers to make hour-long feature films about the seven deadly sins. Friedrich Kappeler's contribution is strongly influenced by his own experiences at the time. His protagonist returns from Germany to his home town (filmed in Diessenhofen and Frauenfeld) - just as he himself had returned from film school in Munich shortly before. Gardi Hutter, Elsbeth Gmür and Astrid Keller play alongside Yves Jansen and Walter Wefel.

"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.

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.

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.

An isolated farm in a remote part of the Jura region: this is where Pauline and Alex are living in complete self-sufficient harmony with nature. Their life project is sealed by their love, their ideals and their work. The couple is now ready to take the step towards total independence, and start producing their own electricity. The arrival of Samuel, who comes to install a wind turbine, deeply troubles Pauline, upsetting their relationship and their values.

Hanna Leitner, wants to escape the bourgeois corset and her husband Anton, who sexually harasses her. She goes into therapy with Otto Gross and follows him to Monte Verità, where she discovers the fascination of photography.

Five courageous, clever and self-determined women are at the centre of Barbara Miller's documentary #FEMALE PLEASURE. They break the taboo of silence and shame imposed on them by society or their religious communities with their archaic patriarchal structures. Deborah Feldman, Leyla Hussein, Rokudenashiko, Doris Wagner and Vithika Yadav are committed to the sexual enlightenment and self-determination of all women, beyond all social and religious norms and barriers, with incredible positive energy and strength. For this they pay a high price - they are publicly defamed, persecuted and threatened, they are rejected by their former environment and even threatened with death by religious leaders and fanatical believers.

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.

New technologies are transforming a 19th-century watchmaking town in Switzerland. Josephine, a young factory worker, produces the unrest wheel, swinging in the heart of the mechanical watch. Exposed to new ways of organizing money, time and labour, she gets involved with the local movement of the anarchist watchmakers, where she meets Russian traveller Pyotr Kropotkin.

Vitus is a boy who almost seems to be from another planet: He has hearing like a bat, he plays piano like a virtuoso and studies encyclopaedias at the age of five. No wonder his parents begin to anticipate a brilliant future for him. They want Vitus to become a pianist. However, the little genius prefers to play in his eccentric grandfather’s workshop. He dreams of flying and of a normal childhood. Ultimately, with one dramatic leap, Vitus takes control of his own life…

«The Sandman» tells the bizarrely absurd story of the philatelist Benno. One day, he realizes that he is losing sand. Day by day those sand losses are increasing and he is threatened to completely disintegrate. In addition, his neighbour Sandra, whom he hates deeply, prevents him from sleeping by singing every night in his café below Benno's apartment. However, he finds himself forced to address his worst enemy when he realizes that only she can save him. Then begins a mad race against the clock....

In the beginning of spring 1970, the small village of Monchoux in Valais is experiencing unusual agitation. Is it because of the vote on the women's right to vote? Or because of the upcoming referendum on the expulsion of foreigners? No, it's worse: the village brass band has imploded! Half of the village will say it is Aloys' fault, the other half will respond that it is Pierre's. The dissent will be political, musical and amorous.

An endearing light comedy about a woman who spontaneously becomes a resident of Venice after her family left her begin. While enjoying the wonderful people she meets she achieves a new life and the first time independent of her family.

The 80-year-old psychiatrist and best-selling author Irvin D. Yalom is considered the most influential psychotherapist in the USA. He has sold millions of books worldwide. Critics describe him as inspiring, compelling and life-changing. His work emphasizes the value of relationships and focuses on how therapy works. The film "Yalom's Cure" offers more than a classic biography: Yalom takes the audience on an existential journey through the many layers of the human psyche. In the role of the tour guide, Yalom shares his insights and provides deep insights into his own soul life.

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.

“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.

Wild Plants are plants that seed themselves on fallow land, take possession of seemingly uninhabitable terrain and create new habitats. But wild plants are also people who create their own utopias and become impulse generators for others. People live in many scattered places around the world and projects are growing in which botanical and biographical uncontrolled growth are combined.

Santiago de Cuba, January 19th, 1819. Coming from Lausanne, Enrique Faber, a Swiss doctor and surgeon, arrives on the island, a Spanish province, hoping to find his son, who has been kidnapped…

Jonas Widmer is one of the best long-distance runners in Switzerland, his big goal is the Olympic marathon. Despite his difficult childhood, he seems to have found his way: Apart from his passion for sports, he works as a cook and is about to move in with this girlfriend. But then Jonas fails to defend his title at his home race and is increasingly caught up in the memories of his late brother Philipp. Unable to put the inner pressure of suffering into words, Jonas develops a tragic double life in his growing desperation. The Zurich director Hannes Baumgartner was inspired by a true Swiss criminal case for his first feature film. DER LÄUFER creates a differentiated image of an ambivalent figure entangled in a densely woven web of formative experiences, processes of repression and inner conflict.

What's in the air? - A cinematic diary: personally anchored, at the same time political and social, with the courage for imbalance, for irritating simultaneity of inner and outer world, everyday life and state of emergency. The film spins a multi-layered web, captures feelings, thoughts, contradictory tendencies in a poetic and experimental way: an emotional reflection of this ambivalent time between powerlessness and departure.

Parents split up, a family falls apart. Two separate worlds emerge from what once was considered a unity. In constant transition, children now live between two homes. WHERE WE BELONG approaches their reality and focuses on how fragile children are, but also how brave, smart and funny they respond to their situation.

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.

Like a mosaic, the film “Our Garden of Eden” shows the everyday life in an allotment garden area that reflects the multiethnic and multicultural modern Swiss society today. People of various geographical, religious, social and political backgrounds till the earth of their respective lots here side by side, creating a microcosm full of dreams, loneliness, homesickness, joy, family tragedies, strokes of fate and conflicts. The Swiss concept of tidiness and order meets an exotic talent for improvisation, the will to integrate and respect meet ignorance. Christians and Muslims, people from nations at enmity enjoy a peaceful coexistence in the allotment gardens, sharing what seems most precious in our society today: time, attention and space. They find the path to themselves as well as a place in the eternal cycle that life is.

Rosemonde the Salamander is a young girl who gets by thanks to low-paid jobs of all kinds. She is suspected of attempting to kill the uncle with whom she lives. A journalist and a writer are hired to get to the bottom of this mystery, as the basis for a television film scenario. They are unsuccessful however. The truth about Rosemonde and her special appreciation of life continue to elude these two amateur detectives.

STREAMING PREMIERE - starting March 12th 2021 In 2001, Fahed arrived in the UK, his head full of dreams. In 2018, facing a mid-life crisis, he now has a decision to make. Will he continue to buckle down, working 50 hours between the kebab shop and the factory, or will he return to Algeria, a country he fled in the hope of making a better life for himself?

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.

From the mid-1960s onwards thousands of western hippies and flower children moved to India in search of an alternative lifestyle, spiritual enlightenment and drug experimentation. Most returned after a few months or years, but some stayed forever. Filmmaker Grossenbacher meets some of these lifers, like Cesare, a cave-dwelling Yogi, still striving for spiritual liberation. Swiss Hanspeter runs a small farm in the Himalayas, but judging by the hash pipe permanently wedged between his lips, he is no traditionalist. Then there are the South African twins who get through the day with booze and by sewing hippie clothes for both the old and new generation of Goa freaks.

The Polish woman Wanda, 35, looks after Joseph, 70, in his family villa by the lake. She is there for him around the clock and also helps his wife Elsa, 75. The youngest son Gregi, 28, likes her very much. The work is poorly paid, but Wanda needs the money for her own family in Poland. Since everyone lives under one roof, Wanda gets an intimate view of their family life. So intimate that Wanda unexpectedly becomes pregnant.

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.

Since the death of her husband, Martha, 80-year-old, has lost her zest for life. In her village in the Emmental, especially her friends Lisi, Hanni and Frieda are concerned about her. After discussion, they decide to help her realise a long-held dream: to open a lingerie boutique. The news causes consternation in the little town of Trub.

What happens when fathers do more family work than mothers? An overview of families where traditional roles have been reversed. The director's experiences with children are reflected in the film in the form of short animations.

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?

A family's peaceful existence is threatened when a busy highway is opened only meters away from their isolated house in the middle of nowhere. Refusing to move, Marthe, Michel and their three children find innovative ways to adapt to their new environment. They continue their happy-go-lucky routine despite the daily stress of hundreds of noisy speeding cars. But suspicions about the highway's unknown long-term dangers cause family tension. Remaining in the disrupted household might not be so easy, but it's still their home.

Exiled in Switzerland, Olga, 15, is a talented Ukrainian gymnast. Like all athletes at the top of their game, she dreams of Olympic gold. She tries her best to fit into her new national team but, as the European Championship draws near, the revolution in Kiev shakes her world and tests her will.

Lou (29) is a present-day nomad. Forever in search of the ultimate kind of freedom, she’s long ago blocked out what it is she is actually running from. At home everywhere and nowhere. Living a now-now life. Click and - next, please. Until she meets Aro (35) and Aro is different. Even if he preaches the same sermon: Just make sure not to define the status of the relationship you’re in and enjoy the summer while it lasts, not committing to anything. And yet, without looking for it, they get under each other’s skin. Now there are expectations, jealousy nags and contradicts their frantic pursuit of independence. All of a sudden, Lou does not know anymore what it is all about. Where does she come from? Where does she belong?

VOLUNTEER is a film about the grassroots movement of ordinary Swiss citizens who set out to help thousands of refugees stranded in Greece. In rich and safe Switzerland, citizens from different backgrounds leave their orderly lives behind to support people in need. There is a Swiss farmer and his wife who raise cows in the Alps, a captain in the Swiss army, a pensioner who resides on the lakeside, and a successful comedian and entertainer. These volunteers embark on an adventure that will change their lives forever.

Bethlehem is a neighbourhood in the city of Bern where immigrants from over 30 nations have settled. At the centre of this film is the junior team of the Bethlehem Football Club. In this team, the majority are immigrants between 15 and 16 years old. The film also portrays - along with football - their everyday lives at school, vocational training and leisure time. It questions the protagonists about their self-image, their dreams, worries and fears, asks them about what connects them and what divides them, about what it’s like to be a foreigner in their former homeland and how they get along in another foreign environment.

The Swiss artist Markus Raetz is an established figure in the international art world. For the film by Iwan Schumacher, the artist from Bern is for the first time giving a camera team an insight into his 40 years of work.

The everyday life of midwives unfolds on the threshold where new life is born and life may fade away. The film shows how midwives support couples during pregnancy and birth. It lets us participate in the balancing act between a safe and a perfect birth. The film provides an insight into a mystery that is considered both a miracle and a high-risk medical undertaking.

In the Appenzell region of Switzerland, spiritual healers have always been part of local traditions. Here, natural health practitioners create tinctures and salves in an attempt to complement the procedures of official medicine. This leads to many unexpected and dynamic forms of collaboration.

The European equivalent of "The Return of the Secaucus 7," this Swiss film looks at the lives of several men and women in their 30s as they confront the slim gains of the "revolutionary" sixties. Max, a dissatisfied copy editor; Myriam, a redhead into tantric sex; and Marie, a supermarket checker who gives unauthorized discounts to the elderly, search for renewed meaning on a communal farm. The title character, a six-year-old child, is the carrier of their hopes for the future.

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.

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.

An ethnographic documentary film in three movements, along the lines of a symphony. The three movements reflect the three differing stages of development co-existing within the mountainous canton. In Göschenen, at the foot of the Gotthard, which straddles Europe’s North-South axis, industrialization took hold long ago, and the mountain farmers of old now work in offices and factories. In the Schächtental, however, the traditional family-centric mountain economy survives. Meanwhile, the village of Bristen in the Maderanertal is in the throes of upheaval: while the traditional farming communities still exist, nigh on 250 inhabitants leave the area daily to go to work or school.

The experiment is a journey through the remotest time and on the smallest scale that we can imagine: an exploration of matter about one millionth of a second following the Big Bang that generated our universe. As the new experiment at CERN proceeds in its exploration of the mysterious energy that animates the universe, scientists and artists guide us towards the shadow line where science and art, in different ways, pursue truth and beauty. Some of these men and women believe in god, while others believe only in experiment and doubt. But in their search for truth they are all alert to an elusive sixth – or seventh – sense… the sense of beauty.

Lisa is moving. Upheaval all around: Her mother flirts with a handyman. An eccentric woman seems to be preparing for a glamorous event. A family next door returns from vacation. And a girl documents the adventurous day. As boxes are transported, walls painted white, and furniture is assembled, underlying problems in need of fixing are revealed, a to-do list expands, and desires and needs flair up... A tragicomic catastrophe film. A poetic ballad about change and transience. After The Strange Little Cat, this is the second part of a planned trilogy about human togetherness.

Fraudsters and their victims, wage dumping and illegal employment – we follow employment market inspectors Frédy, Regula, Marcos, Stefan and Chrümu and share their frustration as they try to carry out the often almost impossible task of enforcing Switzerland’s mandatory minimum standards in the work market. A political road movie that provides insights into the complex situation and is as exciting as a thriller.

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.

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.

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

The movie recalls children who suffered mental and physical harm both during the last century, particularly in religious orphanages, and during the time of early modernperiod witch-hunts. It shows that the mindsets and behavioural patterns of both time periods are more alike than one might think.

The film "Zwingli - The Reformer" presents Zwingli's life from a unique perspective: from the point of view of his wife Anna, who remembers their life together after Zwingli's death - a life of infinite love and mutual incomprehension, marked by both happiness and tragedy.

A documentary film about Swiss musician and singer/songwriter Stephan Eicher, his Yéniche roots and the history and persecution of the Yéniche people in Switzerland and their links to Swiss music.

A double self-portrait in which a 90-year-old grandmother and her homosexual grandson confide in each other. With sincerity and humour, the film deconstructs gender stereotypes in depth and with subversive power and traces a family saga from bourgeois society with enchanting archive footage.

Argentinian biology student Miro falls madly in love with young actress Mercedes, but is without a clue as to how to win her love. Then, a series of misunderstandings put him in the hot seat as a famous film director. Miro grabs his chance to shoot a film with Mercedes as his leading lady, hoping that she will fall for him. Whilst his plan is crazy, it is simple enough and Cupid is on his side. But Miro hasn't reckoned with film students Peter and Luigi who wish to shoot a “making-of” documentary of the great Argentinian “director”at work.

The shy Pomme (Isabelle Huppert) meets the philosophy student François on holiday in Normandy. François becomes her first lover and she moves in with him: head over heels in love, the young and inexperienced couple return to Paris with big dreams. But their social and cultural differences stand in the way of happiness. The student she had unconsciously saved herself for will, without meaning to, ruin Pomme.

Artist, anarchist, drop-out, sans papiers: Giovanni Segantini was all of this. He created, usually under the open sky, monumental works in the idealised image of nature of an alpine landscape. In the course of his lifetime he climbed ever higher in quest of more light. He died at the age of 41 in an alpine hut at 2700m in the Engadine. The film provides insight into his difficult childhood and boyhood, shares his inner processes and crises as a painter, as well as his contradictory dealings with motherly love and eroticism – and ultimately his desperate struggle against death.

Based on Patricia Highsmith’s personal writings and accounts of her family and lovers, the film casts new light on the famous thriller writer’s life and oeuvre, permeated by themes of love and its defining influence on identity.

They have traveled far - by plane, train, bus or boat. Now they find themselves in the integration class of teacher Christian Zingg in Basel, where young people from all over the world get to know the language and culture of our country within two years. Anna Thommen's documentary film, which has won numerous awards at numerous festivals, opens up a view into a world that is hardly known. The director skilfully interweaves various stories, observed with great sensitivity.

The internet has changed everything, also for journalism: business models are falling by the wayside, news is available for free, anywhere and at any time. I accompany journalists in their daily lives, see how they struggle, and I do what they also do: I observe and ask, also question myself, my fascination and my suspicion. I, too, use the net with ease. I am a user – and I am used.

Just like a salmon, this writer traces the course of her life back to the source: she tells us her story, in an interplay of reflections involving her sentiments, her writings, her photos and her friends. Before everyone, she drove, smoked, learned German, freely loved unfaithful men, reflected on Switzerland and its demons during the war and stirred generations of women with her sensitivity and her fury to write, getting straight to the point while drawing material from her own existence without glossing it over.

A comedy about aging, youth and other eternal truths. Of all days, precisely on her fiftieth birthday, Julia has to experience that age makes you invisible. Frustrated, she goes shopping and makes an acquaintance, spontaneously deciding to spend the evening with this stranger, rather than with the guests of her own birthday party. They wait for her in a restaurant, all dressed up and groomed, lively debating the years that have passed. The truths and wisdom of Julia's closest friends on aging and growing old are drowned increasingly in sufficient quantities of alcohol. In the mean time, on her eightieth birthday, Leonie, sulking over the loss of youth, is rebelling against her daughter, the senior citizen's home, conventions, and old age in general - and joyfully sabotaging the party in her honor.

Suffering from agoraphobia, Seconda is unable to leave her house. When she finally succeeds, new challenges push her limits even further.

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?

Summer 1900, in a valley in southern Switzerland. Elisabeth is seventeen years old and about to take her vows when the sudden death of her older sister forces her to leave the convent and return to the family farm she had left five years earlier. But Elisabeth is no longer a child. Stifled by the suffocating and strict rules of the village and obsessed by the mysteries surrounding her sister's disappearance, she will fight for her right to experiment. The highly talented French-speaking Swiss director Carmen Jaquier explores female emancipation in the midst of oppressive social norms in impressively composed images. Switzerland's official submission to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Hollywood in the "Best International Film" category for 2023.

Before an office complex is set to be demolished, it expresses one last wish: a love story. It centers around desire, security, and a melody that runs through the entire fabric of the building. So when darkness descends and everything falls silent, the routine lives of those within its walls sparkle like stars, paving the way for intimate chance encounters and absurd humor to unfold. A nocturnal kaleidoscope of longing, loneliness and freedom.

An ordinary day in the megacity of Istanbul: Ten-year-old Cemo sells paper tissues in the streets, Hayat is controlled by her husband and transsexual Ebru sells her body. All three have a secret love and they do everything to satisfy their longing, if only for a moment. An authentic, delicate and unsettling story about love, death and the Turkish society at the beginning of the 21st century.

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!

Zurich, 1958. The bashful teacher Ernst Ostertag and the German cabaret artist Röbi Rapp get to know one another in the Swiss underground organisation called “Der Kreis.” As the two dissimilar men defend their love, they witness the heyday and decline of this Europe-wide pioneering organisation for gay emancipation.

Eugen is in his late thirties and has neither a family of his own nor a secure income. Instead, he has established an underground music club in Prague, the city his father originally came from. When the club burns down, he is forced to return to Switzerland to raise money for the renovation. His return confronts him with Karlchen the smuggled crocodile, his father's lifelong lie and the grotesque charm of the bourgeoisie.

A woman confronts her past – and invents her future. Seventy-six-year-old Elise knows exactly how she will spend the final years of her life: living with Paul, to whom she has been happily married for 50 years, in their villa on Zürichberg till her last breath, and tenderly cared for by Angela, their faithful housekeeper. But then Angela is discovered by the theatre and hired for a stage play. Paul hits a man with his '68 Maserati and subsequently becomes friends with him; Elise passionately kisses a young veterinarian.

"NOT ME - A Journey with Not Vital" takes us on an intriguing foray into the eventful life and creative artistic expressions of contemporary Swiss artist Not Vital. This film essay sheds light on the work of the internationally renowned Grisons artist who for a long time remained the "well-known unknown" inside his home country. Director Pascal Hofmann traces the driving force of this restless cosmopolitan, and establishes a dialogue between the motifs in Vital's work, his childhood dreams, and the influences of his most important places of stay such as Beijing, Patagonia, Niger, "his" village of Sent in the Grisons, and New York. The film opens up visually stunning insights into Vital's perception of reality and its artistic transformation. From beginning to end, this film tells the author's enraptured exploration of the longings of an artist who came from the mountains.

The filmmaker travels to the mysterious land of the “poor souls”. He visits eyewitnesses in rural areas of Central Switzerland. They offer their account of mystifying experiences in connection with the afterlife, of evil deeds by people who passed away long ago in need of atonement. The film investigates the hidden signs of mountain magic and reminds us of our own myths, ghosts and primal images. It also looks for paths to self-awareness that could be revealed to us within and under layers of centuries-old Catholic cultural sediment.

Two places on the edges of the earth are making headlines due to climate change: Thule in Greenland, because the ice there is melting more and more, and Tuvalu, because this island state in the Pacific is one of the first countries to threaten to sink into the rising sea. While for us the warming of the planet takes place almost exclusively in the media, for the people of Thule and Tuvalu it changes their entire existence. The film describes how they have to say goodbye to their traditional way of life and head for an unknown future.

The 36-year-old Swiss artist Urs Fischer, who lives in New York, has been enjoying international fame for some years now. This documentary follows him during the preparation of his exclusive exhibition in an American museum and thus takes us into the daily life and work of an artist.

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.

Filmmaker and anthropologist Céline Pernet questions her relationship with the men of her generation. Responding to an advert, men aged 30 to 45 years old answer her questions, in a quest as personal as it is societal. The film casts an amused and caring eye, reflecting an urgent need to discuss current models of masculinity.

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.

Alfredo seems to lead the life of so many Ticinese families born in the valleys, who now only go back to their native village for the weekend. But Alfredo doesn’t longer experiences the journey as a form of escapism, but as an obsessive rite which is repeated over and over again. Alfredo has lost his own identity.

The film traces possible alliances with the fungal reign. As if in an uprising of spores, the encounters of the film explore the theme of renewal, and question what connects us when the world seems to be falling apart.

Midsummer by the sea in the Maremma in Tuscany. Vincenzo and Adriana, trapped in emotional dependency, make one last desperate attempt to save their marriage. Their 12-year-old son Nic processes the trauma from his father’s violent outbursts in games with other children. Although he is well integrated in his group of friends, he finds it extremely difficult to express what he feels for Marie, who is the same age and suffers from her own relationship with her father. A film about the first steps towards a life of one’s own.

After losing his mother, a young boy is sent to a foster home with other orphans his age where he begins to learn the meaning of trust and true love.

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.

Grappling with a mid-life crisis, Sacha leaves his girlfriend and escapes to his grandparents’ Airbnb. He is surprised by the presence of Marjan, an Iranian woman who is facing her own marital crisis. They are both annoyed at having to share the apartment and rather than finding a place of retreat, tension builds. When Mina, a vibrant American, arrives, their mutual prejudices give way to curiosity and complicity. What began as an involuntary encounter becomes a moment of new possibilities.

When her mother decides to stop administering medication to her mentally challenged daughter, 18-year-old Dora awakes, as if from a deep sleep. Dora discovers her body, her sensuality and finally, sex, too. Her parents are shocked by Dora’s sudden unbridled lust for life and, when she gets involved with a man she meets at her market stall vendor job, they are furious. Seeing her relationship as unscrupulous and abusive, they demand their daughter stops seeing her lover. But their efforts are to no avail and, when Dora’s affair leads to a more serious situation, everyone has to reassess the limits of their relationship to each other, and reconsider such topics as self-determination, trust and jealousy. Courageous, necessary and sensitive – Stina Werenfels’ adaptation of Lukas Bärfuss’s stage play is a fearless and moving drama about letting go. The tender, subjective shots that capture the beauty of the world as Dora sees it are as much a part of the film’s success as is the portrait of a desperate mother, having to cope with life’s pitfalls

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross is arguably the world's most reknowned expert on the process of dying. With Kübler Ross' full collaboration, Haupt's film looks back on her life and career, from her earliest days as a triplet in 1920s Zurich, to her fame as an international lecturer and writer based in the US. Now in her twilight years, Kübler-Ross is bedbound in Arizona, and awaiting death herself. A truly fascinating film that enables us to re-evaluate our own emotions regarding life's greatest certainty, death. With the addition of archive film and interviews with Kübler-Ross' sisters and close colleagues, Haupt builds up a rich picture of a remarkable woman who has done so much to make death less of a taboo.

Up until the middle of the 19Th century, poverty stricken mountain farmers from the Ticino area of Switzerland frequently sold their children to Milan as chimney sweeps or spazzacamini. That is also young Giorgios fate. He is forced to climb through pitch black chimneys, flinging down the soot with his bare hands. But he does not lose heart. Together with his buddies sharing in the same misery, he establishes the association of Black Brothers. They stick together, struggling against their penury and getting involved in fights with the street gangs of Milan. The film tells of the gripping adventures of the chimney sweep boys and their spectacular escape back to their native land.

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.

Spira comes home from a juvenile detention center and reconnects with his loved ones in Reboleira (Lisbon), a slum on the verge of being destroyed. Kikas makes it clear that he’s not welcome.

In the lush Swiss countryside, single mom Judith is raising her young daughter Milla while running the family fish farm with the help of worker and friend Gabriel. The three live and labor quietly in their peaceful corner of the world. When the unexpected arrival of Gabriel’s brother threatens that tranquility, the specter of impending disaster casts a shadow over their pastoral life. When the devastation comes, it’s chilling. This taut thriller poses provocative questions about the weight of guilt, the complexity of forgiveness, and the price of redemption.

Welcome to the prime of life. All his life, Rudy has worked hard for the firm, and for the family. But now, everything is about to change: Rudy retires. No alarm clock, no meetings, no travels to distant countries to set the pace. Shopping, cooking, gardening, and the daily routines of marital bliss will now fill his schedule. Rudy was actually looking forward to it, to the next phase. But as he soon realises, the prime of life is a wild ride on an emotional rollercoaster. Retirement is not for cowards.

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.

Fortuna (14), a young Ethiopian teenage girl, has had no news of her parents since arriving in Lampedusa, Italy. Together with other refugees, she is given shelter for the winter in a Swiss catholic hospice at an altitude of over 2000 meters. While they wait for their fate to be decided by the Swiss authorities, Fortuna meets Kabir, a 26-year-old African refugee, and falls desperately in love. Their relationship develops in secret, till the day Kabir disappears. - Bruno Ganz as Brother Jean.

Three players in the free market take on ethical responsibility for their actions and the following generations: they engage in sustainable production. At various stages, the film charts the careers of successful entrepreneurs who operate locally, nationally and internationally and manage to combine both the market and morality. The film examines the question of what a neo-liberal economic model could look like and presents the positions of three pioneers, who, day in and day out, balance out fair working conditions, biological production and the cost pressures of the free economy. The film presents a motivating approach to solving a situation which often appears hopeless. It emphasizes ethics and sustainability as factors for success.

"Grauzone" is the film by Fredi M. Murer that anticipated the 1980s movement in 1978. A mysterious epidemic haunts Switzerland. The symptoms: a sudden urge to go outside, sudden melancholy, general sensitization. An unintentionally published advertisement informs about the wave of illness and triggers uncertainty, which also penetrates the uniform suburban idyll of Zurich. Julia and her husband Alfred live here, who, in addition to his work as a commercial employee, leads a double life as an eavesdropping specialist and is increasingly plunged into a crisis of meaning.

Oscar, not quite a child anymore, scavenges for scrap metal for his father. He spends his life in improvised landfills among what remains of leftovers. Worlds apart, yet close-by, there is Stanley. He tidies the church in exchange for a monetised hospitality, picks fruits, herds sheep: anything that keep his foreign body busy. Oscar, the young Sicilian, and Stanley the Nigerian don’t seem to have much in common. Except for the feeling of being thrown into the world, to suffer the same refusal, the same overwhelming wave of choices imposed on them by others.

No Apologies describes the state of physical and mental siege of black people living in precarious conditions in Lausanne. Confronted with the need to protect anonymity and the impossibility of filming in the street, No Apologies was conceived in a way that allows its characters to express themselves freely. Masked or barefaced, they bear witness to their personal journey, their struggle for everyday survival and police brutality. Thus questioning their place in a Swiss society that considers them as pariahs. The film is a collective project resulting from an alliance between the people directly affected by these issues and movie professionals. Given the urgency of the situation, the documentary was produced in very little time, in guerrilla mode without the constraints of institutional funding.

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.

Spring 1995 – after the closure of the Needle Park and the public drug scene in Zurich, eleven-year-old Mia and her heroin addicted mother Sandrine are relocated to the countryside. While caring for her mother, Mia spends time with her imaginary friend and a gang of local teenage misfits. These friendships finally give her the strength to rebel and break free from her abusive mother.

Aïcha, Johan and the couple Lo Manto have taken a step in their lives that has disturbed many people around them. They have made the Muslim creed. This is the beginning of their transformation and reorientation. Aïcha moves from the rural province to the big city and euphorically follows the strict rules of her new religion. The Lo Mantos try to assert themselves against prejudices in their surroundings. And Johan? He wears a beard and flirts with his role as a devout Muslim. Or is filmmaker David Vogel just imagining it? What role does his own Jewish past play? The longer he accompanies his protagonists, the more he feels that he cannot ignore his own biography. His religious past catches up with those he thought he had left far behind.

Alphonse lives as a recluse on an Alp. Mother Nature provides him with everything he needs, and being able to live in the present is a gift for him. Monika’s attitude towards time has become serene since her near-death experience. She no longer has a fear of death, which is also sensed by the dementia patients she treats. Sam, a forester, sees the deceased. In his opinion, death only occurs on a physical level. For the Capuchin monks in Schwyz, death and dying are part of everyday life, also for Eugen, a monk and artist in Engelberg who has administered terminal care for more than thirty fellow brothers.

After a violent argument with her mother, Margaret, 35 years old and with a long history of inflicting and suffering from violence, is subject to a strict restraining order before her trial: she’s no longer allowed to make contact with her mother or approach within 100 metres of the family home for three months. But this separation only exacerbates her desire to be closer to her family and so she returns every day to this invisible and impassable frontier. «La Ligne» celebrated its premiere in competition at the 2022 Berlin International Film Festival and was nominated for Best Fiction Film at the at the 2023 Swiss Film Awards.

Un film sur ma façon de vivre cette douloureuse réalité que le monde d’aujourd’hui n’est pas celui dont j’avais rêvé il y a 50 ans. Les images du monde d’aujourd’hui se télescopent avec des souvenirs fragmentaires, des textes poétiques et la Passion selon saint Matthieu de J. S. Bach. Un essai filmique sur la fragilité de mon existence à l’heure du capitalisme débridé.

Semret lives a modest and quite isolated life in Zurich with her teenage daughter Joe. She works at a hospital and is applying to a midwife training program. When Joe starts to ask about her own roots from Eritrea, Semret can no longer repress her past and has to confront her traumas. With the help of Yemane, a new hospital employee that is also an Eritrean refugee, she is finally able to face the tragic memories of her escape. With her film «Semret», Swiss director Caterina Mona takes a subtle and profoundly humanist look at migration and integration in contemporary Switzerland. With Lula Mebrahtu, Tedros Teddy Teclebrhan, Hermela Tekleab and Manuela Biedermann.

It is the year 1985: Josef is a 47-year old alcoholic who has given up on life. When his younger sister moves into the same house, an unexpected friendship develops between him and her 4-year old daughter, Nina. Thirty-five years later the two meet again. Nina is in trouble and Josef, now 82 years old, sets out to help her.

Project initially entrusted to Maurice Pialat, who had already begun to film it under the title of “Meurtrières” (see the special edition of Les Inrockuptibles devoted to Pialat), Messidor is based on a crime story which hit the headlines in France in the 1970s: two adolescent girls run away and go on a criminal spree which ends in their deaths. On the face of it, this subject is remote from the world we associate with Tanner, since a violent story of this kind and its social background would seem to impose the realistic, even naturalistic form always shunned by the Swiss director. Moreover, Tanner is instinctively averse to filming physical violence. “Killing a person”, he says, “is generally a gratuitous special effect.” Consequently, of all Tanner’s films Messidor is the only one in which someone dies of non-natural causes. It is also Tanner’s most sombre work, characterised by a despair unmitigated by his usual verbal and situational humour. This is because Tanner accepted the project only on condition that he could recast the original idea and use this violent story as a vehicle for more personal preoccupations: the limits of freedom (already treated in his previous film) are here related to the girls’ frantic flight in the Swiss countryside. What interests him is the possible sullying of this place of excessive peace and quiet, now transformed into a field of experience and criminal fun-and-games by the two characters..

A fictionalized documentary about the great Japanese poet Bashô (1644-1694), the spiritual father of Haiku poetry. A monk plays the role of Bashô and walks through the Japanese countryside, following the tracks of the poet’s travel diaries. On the way he writes many of his famous haiku poems. A film about poetry, meditation, zen buddhism and a view of untouched, virgin nature, seen and to understand as a lost paradise.

A letter from her oldest brother reveals why Jill's (Alison Skye, Dree Hemingway) idealistic hippie childhood slowly drifted into an ideological nightmare. On a journey among lost images and long-forgotten voices, Jill approaches the secrets about who her father was, how he divided her family, and why her mother never could talk about what happened.

Thirteen-year-old Sandra isn't happy to be the new girl in town, but then she falls in love with Mike, the boy next door. Everything seems perfect, until the day the young couple witness Mike's mother having an affair. Mike is devastated, but what he does not realize is that his mother's ardent lover is actually Sandra's father, an old childhood sweetheart. Divided by her loyalty to her father and her feelings for Mike, Sandra decides to keep her father's identity a secret. However, she can't keep up the charade for much longer, and whatever she decides, it is bound to have serious consequences.

After 40 years Alain Tanner again travels to the port of Genoa, where he worked for a shipping company as a 22-year-old. On the back of his own memories he depicts the rough world of the dockworkers, another of those trades that has undergone fundamental changes as a result of recessions, modernisation and liberalisation. “The visual impression of the harbour and the city has changed very little, but what goes on there nowadays is completely different. The city is still as beautiful and alien and somewhat sad as before. But the port is dying, like so many other major ports. In Genoa, as elsewhere in Italy, the economic, social and political climate is highly explosive. But you also feel that things are in flow and the country is on the verge of some far-reaching changes. In this film I wanted to explore my own memories of Genoa, uncover its present and guess at its future. Genoa, this beautiful, this sad, this alien town has become for me a metaphor for society in change.”

Goalie has just been released from prison after spending a year inside for keeping his mouth shut for his best buddy Ueli. He heads for his hometown of Schummertal, a small town where everyone knows you. He's going to start over, without drugs. Meanwhile, Ueli has gotten ever deeper into drugs, can't understand why Goalie suddenly wants to be a square. Although they've been friends since childhood, everything is different now. Goalie wants a new life but finds his past.

In the “Kunstgiesserei” in St. Gallen renowned artists – such as Urs Fischer, Katharina Fritsch, Peter Fischli, Mariana Castillio Deball, Paul McCarthy, Alex Hanimann and Hans Josephsohn – meet up with Felix Lehner, the charismatic founder of the art foundry. He and his crew translate ideas into sculptures with a great deal of passion and enthusiasm. Their success has led to the fact that some of the production phases had to be outsourced to Shanghai. The cultural and artisanal exchange with China is tremendously enriching. And regardless of whether in Shanghai or St. Gallen, the molten metal is spellbinding as it turns dreams into reality.

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.

During World War II, Switzerland severely limited refugees: "Our boat is full." A train from Germany halts briefly in an isolated corner of Switzerland. Six people jump off seeking asylum: four Jews, a French child, and a German soldier. They seek temporary refuge with a couple who run a village inn. They pose as a family: the deserter as husband, Judith as his wife, an old man from Vienna as her father, his granddaughter and the French lad, whom they beg to keep silent, as their children. Judith's teenage brother poses as a soldier. The fabrication unravels through chance and the local constable's exact investigation. Whom will the Swiss allow to stay? Who gets deported?

Why does an apparently large majority in Russia back Vladimir Putin? A timely testimony from the heart of Russia, this documentary sheds light on the influence of aggressive state propaganda on its people. It is set on a lost island (‘ostrov” in Russian) in the Caspian Sea, where people have been left to fend for themselves since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Ostrov’s formerly well-functioning collective fishery closed down decades ago. Since then, there have been no gas or electricity, neither any formal administration on the island. For Ivan, a third-generation fisherman, there is only one way to support his family: poaching. Nevertheless, inundated with the state propaganda on TV, Ivan still believes in Putin; he believes that after having restored Russia's honor and having created a strong army, he will help common people like him and their families. Awarded the Swiss Film Prize 2022 as best documentary film.

The newly-wed Antoine climbs an alp with the elderly Séraphin. A few weeks later a terrible landslide takes people and animals to their death. There are no survivors. The few who have escaped the disaster inform the village. Thérèse, Antoine's young wife, is pregnant. It's difficult for her to see her pregnancy through and adjust to her role as a young widow. Two months later, Antoine manages to free himself from the rubble. The villagers think he's a ghost. Finally they come to accept the fact he is alive. But he cannot accept the fact he is the only survivor. He returns to the mountain, convinced that Séraphin is still alive. At dawn, Thérèse discovers his disappearance. She wants to look for him among the debris, in order to “snatch from the dead something still alive”.

On his expedition into the heart of Switzerland, Swiss filmmaker Matthias von Gunten met six people whose lives and everyday lives, their small and big fates fascinated him. At first glance, they have nothing to do with each other apart from living in Switzerland: six very different people, their attempts to master everyday life and their individual escapes from reality. In the course of this one year, in which von Gunten visited them again and again, a lot happens in the lives of these people. On these surprising journeys, Von Gunten traces the absurd and dramatic behind seemingly normal everyday life. Thus, little by little, an exciting time picture emerges in which each of these people has their place. The six people, their fears and dreams, their hopes and failures create an atmospheric picture of our lives today. To face or escape the much disdained Helvetic narrowness: there are different possibilities - the six people in Matthias von Gunten's film live some of them.

The painter from Solothurn (CH) Frank Buchser was sent to the USA in 1866 to paint a large painting of the "Heroes of the Civil War" for the future Council of States Hall in Bern. Initially Buchser was busy portraying politicians and generals in the spirit of his clients. More and more, however, he became interested in the Indians expelled to the reservations and in the living conditions of the slaves who had just been freed. Years earlier, fascinated by Moorish culture, Frank Buchser rides disguised as a Turkish sheikh to the Moroccan town of Fez, which is forbidden to Christians under death penalty. The Swiss filmmaker Bruno Moll (Pizza Bethlehem, Tunisreise) tells the two adventurous journeys of the rebellious and controversial artist. The film narrative begins with film documents of the riots in Charlottesville in August 2017 and the diary entries made by Frank Buchser in 1869, when General Lee was his model for the portrait. In a large flashback the film tells Buchser's story of his stay in Andalusia and Morocco in 1858, returns with him to his homeland and closes with his North American adventure.

Pays de Gex, on the Swiss border. P.A. and his group of friends are in their last year of high school. One hundred metres beneath their feet, the LHC, the most powerful particle accelerator in the world, recreates the energy conditions of the big bang in order to detect unknown particles. As winter sets in, P.A. starts to observe strange phenomena in the environment. The changes are imperceptible at first, but gradually his whole world seems to be on the brink.

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.

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.

An artist, a musician, a filmmaker. Three worlds, three ways of thinking, three interpretations. Fused to an energetic work. Beat Zoderer’s work fascinate with quiet humor and the intelligent challenge of distrusting a conventional view of things. Nik Bärtsch’s sound is characterized by his love for the architecturally articulated space and rhythmic overlaps. Filmmaker Jürg Egli has brought the two artists together in a studio session. The result is a cinematic performance of unique intensity. „The idea can sometimes only be thought out in its realization.“ Beat Zoderer Sketchbook IX 1999

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.

The first feature documentary about the legendary pantomime artist Marcel Marceau. He inspires several generations of artists, among them his own grandson and family, who cast a new light on his life's work.

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.

At an age when others might look for a quieter life, Walter Pfeiffer had burst onto the international scene as an artist and fashion photographer - which is a joy to see. Alongside those who accompanied Pfeiffer through this journey, we also hear from his former models. We discover what they gained from agreeing to be photographed. And as he only photographed the young, we catch glimpses of youth culture over four decades.

Max Frisch was the last great Swiss intellectual whose "voice" was widely heard and appreciated beyond the borders of his country: a character like none can be found today. Against the backdrop of the late 20th century, the film follows the story of Frisch.

Two friends – Paul Girard, the “people’s mayor” of Delémont who has his sights set on a national career and Liu, a Chinese watchmaker living in the Jura – decide to organise the semi-finals of the Miss China competition in Switzerland. Paul is hoping this original, media-hyped project will help him acquire the image his party has been refusing him: that of future deputy. Liu, meanwhile, hopes to open the Chinese market to luxury watches. Instead of the heroes’ welcome they were anticipating in bringing the women to the touristic Meccas of Switzerland, the two partners are met with resistance from the political milieu and indifference from their sponsors.

The story of Rafael, a fun-loving youth on the verge of manhood who is trying to make his dream of total freedom become reality. Determined to conquer the world with his Utopia Blues Band at any cost, Rafael's philosophy is that “life is a game”. But the game unexpectedly becomes bitter earnest. How much freedom is permitted?

After losing his mother, a young boy is sent to a foster home with other orphans his age where he begins to learn the meaning of trust and true love.

They are single, widowed or divorced; they have had children, husbands, work; they have a life behind them, but also one to come… The film reveals the intimate lives of five women in their sixties who are waging a discreet daily battle against solitude. One fills her time with activities, another is recovering from the loss of her husband, others find sustenance in nature. And love? They still believe in it, of course.

971: Nora is a young housewife and mother, living in a quaint little village with her husband and their two sons. The Swiss countryside is untouched by the major social upheavals the movement of 1968 has brought about. Nora’s life is not affected either; she is a quiet person who is liked by everybody – until she starts to publicly fight for women’s suffrage, which the men are due to vote on in a ballot on February 7, 1971.

After the death of his mother, a middle-aged insurance salesman inherits her small cottage. Selling the cottage, which is attractively located near the center of a big city, makes him a rich man and he buys a large house in the countryside. The salesman then decides to throw a big garden party and invite all his colleagues from the office. Loosened by large amounts of alcohol, the guests gradually shed all their inhibitions and reveal their innermost frustrations.

Sarah is a solitary 17-year old girl. She struggles to connect with people, a reality her listless bourgeois family fails to understand. Sarah wishes she had a boyfriend, a friend, someone she can connect to. Instead, she struggles with depression, and perpetuating a loop that only serves to isolate her further. Yet Sarah finds an outlet in her high school drama class— when she performs she becomes someone else entirely, another character able to give truth to her most hidden desires. But sublimation through art leads Sarah down a dangerous path to a secret only she can keep.

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.

Titeuf has just learned that all the boys in his class have been invited to Nadia’s birthday party – except for him! That same evening his parents inform him that they are going to separate.

The feature documentary is an intimate memorial paying tribute to the man, thinker, writer and painter Friedrich Dürrenmatt. The focus is on the hitherto unknown love story between Friedrich Dürrenmatt and his wife Lotti Dürrenmatt-Geissler, a close relationship that lasted for forty years. After Lotti’s death in 1983, Dürrenmatt suffered from a profound crisis, which he overcame with a new, great love. His sister Verena Dürrenmatt, together with his children Peter Dürrenmatt and Ruth Dürrenmatt, share the exclusive story of their brother and father for the first time.

In 2013, an ancient statue of Apollo, the god of arts, beauty and divinations, is found off the coast of Gaza. When it disappears under strange circumstances, rumors quickly spread regarding this mysterious treasure. Both an investigative film and a reflection on history, The Apollo of Gaza immerses us in the little-known reality of a land ravaged by wars and blockades.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Expeditions to the heart of the country with the author Pedro Lenz, who lives above the Flügelrad Restaurant next to the railway station in Olten. An oscillating snapshot of the prevailing mood in Swiss society emerges from the interplay between stories of everyday life and Lenz’s reflective texts in Swiss dialect, replete with laconic poesy and a tinge of yearning.

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.

Evangelical Christians are calling out for a second sexual revolution: chastity! As a counter-movement to the attitudes of today’s culture, one in eight girls in the United Sates has vowed to remain “unsoiled” until marriage. But the seven children of the Wilson family, founders of the Purity Ball, take this concept one step further; even their first kiss will be at the altar. For two years, the filmmaker follows the Wilson offspring as they prepare for their fairytale vision of marriage and documents how the religious right is grooming a young generation to embody an Evangelically-grounded Utopia.

The film tells of the radical life-search by the Swiss writer Paul Nizon, born 1929 in Bern, Switzerland, who became what “he was meant to be” in Paris. Now 90-year-old, Paul Nizon grants insights into his life and work in a self-ironic, direct manner. The intimate portrait of a great literary outsider emerges, for whom the risk of life and the risk of writing merge into one and the same work of art.

The film tells of the radical life-search by the Swiss writer Paul Nizon, born 1929 in Bern, Switzerland, who became what “he was meant to be” in Paris. Now 90-year-old, Paul Nizon grants insights into his life and work in a self-ironic, direct manner. The intimate portrait of a great literary outsider emerges, for whom the risk of life and the risk of writing merge into one and the same work of art.

Nowadays, the wish to have children ranges between legitimate desires, primary instincts, social pressures and lifestyle choices. With a great deal of expert knowledge and impressive pictures, the film takes a candid look at reproductive medicine and its industry, as well as into the test tube. The point is, however, not to praise or stigmatise reproductive medicine. Nevertheless, the social, political and, above all, ethical implications are palpable at all times. A present-day science fiction.

A large private television channel has just been established in Switzerland. A communications company is given the task of drawing up concepts for programmes and decides to buy the rights for the stories of various criminals from which to produce films. Rosemonde decides to sell her story. Eight years ago, she killed a man who tried to violate her. As there were no witnesses, the case was dismissed for lack of evidence. Kevin, a film producer, charges Paul, a young writer, with the task of writing the scenario relating Rosemonde's life at the time. However, she appears to be incapable of recalling her past and clams up when Paul approaches her with the questions he needs to ask her. Marie, a young actress, is then asked to visit Rosemonde and in exchange is promised the role in the film if she can make her talk. The film relates the strange relationship between the two women who begin to develop a friendship

Stations are islands, detached between worlds and times, cosmopolitan meeting points and junctions. "Mahatah - Side Stories from Main Stations" plunges us into this world where, almost without realising it, people scrub the stairs, set up the train compositions, look after security and sell tickets - or kebabs.

Schmid's satire on 19th-century class relations is also a thinly veiled commentary on the failure of the 1968 political revolution. Once a year, an aristocratic Austrian family holds a traditional feast at which masters and servants trade places. A troupe of actors (including cult cabaret artist Ingrid Caven) are hired to entertain the guests, performing fragments from the "cultural scrap heap": GONE WITH THE WIND, Madame Bovary, Tennessee Williams, Swan Lake. The decadent proceedings take on a dangerous edge when the actors incite the servants to revolt against their masters-but is the Revolution also part of the act?

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.

In a remote village nestled in the foggy hills of northern Bangladesh, Rupa fights against a predetermined destiny. With only a bike, a camera and her knowledge, she defies traditions and tries to make a place for herself in her community. When a twist of fate hits her family, Rupa’s freedom is threatened. Will she be able to maintain the fragile balance between the expectations of her loved ones and her own dreams?

The autobiography of Bruno Wilkomirski, who described his childhood in a concentration camp in it, led to a scandal, because it was exposed as fiction. Interviews and archive material are used to investigate the motives of the man who turned his personal trauma as an orphan in Switzerland into a collective Jewish trauma and thus became a perpetrator himself.

The Film UR-MUSIG authored by Cyrill Schlaepfer is a musical journey into the remaining worlds of authentic and traditional Swiss folkmusic. It's unconventional form as a symphony of sounds, music, pictures and landscapes (soundscapes) caught the attention of the audience at it's successful premiere at the International Filmfestival Locarno 1993. After beeing showcased at many differnent Music- and Filmfestivals in Switzerland and abroad the award winning film UR-MUSIG got it's famous cult-reputation by continuous screening of more than 2 years in Zurich.

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.

A kind of road movie which travels in the grooves of magically charged landscapes across Europe. From the Swiss Alps to eastern Poland, from Stromboli to Iceland… the film is a large-scale attempt to achieve the ideal cruising speed. Roman Signer marks the stages of the journey with his own highly personal set of instruments – strikingly succinct interventions full of underlying humour. The film is also a journey through mental and emotional states. A tightrope walk between devilment and melancholy. Danger – including mental danger – develops into a sensual stimulus. Sudden crashes and abrupt changes of mood create the rhythm and the climate of the film. “Chamber of music” is how Signer describes his exploits with rocket and fuse, “sculptural chamber music”.

An hallucinatory tale of a filmmaker’s journey to Canada’s Arctic in search of the Northern Lights – an encounter with the gulf between the knowable and the ineffable, between humankind’s need to capture and control Nature, and Nature’s refusal to be caught… aurora borealis, the lights with no bodies pouring colours from the sky… more special than any special effect…

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.

It is summer in a small village in south-eastern Spain. A storm threatens to cause the river that runs through it to overflow again. A popular old belief claims that some women are predestined to disappear with each new flood, because they have the “water inside”. A band of young people is trying to overcome the weariness of a summer in the village that smells of death by smoking, dancing, and lusting after each other. In this electric atmosphere that precedes the storm, Ana and José live a love affair until the storm bursts.

A small village on the Syrian-Turkish border in the early 1980s: The six-year-old Kurdish boy Sero experiences his first school year in an Arab school and has to watch his small world being radically changed in the course of an absurd nationalism. Humorous yet serious, the film tells of a childhood that also finds its light moments between dictatorship and dark drama.

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.

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.

Paul, in his fifties, is a filmmaker. He writes a screenplay as if it were his job and starts looking for an actress for the lead role. The fact that he can't find her must be due to something: perhaps there are too many stories, too many images, too many actresses and too little peace. Perhaps it is also a necessity. Paul spontaneously throws away his script. Jean has just finished film school and is hired by Paul as his assistant. One day, Paul comes across an old photo of Dara, an Italian actress he once knew and admired, who has long since disappeared from the screen. Paul asks Jean to find her. Both of them do everything they can to bring her back to the screen. To achieve this, they embark on a world of feelings, confrontations and dreams.

Inside Marrakech’s bustling Medina, Samir is looking for love and a brighter future. But his summer flings all come to a bitter end at the airport and he is left behind in a country with limited possibilities. When Samir really falls in love, he is faced with a major decision: Should he listen to his sisters and agree to an arranged marriage in Morocco? Or should he follow his love and his dream of a brighter future in Europe?

The demise of airline Swissair in 2001 was a huge blow to Switzerland’s economy and to the country’s morale. It was a sad day for Swiss history when the airline’s fleet was grounded on 2 October 2001. Grounding is set during the last days of the doomed airline, and tells the story of manager Mario A. Corti’s unhappy fate, the last, unlucky CEO at the traditional airline company, as well as of all those nameless people who lost almost everything in the maelstrom of Swissair’s downfall: their job, home and their belief in Switzerland.

In the summer of 2015, one million refugees seek sanctuary in Europe. 40,000 reach Switzerland. Andreas Glarner, mayor of the wealthiest municipality in Aargau, wants to set an example and refuses to accommodate ten refugees in his village. Johanna Gündel, student and daughter of a local vegetable farmer, fights this policy with like-minded villagers. The film tells the story of Switzerland in times of the so-called refugee crisis.

Zilla Leutenegger is a successful Swiss artist. Filmmaker Iwan Schumacher accompanied her as she prepared for a major exhibition at the Bündner Kunstmuseum Chur and focuses on the creation of three artworks: Two Pianos from the piano cemetery, a endless hallway and a Silverback called ZillaGorilla. These works are jumping-off points for following a few trajectories in Leutenegger’s life and work. A very contemporary picture emerges of life as a woman and as an artist today.

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.

In 1943, chemist Albert Hofmann stumbles upon a previously unknown substance in his Basel research laboratory: LSD - the "atomic bomb of the mind". He recognizes the enormous potential of this new substance, which will change the world. Hippies, secret services and the military experiment with it. Doctors argue about the usability of LSD as a cure. The documentary is a cinematic trip through six decades and tells the story of a drug that has lost none of its mystery to this day.

Getrud Woker, one of the first female professors in Europe, was an early feminist and pacifist, advocating for women’s rights and against war. Yet her story was never included in historical accounts, despite the fact that she challenged the societal conventions of the day to oppose gender discrimination and immoral war practices. She was – as she continues to be today – a true inspiration for self-determined women

Max is an orphan who has been hired out to a farmer’s family. His foster parents treat him like a workhorse while their son seizes every opportunity to humiliate him. Playing the accordion is the one thing that is entirely his. But when the new teacher stands up for Max, it only makes a bad situation much worse. The only thing preserving his will to survive is his friendship with Berteli, who was also taken on to work at the farm. Max dreams of Argentina with her: a fantasy world, where allegedly even hayforks are made of silver.

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.

Situated halfway between Bern and Biel in the foggy Lyssbach valley, Suberg has gone from a sleepy farming village to a dormitory village over the decades. The filmmaker was born in Suberg and has lived there all his life, successfully ignoring the village and its inhabitants for 32 years. When he was in primary school, his friends were from Suberg. Nowadays they live in Zurich or Berlin and the evenings in the countryside are becoming lonelier. As a result, he now wants to become part of the village community. But how do you get to know the inhabitants of a village that has closed all of its meeting places?

Daniele von Arb was 16 years old in 1970 when he and his friends founded the revolutionary cell in Zurich later listed by the U.S. secret service CIA in its chart on international terrorism under the code name “Annebäbi”. Today he is a fortune-teller and future consultant. A hurtling journey through the armed struggle of the 1970s, entry into the cosmos of spirituality and finally, in 1989, a first class ticket to freedom.

Winter in rural Switzerland. Marina, a teacher in her mid-forties, leads a quiet life with her husband and daughter. But appearances are deceptive; she is having a secret affair with Artem, the father of one of her students, Ulyana. Although both Artem and his daughter have lived in Switzerland for years, neither has a residence permit. When Ulyana is caught stealing it exposes their game of hide-and-seek and threatens the existences of everyone involved.

Amidst the preparations for her 35th wedding anniversary, Meredith is surprised by the discovery that she is HIV-positive. Only her husband André could have been the carrier of the virus.

In the dramatic first half of the 20th century, in which dreams and traumas are so close together, almost all possibilities of modern existence are played out. How to live, how to love? These questions are different ones for women. The women around the architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, his wife Ada, his three daughters Georgia, Marianne and Waltraut and his partner Lilly Reich seize the opportunities of the new age, but also experience the limitations of old patterns. When Mies emigrated to the USA in 1938, they struggled on their own through the barbarism of the Nazi era and the war. Their life was always determined by the absent husband, father and lover. The hybrid documentary «The Mies van der Rohes» tells a troubling family story and designs a moral painting of the modern age with unpublished films, images and documents - from a female perspective.

Tamás never wanted to get close to people. But he got stuck with Norika, with whom he often spends the nights. Her sister Annika also likes the mysterious man - and one day Norika suddenly disappears without a trace. Annika reports her missing and testifies that Tamás has been following them both at every turn. The suspected Tamás, however, sticks to his perception: Seduced by the women, he has slipped from an affair into a fatal triangular relationship.

A co-operative that was founded in 1993 in Ticino (the Alpine southernmost Canton of Switzerland) by Ulrich Stamani and 12 other people continues to prosper as a small farm and eco-resort thanks to the help and support of people like Katharina Luthi, a skilled farmer. Over the course of a year the co-operative has to readjust itself to the needs of its members and try to find new younger people to progress the simple life it preserves.

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.

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.

Peter Mettler's film essay explores our perceptions and mental representations of time. This visual reflection on the origins, the conditions and the effects of our existence aims to give a vivid impression of how we experience our present moment and of how each of us impacts the future.

Vincent Fleury, a taxi driver who has been rejected by his wife, embarks on an adventure from which he hopes to benefit: in exchange for a sum of money which will enable him to pay child support for his son, he agrees to set out for Crete with an unknown person, Thelma, to help her find the ex-lover who had spurned her. During their trip across Switzerland, Italy and Greece, they flirt – but at the last minute Thelma always holds back. Vincent is at a loss to understand until he discovers that she is a trans woman who, in order to keep him with her has been lying from the very beginning. Torn between love and repulsion, Vincent has to make a choice.

More focused on the act committed than on the needs of those involved, penal justice has certain limitations. The film explores the difficult connection between victims trying to rebuild their lives and perpetrators disposed to taking responsibility. Restorative justice encourages the parties to manage their conflicts themselves, helping them to free themselves from their status. An intimate, emotional film in which the barriers between reality and fiction fade away.

The day after the night of the full moon, 12 children all 10 years of age are found to be missing in the four language regions of Switzerland. The police and the media reassuringly claim that there are plenty of leads and clues. No kidnapper comes forward to contradict them. At the end of one week, all the parents receive the exact same letter from the children, written in cryptic language. By the next full moon they must have deciphered the letter and complied with all its requirements, or else… A dramatic-ironic tale that reveals the current state of Switzerland. Switzerland as a metaphor. Or: a plea for less logic and more imagination in our world.

A powerful man, who is also the former prime minister of Georgia, has developed an exquisite hobby. He collects century old trees along Georgia’s coastline. He commissions his men to uproot them and bring them to his private garden. Some of these trees are as tall as 15-floor-buildings. And in order to transplant a tree of such dimensions some other trees are chopped down, electric cables are shifted and new roads are paved through mandarin plantations. The film moves the concept of uprooting from its metaphorical meaning into an oppressive, tangible and yet surreal reality.

The Swiss National Association for the Storage of Radioactive Waste plans to build a permanent waste disposal site in Wellenberg, Canton of Nidwalden. A regional citizens’ action group is formed to protest against it. Murer not only interviews supporters and opponents, in particular the Alpine farmers living on the Wellenberg. He starts by raising the question of a time-scale that is out of all proportion to the human lifespan as a measure of time. Fredi Murer dedicated the film to the “children and children’s children”, both of the farmers on the Wellenberg and of all of us. For the first time, Murer deals explicitly with the ‘can-do’ generation that lives and works as though they were the last people on this earth.

A fictionalized documentary about the great Japanese poet Bashô (1644-1694), the spiritual father of Haiku poetry. A monk plays the role of Bashô and walks through the Japanese countryside, following the tracks of the poet’s travel diaries. On the way he writes many of his famous haiku poems. A film about poetry, meditation, zen buddhism and a view of untouched, virgin nature, seen and to understand as a lost paradise.

An ode to liberated speech and to the power of words, “those one speaks to others, those one speaks in silence”, Alain Tanner’s third film is inspired by a poet and a poetic text which deeply affected him as a young director: Cahier d’un retour au pays natal, written in 1939 by Aimé Césaire. A poem extolled by the Surrealists, this seminal flow of anti-colonial thinking by the West-Indian-born poet is the bubbling spring which inspires the gestures and words of the film’s main character, Vincent (François Marthouret), a 30-year-old from Geneva.Weighed down by the monotony and boredom of his life as a well-off westerner, he sells all his possessions and decides to leave for Algeria with his fiancée. The subject is clearly that of escape from one’s place of belonging, a Rimbaudesque theme dear to Tanner, which is here directly linked to the Third Worldist discourse of the 1960s and 1970s. But the strength of the film lies in the way it turns this thinking on its head: on the eve of their departure, chance circumstances prevent the couple from leaving. Instead, they decide to pursue their dream of escape by living hidden away in their empty apartment. Again, Tanner shows that it is the inner mileage travelled that matters, not the arrival at a destination; the posing of a question rather than the answer. As the director says at the beginning of the film: “Speaking words can be an act in itself, it can also be a substitute for action.” This is an important precept for the understanding of Tanner’s cinema: poetry is a form of action, and having it in mind, reciting it, can help to give a new shape to reality: in the film’s final scene, the couple decide to have a child.

Modern Amazons are fierce heroines. They are ready to fight for what is important to them. Without explaining, without compromising, always persisting. They fight for victory in the ring, for acceptance, and also, for fellow sufferers and humanit

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.

For the first time in the history of mankind, we are forced to seriously consider the future of the Earth, and to do so in a global context. We need new energy concepts: energy production, distribution and consumption must be fundamentally redefined and organized. Despite all the challenges, there are also unique opportunities in this transformation process. How do we tackle the future? Which concepts are promising? Where do we stand?

Heidi (Elsbeth Sigmund), a young orphan girl living with her aunt (Elsie Attenhofer) in Frankfurt, is forced to move to the Swiss Alps to live with her ornery grandfather (Heinrich Gretler). At first, he resents her presence, but, after a short while, Heidi manages to pierce his gruff exterior, and the two become close. She also befriends a young shepherd named Peter (Thomas Klameth). After three years, Heidi's aunt arrives and demands Heidi's return to Frankfurt.

“If the bee disappears from the surface of the Earth, man would have no more than four years left to live.” Einstein. All over the world bees have been dying for the past three years. Although the causes for this are still a mystery, one thing is already clear: there is more at stake than simply a few dead insects, and a great deal more than just honey. Seeking answers, the film embarks on a journey to meet with people whose lives depend on bees: to a Swiss beekeeper living on an Alp; to the gigantic almond plantations in California; to a bee brain researcher in Berlin; to a pollen trader in China; and to the killer bees in the Arizona desert. All report on how the bees are vanishing. The film tells us about their lives. And about ours.

H.R. Giger became known all over the world as the designer of the aliens in Ridley Scott's feature film ALIEN. In this documentary about H.R. Giger's work, which was made many years before, the artist's creative process and the interplay between conscious and unconscious influences are the focus. Statements by experts and contemporaries address the question of the artist's position and social responsibility.

Helena (19) and Jonas (11) are both severely handicapped and permanently dependent on support. In their being different and with the difficulty of expressing their needs, they put parents and family, school and caregivers, but also society to the test. How do we deal with it if our expectations of life are not fulfilled? How do we integrate the unexpected into our everyday life? Helena and Jonas succeed with support from their environment.

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.

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.

Two women moved into a new housing estate in 1957. Now both are over 90 years old and could actually enjoy their retirement. But they have to leave their familiar surroundings after more than 60 years because the houses are being demolished.

Cairo, a city of more than 20 million people, has recently gone through multiple political, cultural and economic upheavals, forcing Egyptian society to reinvent itself. In Egypt, people don't live on their own and it's only after they get married that they can leave their parent's home to create their own household. Whatever their intimate feelings might be, marriage is an inevitable step towards independence. The film follows the path towards marriage through the eyes of three couples. Instead of presenting marriage as the union of two beings for eternity, FIANCEES uses marriage as a pretext to talk about men and women, and the social pressures young couples face every day. By freeing the intimate and sincere voice of those characters, the film allows us to see the aspirations and fears of today's Egyptian youth.

1984: Searching for an experience beyond modern civilisation, Bruno Manser travels into the jungles of Borneo and finds the nomadic Penan tribe. When the existence of the Penan is threatened by relentless deforestation, Manser takes up the fight against logging with a courage and determination that makes him one of the most renowned and credible environmentalists of his time. Based on a true story.

Spring, 1912. Georgette, a mismatched newly-wed travelling by steamer on her honeymoon, meets Esther, who has been promised in marriage to a missionary. When Esther refuses to leave the ship in India to wed this unknown man of the cloth, Georgette dons her clothes and departs. Despite the lure of adventure however, Georgette soon realises that she is in over her head. But it is too late. She has gone too far to turn back now. Confronted with the missionary as her future husband, she finds herself powerless, as tender feelings begin to invade her bosom. At this point her legal husband Braun appears, with Esther in tow, intent on getting his wife back. The drama takes its course.

Ren, who is in her mid-twenties, goes on holiday with her Italian-Canadian parents and her younger sister Siena. Her family doesn’t know that she recently lost her job. Ren tries to find her way around the beach resort, which is geared towards retirees, and to escape her parents’ loving but overprotective ways, while her sister keeps the family on their toes with her rebellious outbursts. Knowing that Ren will be even more dependent on her parents’ support after the holidays, the resort house feels more and more confining. In this refreshingly cliché-free film, writer-director Luis De Filippis tells of vibrant family dynamics and explores a Millennial’s conflicted desire to be independent yet cared for. While the film perfectly captures the tenor of a summer holiday where sunshine, watered-down booze, boredom and awkwardness are standard, there is an underlying sense of the slight unease that afflicts Ren as a trans woman in a conservative resort. Beyond melodramatic stereotypes, De Filippis and her team show us a world that authentically represents the trans experience.

The second part of the famous story on Heidi. Returning from Frankfurt, she applies her new knowlegdes.

15-year-old Max sets off for Saint-Hilare in search of his father, the famous troubadour Johnny Bigoude, who disappeared shortly before Max's birth. He is waylaid by Sam, a rascally fairground entertainer, and introduced to the delights of the amazing Fly Swatter Festival. When Max finally gets there, Saint-Hilare turns out to be the private kingdom of Bzzz & Co., infamous manufacturers of flyswatters, run by the degenerate Rodolfo. Musical virtuoso Max makes a big impression, especially on smart, lovely, resourceful Felicie, who convinces Rodolfo to hire him...

Drawing inspiration from his personal encounter with the Italian refugee child Giovanna during World War II, Markus Imhoof tells how refugees and migrants are treated today: on the Mediterranean Sea, in Italy and in Switzerland.

The scene of the action is a closed-down, dilapidated hotel in the Swiss mountains which has been lying empty for some time. The hotel used to belong to the narrator’s grandparents, and it was there that he was born and brought up. He visits the hotel for the last tim with the intention of losing himself in memories connected with the old building.

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.

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.

The film deals with an imigrant woman from southern Italy, who lives in Frankfurt in the 1970s. Unusual about this film is the way of the storytelling. The original plan was to make a documentary, but none of the female protagonists were willing to be seen in front of the camera. The fear to expose their own family was too big. The law of “omerta” exists in the diaspora as well. A southern italian proverb states: “The girls greatest value is her beauty - the womans greatest value is her silence”. For this reason, in the film only the sound of Maria M. from Basilicata, can be heard. She remains anonemous. In the movie, southern italian emigrants act in Maria's story. In fact, they end up playing themselves, which gives the film several layers and adds a refreshing sense of humor.

A musical journey through the world of tones, sounds and noises: with Manfred Eicher, the outstanding producer of contemporary music. The film traces his life at concerts, in recording studios, in back rooms and off the beaten path with such musical contemporaries as Arvo Pärt, Dino Saluzzi, Jan Garbarek, Eleni Karaindrou, Anouar Brahem, Gianluigi Trovesi, Kim Kashkashian, Nik Bärtsch, Marilyn Mazur and many others.

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 story of four people trying to fulfil their most basic desires in life. A group of young people meet up regularly in a nightclub situated in a former customs house on the Swiss-French border, as a means of escape from their drab lives. NO MAN'S LAND is an “in- between” film. Between staying and leaving, between Paul and Jean, about friendship, between Paul and Madelaine, Jean and Mali, Jean and Lucie, about love. Between Paul and his route of escape, Jean and his territory, Madelaine and her music, Mali and her exile.

Rock musician Benji leads a charmed life until the day the evil Maestro steals his shadow in order to take possession of Benji's musical talent. At first, Benji loses the ability to play, then he slowly becomes invisible. Desperate to help his friend, Globi follows the Maestro to his old “Opera house” and discovers that the villain has been stealing the shadows of all the gifted musicians, so that he may rule the world of music. With Globi's help, Benji and his musical partner Lucinda set out to regain their stolen shadows. Will the three of them be able to conquer the evil Maestro and save Benji's life?

More than 500 000 Italians live and work in Switzerland. They are considered a „problem“. An over-employed economy needs their labour – a small nation of distinct peculiarity perceives them as foreign objects. They live beyond the barrier of a different language. Discussed as a problem, they remain unknown as human beings.

The film sets out in the footsteps of German writer Marc Fischer who obsessively searched for the last musical legend of our time, the founding father of Bossa Nova, Brazilian musician João Gilberto. Fischer described his journey in a book, «Hobalala», but committed suicide one week before it was published. By taking up Marc Fischer’s quest, following his steps one by one, thanks to all the clues he left us, we pursue João Gilberto to understand the history, the very soul and essence of Bossa Nova. But who can tell whether we will meet him or not?

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.

Lucien asks a friend, Léon, to carry to the woman he desires, Alice, a basket of provisions and to thank him for it offers him its cap. Léon seduces Alice, small brunette and admits later to his friend his "overflowings". Léon returns at Alice's home but it is not any more the same person; she is blonde and bears no resemblance to the woman the day before. One is sensual and welcoming, the other, mysterious and independent. Alice in Verbland. No drama, no action, a so "seventies" nonchalance... and the art of the conversation as the main subject of a delicious film, worn by remarkable actors (Marie Dubois, Jean-Luc Bideau and Jacques Denis). A wonderful, free and independant film.

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.

The Sagrada Família in Barcelona: a unique, fascinating building project with a brilliant architect, Antoni Gaudí, a huge number of participants and a history full of abysses and high flights. The biography of this building, which has been under construction since 1882 and is now well over half finished, is the starting point for a film about this mysterious process of "creation", about the question of our human creative power - and what we want to use it for.

With his band Zeal & Ardor, Swiss musician Manuel Gagneux was catapulted overnight from the underground to the big stages of the world. The bold mix of Black Metal and old work songs and field hollers by enslaved African-Americans – his answer to a racist provocation on the Internet – is politically explosive. Religion, racism, segregation and appropriation: With his music Gagneux questions and breaks taboos. But being praised as a new kind of leader by his fans frightens the introverted artist. How can he deal with the oversized expectations? Filmmakers Olivier Joliat and Matthias Willi show us the fairy-tale rise of a musician and his band - and how fame affects creative work.

June 2020, Corona, one year after the national women's strike. Six directors dive into the everyday life of six women and explore what it means to be a woman in today's Switzerland.

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.

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.

An essay on the tale of a filmmaking everyman. A personal story and a brief history of image, spanning from 1947 to 2017, told through his favourite movies, some of which are little known. Life and art, intertwined. From the freedom to create to the consumer society that devastates dreams just as Coca-Cola dissolves bones.

Giuseppe Verdi's «finest work», as he himself described it, still stands today on the Piazza Buonarroti in Milan. It is the «Casa di riposo», founded by Verdi in 1896 for «people who are less fortunate than I» - people who never made a big career, and people who have long spent their dream salaries. Today they live, all long forgotten, in a small room with a suitcase full of memories.

In this docudrama, the real star is a railroad tunnel. First built, at the instigation of a banker and an engineer, in 1872 under appalling conditions, it was widened to accommodate automobiles in 1972. The tunnel links the Rhineland in Germany with Italy and goes through the Swiss mountains. The many lives lost in the building of the first tunnel were considered to be one of the costs for economic progress. In one re-enactment, a strike for better conditions is severely dealt with by the military. Even in 1972, though working conditions were better, most of the men working on the tunnel were poor immigrant workers, with almost no power to negotiate better treatment.

Oliver and Elena a young Swiss couple, travel through the Sahara when their truck breaks down. They are forced to stop in the oasis of Tar. The everyday life of the place rotates around a small Taxi Phone, owned by Said a young Tuareg. It’s the only place one can call from, get or send mail, find tourist guides. Here they meet other tourists, young people dreaming of immigrating to Europe, children with big hopes, and fantastic storytellers. While Oliver has a hard time getting accustomed to life in the desert and wants to resume the trip quickly, Elena is soon absorbed by this fascinating world.

Sebastian makes a decision on his 18th birthday: to escape his parents' house, he goes to the French speaking part of Switzerland as an "au pair". Not only is he the only male domestic help there – what is initially merely intended to be a linguistic stay turns into an introduction to life and love. For with his host family, the Dumoulins, all hell breaks loose. The story of a young man who dares to try something new and finds his destiny in the process. Romantic comedy with nuanced overtones.

Mitholz, a village in the Bernese Oberland, was destroyed in 1947 by the explosion of a Swiss army ammunition depot. After decades of secrecy, the population learns in 2018 that the danger is not over. They must now leave their homeland. A story of abuse of trust and state failure, for which the population pays the price.

Fifty years after her graduation, Senta von Meissen invites eight former school friends to a class reunion at her castle. The table is set for ten people. One place remains empty: Teddy, the hostess's once great school sweetheart, died in an accident on the Rhine Falls during the after-graduation trip. But was it really an accident? The evening turns into a murderous act of revenge.

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.

Läppli is arrested as a supposed opponent of the army and misses the general mobilisation. Eventually he arrives at the barracks after all. There, as HD Läppli, he drives every superior mad in record time with his obtuseness and sense of justice.

Carmen Aristegui will not be silenced. The incorruptible journalist and news anchor is one of the few voices in Mexico with the courage to speak the truth – becoming one of
the most dangerous voices in the eyes of the government. Millions of people listen to her when she draws attention to maladministration and misinformation on the radio or on television. Following the unveiling of a corruption scandal involving the president, Carmen is fired from the radio station where she works in 2015. The population reacts with protests, and the journalist’s fight for freedom of the press begins. We accompany the brave woman through her tumultuous everyday life as she continues to speak and manoeuvre a team of investigative journalists through the poisoned Mexican media landscape on her own news platform. SILENCE RADIO draws the rousing portrait of a woman who refuses to be intimidated or silenced.

What determines our biography? Fate, chance, others? And what influence does the zeitgeist have? Filmmaker Frank Matter set out to find people who, like him, were born on June 8, 1964, but in completely different circumstances. Following their biographies, the film takes us on a moving and visually powerful journey through the last decades.

Nardos, an Azmari singer from Addis Ababa, dreams of telling stories about the lives of ordinary people through her music. In her search of stories for her songs, she meets Gennet, a poet who lives on the streets with her children. As Nardos puts the lives of Ethiopian women, their visions and power at the centre of her creation, we dive deeper and deeper into a rapidly changing country.

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.

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.

While managers of Swiss banks in the USA ruefully apologise for their tax evasions practices and customer data is disclosed to the American authorities, Rudolf Elmer, former auditor at bank Julius Bär, is indicted for violating the Swiss banking secrecy law on the Cayman Islands. Rudolf Elmer: from insider to critic.

The film explores the destruction of a unique train station in Zurich and the construction of the new prison and police centre in its place. From the perspective of the filmmaker’s window, and with testimony from prisoners awaiting deportation, the film probes how we deal with the extinction of history and its replacement with total security.

“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.

The paths of guests and employees cross at the Palace Hotel in St. Moritz: A chambermaid experiences financial difficulties. A guest has been robbed. A thief is caught. An assistant cook is promoted to waiter. And there’s no shortage of love in this small world of the great Hotel Palace. Keeping an orderly eye over proceedings is the hotel’s beautiful patron, whose heart is in the right place. In collaboration with Praesens Film, Cinémathèque Suisse, Memoriav and SRF, ZFF presents for the first time the restored version of a Swiss cinema classic. The cast list reads like a who’s who of erstwhile Swiss film.

The Future Circular Collider is the machine of the future. Thanks to it, we will finally be able to go back in time to the origin of our universe. But which way do we go to set up the largest scientific instrument of all time? Between metaphysics and underground tunnels, a story of the preparations or how men are ready to move mountains for more knowledge.

The daily life in the primary school of Taillères, in the La Brévine valley, is filmed over the course of an entire school year, from 1959 to 1960. Henry Brandt's film, which won the Vela d'argento in Locarno in 1961, is a unique testimony to pedagogical processes, with a tender observation of the relationship between the young protagonists, their place of birth and the adult world.

Enchanted toys come to life to do battle with a holiday-hating villain who is bent on stopping Christmas.

What are skinheads? A journey across Europe, the USA and Canada shows a picture of the current skinhead scene and its history: from the beginnings of the subculture, which grew out of a passion for ska and reggae music, the emergence of the term, which was coined by black Jamaicans, to the rise of the far-right scene. Fascinating portrait of an extremely divided and discredited movement.

Röbi has lung cancer and only a few months to live. He does not want chemotherapy or radiation. The film accompanies Röbi on the last metres of his life. In everyday life, in the cellar archive where his life passes him by, when friends visit him on the sofa, on his last holidays with his grandchildren. A film about doubts, hopes, crises of a courageous person who looks “brother death” in the eye and celebrates life in the process.

Four young people with physical disabilities try to overcome their isolation and the difficulties of living together. In a vacation home, they talk openly with people with and without disabilities about the challenges they face in relationships and sexuality.

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.

Nightclub singer La Paloma succumbs to the persistent courting of a chubby rich admirer and marries him. Before the marriage, she was thought to be dying, but soon she is well. She believes her husband’s love has cured her, but her efforts to love him begin to fade as she discovers true love with her husband’s old school friend. An excessive film opera that brings fiction to life in its most beautiful form.

A Roma boy living in Sweden dreams of building a spaceship to escape the reality of his family's pending asylum request, and the mysterious coma-like illness that has befallen his siblings.

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.

Bombs, war, angry bearded men, shrouded sobbing women, shattered cities: Iraq, as seen through the eyes of the western media these days. These images are juxtaposed with those from the fifties and seventies: films with frivolous music, unveiled women who study; elegantly dressed men in Bagdad, a modern city. How did it come to this? Film director Samir tells the story of his globalised middle-class Iraqi family, scattered between Auckland, Moscow, Paris, London and Buffalo, New York.

In 1976 a massive explosion at chemicals factory Icmesa in the Italian Seveso had devastating consequences for neighbouring communities and their environment. Icmesa’s parent company was Givaudan, which in turn belonged to Hoffman La Roche, based in Basel. Following the accident, Icmesa’s technical director Jorg Sambeth was charged with failing to keep adequate security measures. During his investigations into the true cause and background to the catastrophe, Sambeth stumbled upon facts that were damaging to those who were paying his lawyers. Yet he is sentenced to five years in prison. How should he take up his grievances with this conglomerate of companies?

In a small mountain village, lost deep in a valley and deprived of sunlight for months on end, an old man, Anzevui (Charles Vanel), prophet and sorcerer, foretells the end of the world. According to his calculations, the sun will not return and the village will sink into a definitive winter. One by one, the villagers panic. Only Isabelle stands up to the hysteria. She succeeds in convincing those who hesitate not to give in to the terror and to fight against fate.

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.

In May 1747, the aging Johann Sebastian Bach (Vadim Glowna) meets the young King Frederick II of Prussia (Jürgen Vogel) in Potsdam. For one week, these two titans of the Baroque era play out a father-and-son relationship that is sometimes painful, yet often humorous. A battle of giants that provokes joyful chaos, both among the Bach clan as well as in the royal palace.

Faces of Children (Visages d'enfants), a masterpiece, was filmed on location in the Haut-Valais region of Switzerland, with spectacular mountain scenery adding important atmosphere to the characters' complex emotions. The film is about the effect on a sensitive boy (again Jean Forest, who is heartrending) of his mother's death and his father's remarriage.

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.

Pensioner Roli comes to Fareed’s assistance when the Syrian refugee is faced with the burial of his Muslim wife. Together they stumble into a bewildering forest of Swiss bureaucracy to which Roli finds a beautifully simple answer.

Uli, the farm hand of the Boden farm, is a bawdy, careless, spendthrift fellow. Lectured by his master, he becomes aware that if he is to escape his abject condition, he must reform. He accordingly leaves the farm girl Anneliesi, turns his back on his drinking companions and starts working hard. His reputation improves so much so that Joggeli, an old farmer, hires him to restore order in the Giungge farm where chaos is rife. In using strong-arms tactics, Uli attains his ends and soon becomes indispensable. Attracted to the sweet Vreneli, Uli is unfortunately lured by Elisi, the master's scheming daughter. It is based on the classic 1841 novel of the same name by Jeremias Gotthelf.

The film is an attempt to offer an insight into the Japanese Kabuki star, Tamasaburo Bando. The film consists of four continuous acts: A prelude, the dance of the drunken snake, «Orochi», from Japan's oldest myth, is followed by a documentary section, «Tamasaburo Bando and his idols». It includes encounters with Han Takehara, geisha and dancer, Haruko Sugimura, film actress (Ozu, Naruse, Kurosawa), and Butoh dancer, Kazuo Ohno. The next act, «Twilight Geisha», is a light-hearted variation on the geisha theme. In the fourth and final section, Tamasaburo dances the Kabuki drama «Sagimusume», a story of reincarnation and of a girl's transformation on a snowy winter's night.

Heidi, a five-year-old orphan, lives with her grandfather in the Swiss mountains. Her happiness ends when her aunt Dete takes Heidi to Frankfurt, where she is to help take care of a sickly child, Klara.

Mali - Algeria - Libya - Italy. Issa’s escape from West Africa to the European mainland lasted ten years. Everything was supposed to be better here. But when he arrived in Rome, the only thing waiting for the young man was a life of homelessness and unemployment – which meant no money to send home. Drissa and Sekou share a similar fate, waiting in Italian asylum centres for a residence permit. Then there’s Bubu, who, forced to move from job to job, is unable to settle down. And lastly comes Alassane, who lives without identity papers in a state of constant uncertainty in a refugee camp near Rome. They all have one thing in common: after a gruelling odyssey, none of them has found the Italy they were hoping for when they arrived. Disillusioned, they find themselves in a vacuum of waiting, reflecting on the time they live in and the time that lies ahead.

A film about people who have fought for more freedom and justice – and have had to pay dearly for it. The two women and two men from Tibet, Congo, Chile, and Turkey now live in Switzerland. In their native countries they were badly tortured for their human rights efforts. Nevertheless, they have not lost their belief in a better world.

In 2009 the body of Alice B is found washed up on an African beach. Next to the corpse of the white, 30-year old European woman lie those of a dozen black migrants. Eight years after this tragedy, Pierre-Alain Meier travels to Senegal in the hope of understanding the story behind this shipwreck. When he was Alice’s age, he wandered the streets of Dakar planning the production of the film Hyenas. Like her, he was a white person in Africa. Perhaps like her, he would hoped he could blend in a bit more with his African friends and co-workers and not be so unmistakeably foreign. Following in Alice’s footsteps, the filmmaker today puts his own story into perspective, with humility and affection, allowing us access to a very intimate terrain. Farewell to Africa tells the story of a final journey and sets out to explore the complex ties – both rich and asymmetrical – that have never ceased to exist between Europe and French-speaking Africa. (Luciano Barisone)

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.

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 documentary enters the heart of football culture and uses the dressing room as the central stage. By putting on their jerseys, professionals, women, juniors and seniors take on different roles for the duration of a game. The joy of the game unites them all. The film shows the National League A women's team from GC Zurich, SC Kriens from the Challenge League, the C-juniors of FC Blue Stars Zurich and the veteran team of FC Wettswil-Bonstetten in the dressing room. A unity is created from single individuals. By putting on the football jersey, each and every one of them is given their task. Everyone faces the pressure of the game, but also their own fear. The film shows how teams come together, forget everyday life and become part of a greater unity through the ritual of football.

On a summer morning, the opening of the trial in the Zurich District Court is announced for 8 o'clock. On trial is the divorce case of Marlene Faber and Nick Merk. The couple is waiting outside the courtroom for their divorce and is reviewing their marriage once again: From the honeymoon over the first quarrels until the end.

In 2016 the sun has turned the entire world into a scorched and barren wasteland. The humans who have survived are either resourceful or violent, and sometimes both. Marie, her little sister Leonie, and best friend Phillip, are in a car headed to the mountains - rumor has it there is water there. Along the way they meet Tom, a first-rate mechanic. But can they trust him? Fraught with deep distrust, the group is lured into an ambush where their real battle for survival begins.

Montreal, 1963. 13-year-old Hanna has to deal with growing up and with her family: Her father is trying unsuccessfully to make a living as a writer, her mother is constantly overworked. Hanna takes refuge in Godard's cinema and in her film idol Anna Karina - only to discover, like Karina in «Vivre sa vie», that although she is free, she is above all responsible for living her life. Sensitive and poetic coming-of-age and coming-out story with subtle overtones.

On the barrier island of Sapelo, two young brothers are growing up in the last remaining enclave of the Saltwater Geechee people. Their greatest joy is exploring the wilderness like their adoptive mother, Cornelia Walker Bailey, did as a child. As Sapelo’s storyteller and elder matriarch, she works to preserve what remains of this island community established by her ancestors. At the dawn of adolescence, the brothers inherit her hope, but their bond is tested as they begin to face the wider world. The documentary by Nick Brandestini was awarded the Sesterce d'or for Best Feature Film at Visions du Réel 2020.

Max Haufler hated acting, but while he left his mark on Swiss filmmaking of the 1950s with his character roles, success as a film director eluded him. He tried in vain in the last years of his life to film the novel "Der Stumme" by Otto F. Walter. Max Haufler fought for his dream - until it broke him.

A few hours after the Iraq war started in March 2003, Antonio Gutierrez’ photo was sent around the world: the first fallen soldier on the American side, and he wasn’t even an American! In death Antonio’s dream finally came true: like 38,000 other non-American soldiers he had enlisted in the US army because of the promise of American citizenship. Now he received it posthumously. Heidi Specogna’s film tells the moving story of a former street kid from the slums of Guatemala, who made the long journey to the North. An idealistic young man who wasn’t an adventurer, but full of hope and longing for a better future, and who died an American hero.

At the beginning of the 1970s: Who are the people who practice the dying craft of home posing in Baselbiet? And what problems do they have to contend with? Exciting and moving picture of social and economic contexts and dependencies and living monument of a once flourishing craft. A milestone of Swiss documentary filmmaking

Having doubts about the guilt of the obvious suspect in the murder of an eight year old girl, a police detective decides to investigate the case on his own.

The deeds of the Swiss national hero William Tell in his fight against despotism and violence in 1291. Based on the drama by Friedrich Schiller and the chronicle by Aegidius Tschudi, filmed on original locations. The film is now protected as a Swiss cultural property.

The documentary road movie recounts the journey of the African singer Youssou N'Dour: From Atlanta to New Orleans, from New York via Luxembourg and Dakar to the slave island of Gorée, he follows the traces of the black slaves and their music, jazz. He is guided by the blind pianist Moncef Genoud. Together with extraordinary musicians, they create a repertoire in the course of the journey that is permeated by the different cultures.

Klingenhof: A courtyard in a part of Zurich which is inhabited by “all nations”; domicile of the authors; a film spontaneously grown out of the idea, Why not start a project just in front of one's own door? Meeting faces, destinies, by chance, following the word of Claudio Magris, Any place can be the centre of the world. Of course there are at once questions about the origins of the inhabitants, about feeling homesick, being well or not in a foreign country, about how comes you feel at home, generally, at a certain place or not. Friendships are beginning to arise, faces become familiar. Young and old people look for adventures of their own in the courtyard, one arrives, one goes and turns back, maybe one leaves forever. The work on the film was overshaded by the premature death of Hans Stürm, both companion and cameraman.

The tragic accident of an Italian laborer ,working on the Mont Blanc tunnel.

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)

With her worldwide success “Fear of Flying”, the New Yorker Erica Jong inspired the sexual liberation of women. She dared to set out for herself and demanded an encounter on equal terms. She wanted to change the world and still wants to today. With her own story, with her humour and with trust in the power of words.

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.

A small theater troupe is stranded in Switzerland after World War II: the artists hope to get a visa to South America. But to get it, they first have to pay off debts to the Swiss government – and perform an operetta. Swiss cinema classic, based on one of the most successful Swiss stage plays of the time.

While "Les nomades du soleil" follows the nomads of the Wodaabe and their herds in Niger in 1955, "Les hommes des châteaux" shows the everyday life of the sedentary tribe of the Batammariba in the north of Dahomey, today's Benin. Unique contemporary testimonies of ways of life and cultures that are disappearing.

The old Grotzen farmer runs an industrial cattle and chicken farm. His son and his wife are shocked by the animal cruelty that the profit-maximizing animal husbandry entails. The Grotzen farmer himself falls deeper and deeper into the dependence of an unscrupulous feed supplier. And then the ventilation system in the barn also fails... A film that shook up the Swiss population on the subject of factory farming as early as the mid-1970s.

The year 2000: 25-year-old Jonas is working in a pub in Irelad when one day, he meets hermit Yoshka Poliakoff (Trevor Howard). He is so impressed by the old man, he follows him into seclusion shortly after. Ultimately, Poliakoff lets him in on his secret: he knows how to fly. A film about the failed ideals of the '68 movement, the longing for happiness and the realization of dreams. Full of magical sensuality and meditative power.