Swiss film classics

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.

Gisèle Ansorge (1923-1993) and Ernest, known as Nag Ansorge (1925-2013) had a lasting influence on national and international animated film with their animated films. Inspired by the work of Jiří Trnka, they began experimenting with a Super 8 camera and animated puppets. Encouraged by the festival success of "Les Corbeaux", they created ten more short films together. filmo is releasing a series of their wonderful films made between 1957 and 1991. It is a representative selection of short films from the Ansorges' entire oeuvre, which have been restored by the Cinémathèque suisse. Some of the most beautiful works are created using the sand animation technique developed by Gisèle Ansorge: In "Anima" (1977), living creatures are in constant transformation, and bodies, such as those of mother and child, also flow into one another; a bonus of the collection shows the making-of of "Anima". "Les Corbeaux" (1967) tells a fantastically gruesome fairy tale about the adventures of a horseman, while "‘Le petit garçon qui vole la lune" (1988) is a highly imaginative fable about how a boy's theft is connected to the phases of the moon. A collection of 15 works: Pam et Poum (1957) La Danseuse et le mendiant (1958) Le Pont du diable (1959) Alunissons (1965) Les Corbeaux (1967) Tempus (1969) Smile 1,2 & 3 (1975) Anima (1977) Scenes de la vie domestiques (1980) Das Veilchen (1981) Les enfants de laine (1984) Le petit garçon qui vola la lune (1988) Sabbat (1991) Bonus: Gisele ansorge au travail animation sable («Making of» Anima)

“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.

Two solitary men (Bruno Ganz and Jean-Marc Stehlé) live in a secluded hut in the snow-covered Jura mountains. When a neighbor girl (Aude Eggimann) is suddenly left to fend for herself because her sister dies, the three are forced to get along. From this constellation, Maya Simon creates less of a survival drama than a poetic film that thrives on moods and is interspersed with dark dreams and memories. The director studied at the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography in Moscow, and some of the shots in her debut film reveal the influence of Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky. The film was shown at the Locarno and Cannes film festivals and is now available in a newly digitized version.

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.

Victor (Jean-Louis Trintignant), a renowned filmmaker, has started work on a film adaptation of Chekhov’s play "The Three Sisters". The project is in fact a pretext so that Victor can patch things up with Julie (Delphine Seyrig), his ex-wife, an actress whom he still loves. The ensemble includes Cécilia, a conscientious Italian actress, and Esther, a more carefree debutante who soon manages to exasperate Julie. With "Repérages", French-speaking Swiss filmmaker Michel Soutter has created a delicate intimate play about art, jealousy and reconciliation, in which life and imagination, memory and the present come together. Renato Berta's camerawork is as atmospheric as the locations in Bex in the canton of Vaud, and the international acting team, including Italian actress Lea Massari, is outstanding.

Marie is Swiss, Filipa is of Portuguese origin. One wants to study forever, the other wants to get married. When Marie is lovesick, Filipa suggests that they spend a month together in Portugal with her family. There they have various encounters, but also conflicts. Love and emotions send them into a frenzy - and then they also have numerous decisions to make.

Daniel Berger, a civil servant in land registry office in the canton of Vaud has an enviable life with his own villa and expensive car... It is well known around Lake Geneva that keeping relations on an even keel makes for good relations. But, the senior member of the Council of State decides to apply methods of New Public Management and assigns Werner Schäfer from Zurich to carry out the job. When Werner Schäfer also comes to live next door to Daniel Berger, life takes on a more complicated nature...

Little Sali and Vreni grow up in the Swiss countryside, where their farmer fathers work together. When a disagreement arises between the two men that turns into extreme animosity, the children are prevented from seeing each other. Meeting as young adults some years later, Sali and Vreni must confront the hostilities between their families, as well as the tense atmosphere of the village, if they are to love each other. A heartbreaking and, for its time, uncharacteristically melancholy love story with excellent leading actors, the young Margrit Winter and Erwin Kohlund. Cinematéque Suisse and SRF have carefully restored and digitized the classic with the support of Memoriav in order to come as close as possible to the untraceable, once mutilated original.

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.

The film is about gluttony, with the topic of eating also serving as an example for other metabolic processes. The starting point of the playful collage is the energy theorem: "All natural processes are only energy transformations, but never energy production or energy destruction." Physical life, however, functions according to the pleasure principle, the aim of which is to generate as much pleasure as possible. But what if the pleasure of one leads to the loss of the other, since the sum of the supplies remains constant? This is decided by the right of the strongest, then one must starve or be eaten.

The movie is based on the autobiographical novel DIE REISE (THE JOURNEY) of Bernward Vesper. He is the son of a famous nazi-poet and life's companion of the female terrorist Gudrun Ensslin. The novel has been called «inheritance of a whole generation», because the destiny it describes stands as an enlarged and therefore recognizable example for those influences imprinting the whole generation of the sixties: Those born during the war learn how to think during the new beginning. However, instead of being able to orient themselves in relation to a fatherly ideal they see themselves confronted with their fathers' guilt.This situation leads to angry, moral demands of the children. After the hot years of student revolts it culminates in either resignation or in the blind hatred of terrorism. The film tells two childhood stories: The first one builds the framework. It narrates how a young father with his five-year old son escapes terrorism. The second story describes the development of this father, who – out of opposition to his nazi-father - gets involved with terrorism.

Northern Italy, 1943: A British and an American soldier escape from a German prisoner transport. In a mountain village, they meet a priest who is hiding Jewish refugees and persuades them to accompany these desperate people on a dangerous journey over the mountains to neutral Switzerland. It is their last chance. Restored version of a Swiss cinema classic. This award-winning drama is one of the most important productions in Swiss film history.

Danger of escape shows the story of 23-year-old Bruno Kuhn, who is sent to prison for a stupid offence into which he slips. He begins there as one of the lowest in the social pecking order of the prisoners. He is a small fish that is not taken seriously at first. But slowly he begins to accept his role. He learns to assert himself and to strike back

At the end of the Second World War, the Pestalozzi Children's Village in Trogen brings together orphans from many different nations. When the order arrives from Poland that the Polish children must return to their country, it comes as a shock to 13-year-old Andrzey: he does not want to leave Anja, for whom he has developed a strong affection. The two children decide to flee and go into hiding... English international version as it was shown in cinemas worldwide.

While on a short vacation, American sailor Stanley Robin falls in love with watch saleswoman Suzanne. Their newly-found luck is put to the test by Zermatt's classy nightlife. To win Suzanne over, the lovesick sailor embarks on a high-speed ski run. There isn't much time to strengthen the tender bonds of their transatlantic love... A classic rom-com with Hollywood star Cornel Wide and Swiss acting legends such as Heinrich Gretler, Zarli Carigiet, as well as Liselotte Pulver in her first on-screen appearance.

Together with 300 children from France, Marie-Louise was allowed to travel to Switzerland for three months during the war in 1943. Foster parents took the children in, except Marie-Louise. Without hesitation, a Red Cross volunteer takes the frightened child home, knowing full well that her father will not like it. However, Marie-Louise quickly wins the sympathy of the bearish factory manager. When the authorities want to send the child back, the host family resists this cruelty. With "Marie-Louise", for the first time, a major film project turned its attention to refugees against the backdrop of the so-called "Geistige Landesverteidung". Oscar-winning Swiss film classic.

Christa Andres runs a home for girls in Switzerland. She is particularly involved with one teenager who works as a prostitute. Years ago, Christa used to work the streets herself, and she now considers it her duty to help girls who have gone astray to return to the straight and narrow. But her own past catches up with her when she returns to the red-light milieu in search of a young girl who has run away from the home: She happens upon her own former pimp, and he threatens to reveal her shady past... Captivating film with exceptional performances by its actresses.

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.

At the end of the Second World War, the Pestalozzi Children's Village in Trogen brings together orphans from many different nations. When the order arrives from Poland that the Polish children must return to their country, it comes as a shock to 13-year-old Andrzey: he does not want to leave Anja, for whom he has developed a strong affection. The two children decide to flee and go into hiding... Longer Swiss version with more Swiss German passages than the international version, as it was shown in Swiss cinemas.

Happy Birthday Markus Imhoof (Switzerland, 1968, 9 Min.) On his 16th birthday, Röbi Keller crashes his father's car. He tells the police how it happened. Markus Imhoof's film is an exemplary portrayal of how, in 1967, the young people abandon the ‘golden mean’ sung about by their parents' generation, which leads them into the machinery of the capitalist bourgeoisie. The leading role is played by his later cameraman Lukas Strebel. Rondo Markus Imhoof (Switzerland, 1968, 42 Min.) The documentary film deals with the problems of the Swiss penal system. It uses an individual case to illustrate the mechanisms to which a prisoner is subjected in the prison. In addition, the film shows the past life of the prisoner, his previous crimes and relapses, as well as his constant conflicts with the social environment. The 40-minute film is a collage of image sequences, photos, interview statements, quotations and sound elements. Ormenis 199+69 Markus Imhoof (Switzerland, 1969, 25 Min.) The documentary produced with the financial support of the cavalry associations draws a critical picture of the mounted troops. The film raises the question of whether this type of weapon is still timely or just an unrealistic symbol of Swiss military will.

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.

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

In the middle of the mountains around the Lötschental is a lonely village that is exposed to the forces of nature. A state of excitement arouses when an international mining company discover a gold vein and acquired mining rights. Swiss western with magical mountain and climbing scenes in rock and ice. First Swiss sound film.

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.

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.

Shortly before Christmas, young bank clerk Norbert Lang inherits a run-down hotel in St. Moritz. It is already fully booked for the holidays, but there is no entertainment program for New Year's Eve, the heating is spotty and to top it all off, all the staff are running off. But the atmosphere eventually warms up... One of the first Swiss film musicals, with Caterina Valente in the leading female role. A classic that is guaranteed to put you in a good mood!

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.

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

The 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 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.

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.

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.

Italian bricklayer Giuseppe works as a seasonal worker in Switzerland. After the death of his wife, he brings his 6-year-old son to live with him. This brings him into conflict with Saisonnier statute of Switzerland: Children of immigrant workers are not permitted to stay in Switzerland. The boy has to hide in the apartment and lives in constant fear of being discovered and having to leave the country. The film by Alvaro Bizzarri, who himself emigrated to Switzerland fro Italy as a seasonal worker, has become a symbol of the fight against the Saisonnier statute, which was in force until 2002.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Uli, the tenant on the 'Glunggenhof', leads a happy life with his wife and child. Weather luck and honest work bring him rich harvests, and so he looks hopefully into the future. In the nearby Stöckli live the old Joggeli and his wife, the 'Glunggenbäuerin', the good soul of the farm. They also profit from the success of their tenant. But Uli becomes overconfident and, advised by false friends, gets entangled in unclean business. When a storm destroys the harvest and Uli is confined to bed by a serious illness, things quickly go downhill. Although Vreneli fights bravely against all adversity, the farm and its inhabitants are in danger of ruin. Only when the recovering Uli with a heavy heart admits to his mistakes and shows remorse, the tide seems to turn

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.

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.

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

An engineer from the French-speaking part of Switzerland, with a family and political ambitions, falls in love with an Italian waitress. He puts his marriage and career on the line for this relationship, but the young woman is not prepared to give up her job and independence for him. A film about an unequal couple, told as a chronology of failure in 112 days. The cinematic form forces us to observe from a distance, while at the same time the film touches us with an interesting, strong female character. Co-writer of Alain Tanner's first color film is writer John Berger, with whom the filmmaker has made some of his most beautiful and famous films ("La salamandre", "Jonas qui aura 25 ans en l'an 2000").

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”.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

The story of a Turkish couple, who start their “Journey of Hope” from a small village in South-East Turkey to Switzerland in order to escape poverty. They are taking their son, who is the brightest of their eight children. From Izmir they travel to Genoa with a freighter. In Italy they are taken by smugglers to the Alps and sent on towards Switzerland, despite the snow and the cold. Father and son are separated from Meryem. Will anyone reach the land of promise?

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?

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.

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

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

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.”

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.

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.

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..

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

"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.

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.