Filmo Season 16

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.

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.

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)

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.

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.

During the Second World War, Friedel Bohny-Reiter, a Swiss Red Cross nurse with the “Children’s Relief” service, worked in the camp at Rivesaltes, which like many others in France held Jews, gypsies and people of Spanish origin who either lived in France or had come as refugees to the free zone. Thanks to this young nurse from Basel, many children were saved from certain death in Auschwitz. The film attempts to tell her story with the help of the diary she kept religiously through all those dark years, interpolating interviews with some of those she saved.

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.

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 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.

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