L'anno senza giorni
2015, for the victims of Charlie Hebdo, and for the whole of France, is a very short year. It begins on New Year's Eve and seven days later it is already over. And just when the tragedy seems to be over, Paris plunges back into terror with the attacks of 13 November. |
Aux armes
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T'es pas la seule
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Die Reise
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. |
Melodias
Set in Columbia, the film tells the stories of Dario, the taxi driver, of Jorge, who unloads trucks, of Edwin, the policeman and Luis Carlo, who looks after the injured and brings the dead into the morgue. One of them was a preacher and hit-man in his past and tells us how much a person’s life is worth. |
La Cité du pétrole
The Oil Rocks, in the middle of the Caspian Sea is a kind of oil Atlantis. It is the largest and oldest offshore oil city in the world. For the first time, a western film crew is allowed to film the site. |
Monsieur Sélavy - The Way It Is
On the move with Monsieur Sélavy. A film diary about the vicissitudes of existence and how to encounter them with dignity. A journey in which space and time coordinates become a bit tangled... |
Gyrischachen - von Sünden, Sofas und Cervelats
A high-rise apartment built in the 1960s provides housing for 2500 people from 42 nations. Separated from the city by a river and bounded by towering sandstone cliffs, everyone attempts to live and survive in their own way. Foreigners who have a go at being Swiss, and Swiss who observe with scepticism. |
Geysir und Goliath
An attempt to evoke the life and work of the sculptor, Karl Geiser (1898-1957), with excerpts from his sculptural, graphic and photographic work as well as from his letters and diaries: Geiser par lui-même. The film refrains from questioning the few witnesses still alive (talking heads). |
Irrécupérables?
Up to what point is a human being still able to be reintegrated into society, and what is the impact on him and on society? This issue forms the basis of this film; a general question that is dealt with in an unusual way in that it is portrayed by Yazid ... |
Pastry, Pain and Politics
As far as Weintraub, an elderly Jewish New Yorker, is concerned, all Arabs are terrorists. Hayat, a young Palestinian woman, considers all Jews to be thieves and murderers. |
Glaubenberg
The love Lena (16) feels for brother Noah is more than sisterly love. To distract herself, she encourages Noah's friend Enis. But she is so obsessed with her brother that she cannot curb her feelings. She starts daydreaming, living more in a fantasy world than in real life. |
Le cul bordé des haies
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Augusto Boal
The Brazilian theatre director Augusto Boal is one of the most prominent representatives of political intervention theatre in the 20th century. In the 1960s he developed a theatre method which he called the «Theatre of the Oppressed», which results in a socially liberating experience. |
Stille Reserven
The insurance agent Vincent Baumann, a cold-blooded careerist and minion of a ruthless system, becomes a victim of the very corporations he represents. Degraded to a henchman, he doggedly struggles to get back on the job market and climb the social ladder. |
Thomas Hirschhorn - Gramsci Monument
At the invitation of the renowned Dia Art Foundation, Thomas Hirschhorn is building the "Gramsci Monument" in the Forest Houses, a social housing estate in New York's South Bronx; a homage to the Italian political philosopher and communist Antonio Gramsci. |
Feltrinelli
The Film tells the story of a great Italian publishing house «La Feltrinelli», about books and the work and passion that goes into their making, development and circulation. It's a story that delves into the discovery of literature and into a world that has been changed by books. |
David Wants To Fly
Nearly six million people around the world now practice Transcendental Meditation (TM). David, a young filmmaker in search of inspiration, also wants to try meditation. His role model, the legendary director David Lynch, assures him in person that TM is a source of creativity and success. |
Per l'amor di Dio
Isabella and Nando are two militant atheists. They live in Italy, a country where the Church still plays a strong political role. They are among the 4000 members of UAAR (Union Atheists Agnostics Rationalists), an association that keenly defends the fundamentals of the secular state, giving trouble even to the Vatican. |
Heidi
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Erfolg am Dhaulagiri
On 13 May 1960, a Friday at 11 o'clock, Albin Schelbert was the first person to set foot on the summit of the 13th eight-thousander, closely followed by his comrades of the 13-man expedition. It was a daredevil undertaking, but it brought the group incredible luck. |
D'une rive à l'autre
A moving image of the palliative-care nursing home Rive-Neuve on Lake Leman, where the prospect of death is handled with humanity. Staying in a nursing home often becomes a nightmare for seriously ill people, because there is only little room for patience and humanity in these institutions. |
Dans la ville blanche
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. |
Au Café Romand
Thirty-year-old Grégoire has arranged to meet his fiancée Anne and his future in-laws in a restaurant and arrives much later than the appointed time. The atmosphere is tense by the time the food is served. Grégoire feels uncomfortable and escapes to the restroom, where he happens to find a pistol with a silencer in the wastebasket. |
Zwischenwelten
The focus of the film lies in the incomprehensible and indescribable nature of healing; The film audience is given the opportunity to explore the intermediate worlds of healing through interviews, images and sound. The film serves as a door opener for most viewers for an unknown perspective. |
Brot und Steine
A farmer defends himself against a big industry. |
Little Sister
The young postwoman Lisa delivers every day messages of joy and frustration to the people of Zurich, but she is to shy to participate on life herself. |
L'Heure du Loup
An old man has just died in a house in the suburbs, in the middle of the summer. His family gathers round, for the ritual of the wake. The women prepare the departed. Paul, the son, finds himself unable to play his part in the ritual. |
Moka
Diane Kramer is led by one obsession: to find the driver of the mocha color Mercedes which hit her son and devastated her life. With a few belongings, some money and a gun, she goes to Evian, where she's learned the driver lives. But sometimes, the path of revenge is more tortuous than it seems… Diane will have to face another woman, friendly and mysterious. |
Uli der Pächter
Based on a novel by Jeremias Gotthelf |
Nazis in der Schweiz
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Zu Soldaten gemacht
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Jeune homme
JEUNE HOMME, Christoph Schaub's (STERNENBERG) new comedy. Eighteen-year-old Sebastian, played by the new discovery Matthias Schoch, decides to go to Geneva as an au pair for a year. Yet he doesn't only learn French beyond the «rösti trench». His adventure, strewn with mishaps, becomes an initiation to life and love... |
Liquid Assets
The owner of a luxurious illegal restaurant treats his staff badly. The cleaning woman, her lover - a dishwasher - and the cooks hatch a plan involving vengeance and money laundering. Money does not smell. |
Giovanni Segantini - Magie des Lichts
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. |
Stella ciao
Fifty-year-old, Sardinian-born Silvio – a lover of jazz music and karaoke shows – manages the “Stella d’Oro” a restaurant-cum-lodging. Built on the Swiss side of Lake Maggiore more than a hundred years ago, the place has been accommodating less and less tourists, and a few asylum seekers. |
Nazis in der Schweiz
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Uli der Pächter
Based on a novel by Jeremias Gotthelf |
Amiet
Cuno Amiet was born in 1868 and died 50 years ago 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 Texas, Geneva and Studen, near Biel. |
Above and Below
Far, far away and out of sight, that’s where April, Dave, Cindy, Rick and the Godfather are creating life on their own terms. From the depths of the flood channels under Sin City, to a reclaimed military bunker in the middle of the dusty, heated Californian nowhere land, to beyond the stratosphere where Mars now lives on earth. |
Ghetto
“The biggest damned ghetto”, is the way the school caretaker describes the classroom in which Xhumi and Müke are to spent their last few month at school. Ana's hands become moist with sweat when she is asked about the job she hopes to find at some future date. |
Au Café Romand
Thirty-year-old Grégoire has arranged to meet his fiancée Anne and his future in-laws in a restaurant and arrives much later than the appointed time. The atmosphere is tense by the time the food is served. Grégoire feels uncomfortable and escapes to the restroom, where he happens to find a pistol with a silencer in the wastebasket. |
Wilder Urlaub
Film noir on deserting soldats |
T'es pas la seule
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Hécate
"HECATE is a strangely fascinating film, tightly directed and magnificently photographed by the champion of Swiss cameraman, Renato Berta. Is is a nocturnal film but Berta makes the night shine and glitter. |
La valise
Jeanne is about to leave for a three weeks holiday on her own. Michael doesn't like the idea and locks himself into the bathroom. Jeanne and Michel have been married for 50 years |
Fleurs de sang
Pam, a child-woman aged 14 has just killed her first lover, a man much older than herself. This brief news item is followed by a flashback to a time five years earlier. Pam is a little girl who has just turned nine. |
Little Sister
The young postwoman Lisa delivers every day messages of joy and frustration to the people of Zurich, but she is to shy to participate on life herself. |
Der sechste Kontinent
The sixth continent is the place, where everybody is a stranger. The movie tells ten short stories of people who have left their homeland in order to find a new one in the outland. Resulting in an arbitrary, colorful poem of cultural diversity. The bridge between the countries becomes their true home. |
Jeune homme
JEUNE HOMME, Christoph Schaub's (STERNENBERG) new comedy. Eighteen-year-old Sebastian, played by the new discovery Matthias Schoch, decides to go to Geneva as an au pair for a year. Yet he doesn't only learn French beyond the «rösti trench». His adventure, strewn with mishaps, becomes an initiation to life and love... |
Brandnacht
Enquiries into the murder of a young woman take the private investigator Peter Keller to the idyllic village of Schwant in Emmental. But, the more entangled Keller gets in the treads of the apparently clearcut case of sex murder, the more obvious the flaws in the village idyll become. |
10ème essai
The rehearsal of a village brass band in the Ticino (Italian part of Switzerland). The rehearsal of a village brass band in the Ticino. (Italian part of Switzerland), filmed in one single shot as a preliminary study for my film “24 su 24”. Villi Hermann, Beride, 1970 |
Les Russes!
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Face au juge
An immersion in the office of an investigating magistrate where defendants accused of misdemeanours tell surprising stories that are funny yet sad. Subsequent to indictments and arrests, the examining magistrate deals with the individual cases. While listening to the accused in closed sessions and deciding their fate, he is directly confronted with brutal social reality. |
Walter Pfeiffer – Chasing Beauty
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. |
Vibrato
Every year, the choir of the Collège St-Michel in the canton of Fribourg attracts around fifty young people from the most diverse backgrounds. Following their concert rehearsals for a year, we discover a world on its own: a world in which singing means a physical experience, the opportunity to forge close friendships, and oneness with the music. |
Kenia - Wälder der Hoffnung
26 women from Kenya who have been planting trees for the past quarter century are at the centre of this documentary. They are not part of the nationwide reforestation movement which has become more widely known thanks to Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Mathai. |
Le système miroir
A dream keeps coming up every night. A forest of neurons where the director encounters memories and has to figure out the relation between brain and cinema. A walk in search of the link between neuroscience and cinema. |
Dans la ville blanche
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. |
L'usine
In spring 2002 the Lausanne-based Iril textile plant, which had been in business for 50 years, closed down and laid off its remaining 140 employees. In its day, the plant had been No. 1 in its industry and was by far the town's biggest employer. |
Bacigalupo
The meeting with "deep night" is in the fairy tale setting of a cabaret. |
Eigentlich wollten wir zurückkehren
They came to Switzerland to have a better life when they return to their native country one day in the future. Some thirty, forty years later they are still here. Retired by now, three married couples from Turkey and the Balkans face a crucial decision: to go back or stay here? This question has accompanied the migrants their entire life in Switzerland. |
Le chevalier de la rose
Sepp seems much in demand in the city-bound train, where Rosa is due to meet him. |
Il senso della mia vita
Have you ever asked the modern-day Delphi shrine, namely Google the question of all questions: “what is the meaning of life?” What is the answer you received from the modern-day Pythia: Siri, Alexa or chatGPT? Is there a common, shared answer? This documentary searches the winding paths of the internet for an answer and mixes it with the author's thoughts and experiences. |
Am Hang
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. |
Mondes contraires
The theatre company mondes contraires, which means opposite worlds, intends on exploring cultural differences through the medium of theatrical expression. Their dream is to produce a play together with Mongolian actors. |
Swiss graffiti
An animated cartoon about the Creation reviewed and corrected by two women. God the magician has decided to create a paradise: Switzerland. He covers it with trees, cows, until Adam is born. After exploring his paradise, Adam creates Eve from one of his ribs. |
Cet étranger
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Arnold Golay, fabricant de jouets
Upon retirement, Arnold Golay, 91, a former watchmaker who once had learned to make a timepiece entirely by hand, became a toy maker. We follow his steps as he builds a toy cart. |
Gambling, Gods And LSD
A filmmaker's inquiry into transcendence becomes a three-hour trip across countries and cultures, interconnecting people, places and times. |
Forget Baghdad
A filmic reflection about the stereotypes of Jew and Arab through onehundred years of film, contrasted with the history of Jewish communists from Iraq. |
Middle of the Moment
The essence of any experience, any moment, is to be found where people are in most intense contact with the place they occupy. And paradoxically, it is through a nomadic existence that one occupies a space the most intensely. |
La moitié de la gloire
A Geneva mountaineers' expedition to Mount Everest in 1952 paved the way for the conquest of the summit by Hillary and Tensing the following year. |
Gilberte de Courgenay
Swiss soldiers in the first world war and a young woman working in a pub. |
Auf der Strecke
A supermarket detective is secretly infatuated with a saleswoman in the shop's bookshop. He regularly observes her through the video surveillance system and follows her on the train at night. When he witnesses the assault of an alleged rival, he does not intervene. |
Agua fresca
Patagonia is a hard, inhospitable, wild area at the end of the world. And yet, a wave of European immigrants managed to settle in the raw, barren and lonely climate of these areas, amongst them countless Swiss who made Chilean Patagonia their home. |
Nightfall
A man runs along a frozen lake before dawn. Alex Darkley loves nature and being a school teacher. But his untroubled routine ends, when he discovers a mysterious drawing in the desk of one of his pupils. Alex temporarily travels to the city to clear his demented mother's apartment. |
Ultima Thule
When successful stock broker Alfred Böhler leaves for work on a foggy day, he has no idea what dramatic turn his life is about to take. On the journey into work he has a major car accident and ends up in intensive care, fighting for his life. As his wife sits by his side, praying for him to recover, Alfred embarks as an eagle to a very different journey. |
Alpzyt
After z'Alp, Thomas Rickenmann returns to the three families he portrayed three years ago during the Alpaufzug. In the second part we stay up in the Alpstein, the Bernese Oberland and Central Switzerland for the whole summer. |
Je ne te voyais pas
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. |
Alexandre Tharaud, le temps dérobé
An uncommon glimpse into the world of an artist who is considered one of the most talented of his generation: Alexandre Tharaud. Born into an artistic family, Alexandre melds his passion for the piano with his fertile disquiet. |
S'Bloch
In the Appenzell hinterland in the heart of winter at 5 o'clock in the morning: men and boys dressed in colourful traditional clothing pull a wagon on which a long decorated tree trunk is placed: S'Bloch. In the evening, the tree trunk is auctioned in the village square. |
Indonesien - Wälder der Hoffnung
We keep receiving news of illegal logging, slashing and burning and the unrelenting destruction of the rainforest in Indonesia. As part of our Forests of Hopeproject the film by David Höner and Iris Drisse shows that there are alternatives to exploitative forest use in Indonesia. |
David Wants To Fly
Nearly six million people around the world now practice Transcendental Meditation (TM). David, a young filmmaker in search of inspiration, also wants to try meditation. His role model, the legendary director David Lynch, assures him in person that TM is a source of creativity and success. |
Dona Anna
The swiss nurse Anne-Loïse Raboud leaves Switzerland to help out the poorest people in the north east of Brazil. The people of São Miguel call her "Dona Anna". |
Un ange passe
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A volta das tartarugas
The turtles of the african island São Tomé e Principe. |
Zwischenwelten
The focus of the film lies in the incomprehensible and indescribable nature of healing; The film audience is given the opportunity to explore the intermediate worlds of healing through interviews, images and sound. The film serves as a door opener for most viewers for an unknown perspective. |
Vol spécial
In Switzerland, more than 200'000 illegal immigrants live in fear: at any moment they risk being arrested without committing any crime. They can be tied up, handcuffed, gagged and returned to their native land by force on a special rendition flight. These people have a built a new life and started a family, yet Swiss officials can expel them from the country overnight. |
Petits gestes
A young girl before the mirror. She pretends it is cinema: she acts, flirting, in front of the camera. This very short film allies the insouciance of an child in front of a camera with the reflective, chiselled writings of Jean-Luc. |
Nuvem
Nuvem, a young man who greatly enjoys wandering and daydreaming, lives in the centre of the Creole shantytown in Lisbon. In this neighbourhood that looks like the court of miracles where old toothless fishermen mingle with rappers, he passes for the village idiot. |
Höhenflug
Ever since the beginning of mankind, humans have explored the limits of their existence. Just how far, how high, how fast can I go until my body fails me? A documentary about two friends on their search of an invisible boundary. |
Feltrinelli
The Film tells the story of a great Italian publishing house «La Feltrinelli», about books and the work and passion that goes into their making, development and circulation. It's a story that delves into the discovery of literature and into a world that has been changed by books. |
Sakda
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Isa Hesse-Rabinovitch - Das grosse Spiel Film
The Swiss film pioneer Isa Hesse-Rabinovitch (1917-2003) followed unconventional paths all her life. Thedaughter of Russian Jewish immigrants grew up in Zurich. She married one of Herman Hesse's sons and hadthree children with him. |
Ultima sfornata
While tidying up during the lockdown 2020, I found photos I had taken during a night spent with the baker in my village shortly before the grocery store-bakery closed for good in 1992. I spread the photos out on our kitchen table and filmed them with my smartphone. |
Norman Plays Golf
This is a video adaptation of the homonymous multi-media play by Samir. Ted, an influential media tycoon, convinces his wife Jane, a former peace activist, to lead an exclusive interview with general Norman. The live transmission is held on a golf course in the desert. |
Rolling
The hills of Lausanne, Switzerland, have become a Mecca for roller-skaters and Ivano has become a prince among them. Ivano is a symbol of hope who, through his own creative energy and drive, rises above the ordinary and often dead-end choices that most young people face today. |
Immer und Ewig
This is a modern adaptation of the legend of Orpheus. Claude, a militant anarchist, is caught stealing and is shot by a policeman while fleeing the scene. Dodo, a hairdresser, is hit by one of the stray bullets. They meet in the realm of the dead and together they visit familiar places and their loved ones. |
Rêve de Chine
Three sister leave their village in the canton of Fribourg to join their father who is building a factory in China. |
Picture of Light
We live in a time where things do not seem to exist if they are not captured as an image. But if you look into darkness you may see the lights of your own retina -- not unlike the Northern Lights, not unlike the movements of thought. Like a shapeless accumulation of everything we have ever seen. |
Summertime
Thirteen-year-old Nadja is spending her summer vacation at home. She is bored to death until a new tenant moves in with whom she falls madly in love. But what she doesnt know yet: he is her mothers new boyfriend. Nadja begins to spy on him, taking photographs of him and secretly forcing her way into his apartment. |
François Aubrun, l’absolue peinture
"In the morning, the mist weighs more than the sky, and the more you go into the day when there is a reversal, and the sky weighs more than the mist. Then it's a crossing. There is a break. And it's very long. At least for me it was long, and I'm still looking for that. |
Un ange passe
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Nain géant
Petite Neige, an Inuit girl, must catch a bird before she can be admitted into the world of adults. Her test turns into a dangerous adventure when she encounters a menacing giant dwarf out on the ice who is constantly changing shape. The spirits of birds devoured by this bizarre monster come to the girl’s aid. |
Les Particules
At the foot of the Jura in Pays de Gex, the 17-year-old Pierre-André and his clique are completing their last year of high school. And as if that wasn't enough of a fuss, scientists at CERN, with the world's most powerful particle accelerator, are reproducing the energy conditions of the big bang just 100 metres below them. |
Kanti
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Jemand oder Die Passion zum Widerstand
Someone - or the Passion to Resist is about the change in resistance culture in the 20th century. Half a century later, the members of the former socialist workers' youth, who placed emphasis on order and discipline, are confronted with the spontaneous actions of the political movement "Züri 1990". |
T'es pas la seule
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Eastern Avenue
In the Spring of 1983 I took a trip into my intuition through Switzerland, Berlin and Portugal. The following images are, for the most part impulsive intuitive reactions to the people and places I saw. They are cut together in a chronological order with the same impulsive approach, as is also the sound."With these words Peter Mettler introduces EASTERN AVENUE. |
Wer sind wir?
How do we deal with it, if everything turns out differently than we imagined? Helena (19) and Jonas (11) are people with high support needs and put their parents, families, schools and society to the test. The film breaks with them the wall that separates them from our world, shows how language and community develop from the ground up – and poses the question of who we are. |
Liquid Assets
The owner of a luxurious illegal restaurant treats his staff badly. The cleaning woman, her lover - a dishwasher - and the cooks hatch a plan involving vengeance and money laundering. Money does not smell. |
La mort du grand-père ou le sommeil du juste
A tale, told by his five daughters, of the life and death of a man very representative of a Protestant Switzerland in the early 20th century where life was conditioned by the work ethic. He was first a farmer, then a factory worker, then the head of a small family affair where his daughters became his workers. |
Le crépuscule des Celtes
The discovery of a huge Celtic place of worship on a hill in the Swiss canton of Vaud is a prime opportunity for archeologists to explore our ancestors' religious beliefs. Sacrificial offers, religious rites, druids: what do we know or rather what do we think we know about the astonishing civilization of the Celts? |
Snow White
Is Snow White a tribute to the era of sex, drugs, rock'n'roll and politics? Samir : Yes, that's true. All of the above have my fingerprints all over them... I have always been curious to give society a shake, and I still cherish the dream that one day it will change for the better ! 20 year-old Nico (Julie Fournier) lives to party. |
La petite dame du Capitole
Lucienne Schnegg is a little woman brimming with energy. At 80, she remains at the helm of the cinema Capitole. Hired as a secretary in 1949, she has become the heir of the movie house and its very soul. Cashier, cleaning woman and manager all in one, she tells us about her cinema, the grandest, the largest and the oldest of Lausanne. |
SeelenSchatten
Two women and one man, all suffering from severe depression, are accompanied by a documentary filmmaker for a period of one and a half years. Starting point for the film is their acute depressive phase. |
Hebammen - Auf die Welt kommen
The everyday life of midwives is on the threshold where new life is born and sometimes life passes away. The film accompanies various midwives who care for couples during pregnancy and birth. They all have a common goal: a healthy mother and a healthy child. |
Matti Ke Lal, fils de la terre
“I am a child of the earth”, says Vijay Pal, who is as old as our century is. His parents died young, and at school the other pupils used to tease him about God having killed them. Thus he wanted to avenge them, and hold God accountable. |
Un monde discret
Léo returns to his parents' home to spend a vacation with his girlfriend Céline. The ghost of his older, deceased brother appears to him here. Torn between fear and fascination, Léo immerses himself in his past. In the process, he neglects Céline and eventually loses her. |
Lenz
The filmmaker Lenz has left his native Berlin for the Vosges to research the story behind Georg Büchner's novel fragment Lenz. But he soon trades the Alsatian landscape for higher altitudes and more emotional territory: a reunion with his estranged wife Natalie and their son Noah in the Swiss Alps. |
E Nachtlang Füürland
Bern 1981, during the youth movement: a radiospeaker encounters a young enthousiastic woman and together they spent the night in the streets and want to change the world. |
Letters to Srebrenica
Ina Bakalovic is a 19-year-old Muslim girl from Srebrenica. For the last three years Ina has been living as a refugee in Switzerland. With her handy-cam she documents her daily life in Davos, a ski region of world-wide fame in the Swiss Alps. The images of her video diary are composed in the form of letters to her best friend Amela, who is still living in the controversial area. |
Die schwarzen Brüder
Up to the middle of the 19th century poor Alpine farmers in Ticino sold their children as chimney sweeps in Milan. This is also the fate of the young Giorgio. He has to climb up and down dark chimneys, scraping away the soot with his bare hands. |
Das Schlesische Tor
Pictures and sounds from Berlin, Tokyo and Hong Kong, as well as light and shadow studies of my room in Berlin are mixed and dazzled and, supported by westernized Chinese music, evoke the feeling of homesickness and wanderlust, of longing, of somewhere and nowhere. |
Das Engadiner Wunder
In two parallel films two dead people, a man and a woman, recount the last days of their lives. It is far from clear however just how these recordings came to be made on the video cassettes of an amateur botanist, filming flowers on the exact spot where the bodies came tumbling down from a chair lift: two testimonies from "the other side" that are nothing short of miraculous. |
Jour de marché
Every Tuesday and Saturday, in the middle of the small town of Vevey in the canton of Vaud, one of the most beautiful country markets of Switzerland is held. Here, market gardeners, mushroom pickers, fishermen and flower vendors sell the produce of their effort and their passion on which the rules of world trade are very harsh. |
Closed Country
For the first time since the events, they have a chance to confront each other: Charles Sonabend and Fritz Straub, Sabine Sonabend and Sister Anne-Marie. Some 50 years earlier Straub was responsible for the Swiss border post at which the Sonabend family was deported to Germany, into the hands of the Nazis. |
Light Years Away
Jonas, a seventeen year old boy, lives alone in the city. As if by chance, he encounters Yoshka, an absent-minded old man who loves his solitude and is generally regarded as crazy. He lives in a gloomy quarter of the town in a large shed in the middle of a graveyard. |
Pastry, Pain and Politics
As far as Weintraub, an elderly Jewish New Yorker, is concerned, all Arabs are terrorists. Hayat, a young Palestinian woman, considers all Jews to be thieves and murderers. |
La vraie vie est ailleurs
Three stories and three journeys that evoke a road movie. In three secluded venues strangers meet and speak about the everyday and futile matters that are part of our lives. We discover what happens when masks and professional fronts fall away. |
Die Hochzeitskuh
Flora, an irresistibly quirky young lady, sets off on a long journey to her new job as a librarian. While still on the Island of Rügen, her train fare gets stolen and she has to hitchhike for the first time in her life. Tim, a simple plumber, is on his way home to the Black Forest. |
Der Kongress der Pinguine
The real location of the penguins' congress is at the same time the most fictitious place on earth, where even animals can talk. This country of dreams and nightmares is called the Antarctic. |
Carnaval
Carnival in a small town: Margaux, Louisa and Théo are getting ready for a night out. They put on their costumes, drink too much. Each one of them apprehends this evening in a different way. Margaux hopes to meet the boy who will give her her first real kiss. |
Chiquitos
Guatemala City, 21 December 2012. The Mayans are celebrating like they haven't done for a long time. After 5200 years, their legendary Mayan calendar returns to its starting point today. In a remote village, we participate in magical rites to mark the beginning of a new era - and we wonder about our future and that of our children. |
Der Berg
Since 1886, there has been a weather-station master at the summit of the mountain. He telegraphs his daily measurements into the valley from where they are transmitted to Rome, Paris, Berlin and Vienna. During the long winter he is cut off the rest of the world. |
Que sera?
Doing nothing, waiting for death, living in the ghetto that is an old people's home. But the arrival of the children's crèche, brings together the oldest with the youngest. People who do not yet, or no longer belong to the meritocracy have time, much time for each other. |
Matlosa
Alfredo (Omero Antonutti), a middle manager, married with two children, leads an apparently quiet life. He was born in a valley in the Italian part of Switzerland and had to leave it to continue his studies. Later he moved to the city to work. |
Rara Avis
In the middle of the ocean, a crew composed of five teenagers and adults of different ages and backgrounds travels aboard a sailing boat. Off the coast, time seems to be suspended and the boat's space forms a closed-door environment where everyone is put to the test of living together. |
Delphine Seyrig, portrait d'une comète
Delphine Seyrig, an outstanding woman and actress died on October 15 1990. She played in 34 movies from LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD by Alain Resnais to Marguerite Duras' INDIA SONG, as well as 13 TV features and 33 plays. |
D'une rive à l'autre
A moving image of the palliative-care nursing home Rive-Neuve on Lake Leman, where the prospect of death is handled with humanity. Staying in a nursing home often becomes a nightmare for seriously ill people, because there is only little room for patience and humanity in these institutions. |
Melodias
Set in Columbia, the film tells the stories of Dario, the taxi driver, of Jorge, who unloads trucks, of Edwin, the policeman and Luis Carlo, who looks after the injured and brings the dead into the morgue. One of them was a preacher and hit-man in his past and tells us how much a person’s life is worth. |
Per un raggio di gloria
Cycling and poetry, titled a Swiss Italian newspaper. The film uses a poetic sports commentary by the famous Swiss Italian poet Alberto Nessi who likes personally cycling and his text is spoken by the well-known Italian actor Omero Antonutti. |
CHoisir à vingt ans
Between 1954 and 1962, several hundred French people refused to take part in the Algerian war. These rebels, soldiers or conscripts, were non-violent or anti-colonialists. Some of them took refuge in Switzerland, where citizens came to their aid, while in France they were condemned as traitors to their country. |
Bassidji
For almost three years I moved in the circles of arguably the most extreme defendants of the Islamic Republic of Iran (the Basij) in order to better understand their ideas. Even though we come from the same country, the contradictions could not be greater. |
Un petit coin de paradis
Veuve's film bears witness to three generations' endeavors to transform a ghost town in the Swiss canton of Valais into an exemplary eco-village. Agriculture, nature and tourism are the keywords the aim is to restore harmony and create a holistic whole whilst sustaining successful development. |
Requiem
Paul, the narrator, has a rendezvous at noon on a sweltering Sunday. The person he has invited is none other than the great Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa… who is no longer among the living. |
Babylon 2
«Half and half» is the most frequent reply from «secondos» and children of emigrants, when asked whether they feel Swiss or foreign. People here given a voice include Luana, who raps in English and was born in Basle to parents from Calabria, and Ersan Sahin, the only Turkish ice hockey player for miles around, who explains why he goes out with an Italian girl. |
Cher Monsieur, cher papa
Kohler's film is about fatherhood and identity from the point of view of five young men between 17 and 21, and explores the real and imaginary male figures with which they identify. By means of their parallel stories we discover little by little about their interests, secrets and relationships within different family, social and cultural situations. |
White Terror
Over the past years, there has been a significant changeover among radical far-right extremists: the veterans are long gone, either dead or too old. New ideologists are emerging all over Europe, North America and Russia. |
Der Gehülfe
After a considerable period of unemployment, 24-year-old Joseph Marti is offered a position as a clerk in the technical office of the engineer and inventor C. Tobler, of Bärenswil. Tobler has invested his entire fortune in inventions that have failed to attract anyone's attention. |
A l'ouest du Pecos
In 1891 a large number of Swiss emigrated to the Pecos Valley, a desert region in New Mexico. Intensive proaganda by a group of businessmen from Geneva had convinced them they could make their fortune there. More than 200 Swiss settlers - farmers, winegrowers and adventurers from good families - set out to seek the dazzling wealth they had been promised. |
Happiness Is A Warm Gun
Petra, the 1980's “green queen” and peace activist, is shot in her sleep by her lover and political ally, former West German army general Gert. He kills himself shortly afterwards. |
Botiza
In the middle of Europe's green lung there is a region in which people seem to live outside of our age and system of commerce. In the Romanian Carpathian mountains many farmers do not work for money, but only enough for their own needs. Their methods and tools are the same that common in rural regions of Switzerland during the 19th century. |
Ombre
In the near future, young Gaia's dreams are shattered by the evil people who populate the city. Her grandfather tries to distract her by using her imagination. He creates for her, a fantastic place to hide from reality, a reality in which the oil reserves are almost finished and in which plastic has become a valuable material. |
Life in Progress
Venter, Tshediso and Seipathi live in a run-down South African township called Katlehong, the Sotho word meaning progress. Wherever the talented teenagers perform their breathtaking wild dance routines, homegrown on the streets of their township, they receive thunderous applause. |
Wall Street
Encounters of the unexpected kind on Wall Street. An astonishing insight into the biggest market place of the world. Welcome to the frenzied world of Wall Street, a place for those who are capable of taking decisions in the most uncertain situations.Follow them in Andreas Hoesslis film shot between January and September 2003 before the beginning and after the end of a war. |
Josh's Trees
When the best friend of the film director dies, his son is less than a year old. Five years later, the boy is just beginning to ask questions about his father. |
Rive-Neuve, la nuit
The Foundation Rive-Neuve, near the lake of Geneva in Switzerland, is a palliative care establishment, where terminally ill patients are looked after and made as comfortable as possible. When night falls, the presence of the nursing staff helps to reassure the patients. |
Geschichte der Nacht
"It's a black-and-white record of European cities in the dark (2-5am), from Basle to Belfast. Quiet, and meditative, what ermerges most strongly is an eerie sense of city landscapes as deserted film sets, in which the desolate architecture overwhelms any sense of reality. |
Remue-Ménage
Pascal looks for the pair of tights that suit him best, thenapplies his make-up, with the helpful advice of his wife Carole.Between moments of intimacy and scenes from everyday life,Fernand Melgar follows over the period of a year the life of acouple fighting the way other people regard them. |
Le garçon s'appelait Apache
The building of a huge astronomical observatory on Mount Graham, in south-eastern Arizona has been strongly opposed by the San Carlos Apaches. To them, Mt. Graham is sacred land. It is home to mountain spirits, protector from illness and enemies, a source of strength for medicine men and an important ceremonial and burial site. |
Weniger isch meh - Housi Wittlin, Musiker und Poet
Housi Wittlin made his first steps as a 17-year-old street musician with Beatles, Stones and Elvis songs. At the end of the 1960s, he played guitar with the Black Lions and the Lives. That's when I met Housi Wittlins. In 1991 I decided to make a film about Housi Wittlin. |
Parti sans laisser d'adresse
The idea for the film came from a local news item reporting that a young drug addict had committed suicide after 9 months in jail awaiting trial. In his cell, Salvatore thinks of his wife, of his son Simon. Left, address unknown is not a film about prison life but about a man in prison, who will die at 25. |
Magic Radio
In Niger, where more than 80% of the population is illiterate, radio is the main means of mass communication. Simple yet reliable, the radio is everywhere, in the streets, homes and the bush. It entertains, educates, informs and helps provide a check on power. |
En août
Die sechsjährige Margaux erwacht früh an diesem Morgen im August. Sie tritt ans Fenster und sieht, wie ihr Vater Gegenstände und Kartons im Auto verstaut. Ihre Mutter schläft noch. Dieser Sommermorgen wird zu einem entscheidenden Moment im Leben des kleinen Mädchens. |
Geysir und Goliath
An attempt to evoke the life and work of the sculptor, Karl Geiser (1898-1957), with excerpts from his sculptural, graphic and photographic work as well as from his letters and diaries: Geiser par lui-même. The film refrains from questioning the few witnesses still alive (talking heads). |
Stille Reserven
The insurance agent Vincent Baumann, a cold-blooded careerist and minion of a ruthless system, becomes a victim of the very corporations he represents. Degraded to a henchman, he doggedly struggles to get back on the job market and climb the social ladder. |
Le Scelte di Mario - Mario Matasci, collezionista
Mario Matasci é un uomo d’altri tempi, che un giorno ha deciso di lasciar decantare la sua passione per l’arte, come si fa con un vino pregiato. È una persona schiva e riservata, che si lascia trasportare solo quando parla delle innumerevoli tele raccolte durante il percorso di collezionista d’arte. |
Circuit
On a small planet, caught up in their own little private universe, the inhabitants perform their poetically surreal actions, which repeat themselves in an endless loop. That they are all part of a complex little ecosystem, which can only function if each of them plays his or her role, is something they are unaware of. |
Sages Femmes
Three midwives in Geneva offer a different sort of childbirth services and thereby enable the return to gentle birth in an environment increasingly shaped by modern medicine and technology. The film director accompanied the three midwives and three couples for six months before and after the births. |
Gossenreiter
Kurt Moritz Gossenreiter lived his life to the fullest, always exploring and inventing, always following his dreams without compromise, and always speaking his mind. This unconventional portrait and colorful collage of his multi-faceted and controversial personality invites the audience to reflect on their own life decisions and hopes to inspire more courage and determination. |
Ménage à trois
An 85-year-old widower, decides to give up his apartment. Pauline Pappert and Therese Heinze, both also 85, have lived in a shared female-flat for ten years. Looking for a new female roommate in vain, they are now willing to try it with a man. The first few weeks in the shared flat is a big challenge to all parties. |
Simples
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Giovanni Segantini - Magie des Lichts
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. |
Monte Grande
How is it possible for body and mind to exist as an integrated whole? The Chilean neurobiologist Francisco Varela devoted his entire life from childhood to death to answer this question. The structure of the film is based on Varela's non-linear thinking and focuses on autopoiesis, ethics, consciousness, meditation and dying. |
Telling Strings
After the expulsion of the Palestinians and the setting up of the state of Israel in 1948,the young Palestinian Elias Jubran stayed on in the place where he was born. However, becauseof the political situation, he and his family lived in total isolation. Music helped him toovercome this isolation and provided him with an escape. |
Zwischen Himmel und Erde
Anthroposophy – founded by Rudolf Steiner over 100 years ago – is currently operational in such fields as education, medicine, agriculture and art. |
L'escale
Seeking their dream of a better life and freedom, people from all walks of life make the radical decision to leave everything behind and emigrate from Iran. They cross the exceedingly dangerous border into Turkey, risk their lives on board refugee boats heading for Greece, and finally arrive in Athens. |
Chrieg
Fifteen-year-old Matteo is attractive, albeit somewhat girlish and frail. The whole world is against him. He has no friends and his parents seem to live in a different universe. The pressure increases as his awkward attempts to win his father’s respect fail. |
The Sound of Insects
Liechti's film tells the incredible story of how the mummified corpse of a 40-year-old man was discovered by a hunter in one of the most remote parts of Switzerland. The dead man's detailed notes reveal that he actually committed suicide through self-imposed starvation only the summer before. |
Parler Métier - Ein Werkstattgepräch mit Alexandre J. Seiler
The dialectic fields of tension in which Alexander J. Seiler moves lie between home and abroad, form and content, artistic quality and quantity. In an hour long discussion of his life's work as a film author, he formulates a personal balance in front of a running camera that is of great interest not only to aspiring filmmakers and cinema lovers. |
Le mariage en Afrique
Françoise, 25, and Alexandre, 27, live in Lausanne and plan to marry soon. Alexandre suggests having the religious ceremony in Cameroon, where Françoise was born. With the help of Françoise's African uncle the couple embark on extensive marriage preparations. |
Diaries from an Unconventional Journey
Diaries from an Unconventional Journey is a film that presents the topic of disability through the trip of a young girl with disabilities and her family in a multicultural environment within a short window of time. It also examines the relationship to disability by family members, strangers in a different society, and one world leader. |
Exit. Le droit de mourir
No one knows the day or the hour. When illness strikes, accompanied by pain and physical decline, there we are, faced with death. The outlook on what remains of life appears dismal and full of anguish. |
La forteresse
THE FORTRESS is an immersion documentary which, without any comment or interview, will observe the operation of a Swiss centre where asylum seekers are received and selected. It will not focus on asylum seekers but on the workers. |
Le train le plus difficile du monde
The railroad in Ecuador is agonizing. This film retraces its birth, life and death. This means of transportation was constructed a century ago and was never a profitable endeavor and yet it became the link between the coastline and the highlands. Nowadays, along the railway, only ghost towns remain. |
Venus Boyz
A cinematic journey through the universe of female masculinity. A legendary Drag King night in New York is the starting point of an odyssey through worlds beyond gender boundaries, in which women become men - some for one night, others for their whole lives: what moves them, what changes, what do they dream of. |
De la cuisine au parlement
Switzerland was one of the last countries in the world to grant women the right to vote. |
Brot und Steine
A farmer defends himself against a big industry. |
Campagne perdue
Facing the crisis of their lives, six young farmers from a small village decide to pool their livestock in an enormous community stable. Unthinkable in normal times in such an individualistic society, this novel solution shows just how much people have been forced to change their ways. |
Moka
Diane Kramer is led by one obsession: to find the driver of the mocha color Mercedes which hit her son and devastated her life. With a few belongings, some money and a gun, she goes to Evian, where she's learned the driver lives. But sometimes, the path of revenge is more tortuous than it seems… Diane will have to face another woman, friendly and mysterious. |
Le souffle du désert
Thirteen men, total strangers from different countries and walks of life, have gathered at the edge of the Sahara for a physical and emotional adventure: a 15-day trek, a chance to rethink their lives and their male identity. |
Kurt Früh
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Jim O'Rourke
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Spec O'Donnell
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Spec O'Donnel
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Ruby O. Fee
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Donald O'Connor
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Stephan O. Hansch
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Léo Couilfort
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Nikola Šošić
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João Barone
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Markus Baumann
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Alex Mayenfisch
Born in 1954 in Lausanne where I have stayed ever since. Independent filmmaker and producer since 1986. |
Hugo Sigrist
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Claire Simon
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Thomas Hardmeier
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Elodie Pong
1966. US born Swiss video artist Elodie Pong is known for her subtle, analytic works often built as cycles or in series, and which focus on human relationships, cultural codes and their impacts on contemporary society. Her visual language is cinematic, precise and acute, and unfolds through metaphors rather than linear narration. |
Renato Berta
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Andrea Štaka
Born in Lucerne, lives in Zurich. 1992-1993 London College of Printing, Foundation Course in Media Studies, 1993-1998 ZHDK (Zurich University of the Arts), Film. Her films HOTEL BELGRAD and YUGODIVAS brought her recognition at international festivals such as Locarno and Sundance and were nominated for the Swiss Film Prize. |
Jenna Hasse
Born in 1989 in Lisbon, Portugal. Joint Swiss and Portuguese citizenship. Grows up in Switzerland. Studied Drama at the INSAS (Institut National Supérieur des Arts du Spectacle). 2014 Founds Galão Com Açucàr. Works as actress and filmmaker. |
Walo Lüönd
1927-2012. Walo Lüönd grew up in Zug and completed an apprenticeship as a tailor before studying acting in Zurich. After gathering his initial experience on the Swiss stage, Walo Lüönd went abroad in the early 1950s and worked primarily in Munich, Essen and Berlin for more than ten years. |
O Som e a Fúria
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