Discoveries from Switzerland World Cinema

SolarStratos, a mission envisioned by Raphaël Domjan and an airplane designed by Calin Gologan, returns to the skies after a short hiatus in its program in 2018.

The two young teenage friends Hamama and Caluna have left everything behind to flee their home country and ended up stranded in a camp in northern Italy. One day, they decide to cross the closed border into Switzerland under cover of darkness by going over the Alps.

A look at the life on the Mediterranean borders of Europe, where tourists try to relax while "illegal" immigrants struggle for a chance of a better life. Breaking out of a strictly confined tourist zone, two Swiss children experience quickly that reality here has very little to do with the posh life in their camping site. A storm hits the shore and washes away almost all distinctions between the rich and the poor.

After Ella watches a nature documentary about black widow spiders, she makes a connection between the cannibalistic spider species that eats the male after mating and the mysterious new woman in the house, whom her father has invited to a date that evening.

Sights to see in the French alps are depicted.

In the 90s, a young reporter investigates. And in this isolated region, a tale is told by the moon. And this story - about a poor melancholy man - plunges the region into turmoil and violence.

One year after the collapse of society, a young man uses art to forget about loneliness and the new world around him.

A young filmmaker shoots a thriller in a retirement home, with its own dwellers.

Was this father really a teacher, judge, politician and architect? In any case, the character being depicted exists for real on the screen, in the scenes his son wanted to stage. A modest attempt to define a man with some insistence, a condition for the fiction of reality to take shape.

A musical exploration inspired by various pictorial movements of the first half of the 20th century. Animated on the Spinae, a pinscreen created by Alexandre Noyer.

In reference to the ‘King of Soul’, we woke up at 5 am one morning in the midst of Swiss confinement to hit the consecutive bridges of Geneva with some revisited and reassembled James Brown moves. Taking us up the river Arve, we traveled bridge by bridge through the awakening of the city in a dialectic scheme. We are the Camera and the body, connection is our tool, listening our aim and the scenery our stage.

Rumors are spreading. It is said that Giovanni's mother is a bad person. Is she a liar, a whore? He is rejected in his own Palermo neighbourhood and wanders under the judgmental gaze of friends, children, elders and crazy men. A silent turtle for sole consolation, he walks in circles.

After his best friend brutally kills his drug dealer, a man discovers a disturbing secret.

Stony ground, a rocking nest, and the right key. A dreamlike expedition into the subconscious. Sunken memories are recovered and things thought lost are tracked down. Take a deep breath and dive into a poetic exploration of the past.

Patrice is an inmate in the french prison Bois d’Arcy. As an actor and at the same time a silent spectator he hides his drama through a routine of daily gestures and ambiguous postures.

A 'Filmperformance' by Klaus Lutz, described as 'the rendering of the hieroglyph for the word «ARABIA»'

The Aletsch Glacier is the longest and largest glacier of the Alps. According to glaciologists, most glaciers will have disappeared by the end of this century, and only bits of the Aletsch will remain. Through a journey into the body of the glacier the film offers a compelling and unsettling visual experience in which our perception of the nature of the images we see, scale and temporality are questioned.

Henkel ad by Pinschewer.

In 2001, Egyptian police raided a floating gay disco on the Nile and arrested 52 men for obscene behavior. The indignity that these men faced is captured in this animated short.

A film essay on the memory of dreams and how affections are remembered, analyzing the politics of representation and observation at a time of increasing image production, and the meaning of listening exercises. An onomatopoeic journey through Italy and the narration of dreams.

Larry, a young man convinced of his heterosexuality, goes home with a girl after a night out. But when they reveal their intimacy to each others, he discovers that what she has between her legs is not exactly what he expected. This disturbing discovery will lead Larry to a quick trip to the depths of his sexual identity and gender perception.

for Claudia Muñoz, Chile

An illustrator discovers that one of his creations is missing and chases after it.

for Cristobalina Huaiquián, Santiago de Chile

Meet the millenials fighting back against unpaid work. Call Me Intern follows three interns-turned-activists who refuse to accept that young people should have to work for free to kickstart their careers.

Documentary film.

Using Paraguay, Peru, and Guatemala as examples, Bananera libertad analyzes the dependence of small Third World countries on global trade, a form of exploitation from which European consumers profit greatly.

After the death of her father, Selina Weber seeks refuge in Pompei, a city still crossed by phantoms of those struck by the eruption of Vesuvius two thousand years ago. He had filmed her as a child, as a teenager. She had filmed him in the prime of life. In her thoughts, images of their trips surface—brilliant and precious fragments of summers spent together—but also those of the illness, in the cold light of the hospital. Filmed archives and streams of consciousness seem to become one.

Every day, Cyrille leaves for work early in the morning, while Chloé meets her boyfriend during the day in different places. But is that all there is to this seemingly normal situation, and what exactly is the link between these two characters? When everyone decides to only tell his or her own version of the truth, things can often go awry and lead to a dead-end situation. This is the experience that the protagonists will go through in "No Path, No Way", a comedy-drama exploring the theme of "lies", while never taking itself too seriously.

Filmed in London, sent to Paris. For Helga Fanderl. "Dear Helga, today I have recieved a postcard from Chile. Shaking folds and tearing invisible strata, I aim to wander through this city". J.M.

Filmed in the Ligurian Alps. For Tania Masanti. "¿How to deal with this inhability to access things? Walk through the desert, it is the water that its lacking, it is the sun that burns". J.M.

2 minutes experimental short film by Sebastian C. Schroeder

A journey from the civilising void of the desert to a maximal urban, capitalistic and hedonistic density, which in the case of Las Vegas assumes some bizarre expression. The film is a contemplation without any people or moving machines in it, focussing on the built and designed. The narration is fragmentary and works with calm frontal, raw tracking shots. The film is also a narrative of “city-becoming”.

A woman tries to engage with crows in the local park and gets surprisingly emotional.

Short film by Pierre-Yves Vandeweerd produced for the 2014 Visions du réel film festival in Switzerland.

The film "2006-1982 = 114 ans / Jahre" is part of a larger film project based on a 114-year-old event: As part of an expedition led by German officer Hans Ramsay into the so-called hinterland of Cameroon, the chief of the Yambassa, Bisselé Akaba, abducted and executed. He is the great-grandfather of Moise Merlin Mabouna. The video is less intended to contribute to a comprehensive account of history than to question the contexts of forms of knowledge and memory where representations become plausible and powerful. Here, the return of the Ndjaman to Brandenburg promises a future that will be post-colonial because it transcontinentalizes the voice of its history and has the construction of a 'here' and a 'elsewhere'.

A container for stories, between cinema and reality, memories of the past, dreams, and journeys on an eleven-day trip around the world. Piazza Grande, the undisputed symbolic location for the Locarno Festival. Stories experienced firsthand by those who frequent, inhabit, and experience Piazza Grande during the Festival period. Emotions felt for a moment, as ethereal as cinema itself: this is the flamboyant and mysterious magic that is perpetuated every year in this extraordinary place.

SVP National Councillor Arthur Aebi has checked into the Parkhotel for a fling with SP secretary Anita Fröhlich. But when they go to admire the view, a dead body is found on the balcony. As nobody is allowed to know about the meeting between Aebi and Fröhlich, the body has to disappear. Aebi calls his secretary Willy Waser, who then gets involved in the whole mess, not entirely voluntarily.

Is it possible to live a life completely independent of social and economic constraints, wholly at one with nature? In the picturesque mountains of Val Lavizzara in Ticino, several individuals have come together to form a cooperative society and live such a life. There is a plethora of chores to be done on the farm: animals to feed, fields to plough and tree trunks to be chopped. As the year progresses, more and more issues surface dividing the younger and older residents: how much technology is acceptable? How much compromise is necessary and reasonable? Is the amount of work done in balance with the results gained? Along with a poetic gaze, director Hans Haldimann also shows the sometimes extraordinarily complicated side to a ‘simple’ self-sufficient life. This may be far away from the hustle and bustle of the city, but there are just as many problems to be faced.

When Lotti Latrous's husband, a wealthy engineer, took a job in the AIDS-stricken Ivory Coast, she began a much-needed clinic to try to stem the tide of the disease. When he was transferred to Egypt, Lotti stayed behind to continue saving lives. This profound documentary follows Lotti's progress and examines the emotional decision to leave her family behind to pursue her mission, both from her point of view and those of her husband and children.