Discoveries from Switzerland World Cinema

A man takes in three a dog and three runaway girls.

A man travelling by train coincidentally ends up in a village and checks in at a hotel. A dead girl is in the bathroom. He listens to his neighbor’s conversations through the wall, obtains a large suitcase and begins his exploration through the dissolving borderline, contradiction and déjà-vu.

In the aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, a Japanese farmer ekes out a solitary existence within the radiation red zone.

Lorenz Meran, a successful gay author suffering acute writers' block, has to leave Berlin and return to eastern Switzerland to provide care for his aged mother, Rosie. But it is not only his mother's battle against being dictated to and losing her dignity that he is struggling with. It's also his own midlife crisis.

In 1937 Else Blangsted, a German Jewish teenager gave birth to a baby girl. She was told that her baby had died. 47 years later she discovered the truth.

Alexandra is a department store thief; she steals out of necessity and for fun. Jean buys and sells stocks; he works on the stock exchange. Since his wife left him, Jean has been adrift. They set off together and are now both drifting towards England. In Jean's convertible and thanks to his money, they go from hotel to hotel, from one crazy adventure to the next. From Geneva to Penzance, Alex and Jean live life to the fullest, laughing loudly...

This short film is Godard’s message to the people of Lausanne, specifically journalist and critic Freddy Buache, addressing his reasons why he will not make a film about their town’s 500th anniversary. Rather than cynical or defensive, Godard's bemused narration of the footage of Lausanne is imaginative and even playful, a rumination on cinema's possibilities.

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 the country. The dead man's detailed notes reveal that he actually committed suicide through self-imposed starvation only the summer before. Liechti's film is a stunning rapprochement of a fictional text, which itself is based upon a true event: a cinematic manifesto for life, challenged by the main character's radical renunciation of life itself.

When director Daniel Schmid grew up, his parents ran a hotel in the Alps, and this singular setting was to influence his film. Rather by coincidence, he came to Berlin in the early 1960s and became part of the new German wave. Schmid worked with, among others, Wenders and Fassbinder, for example, as an actor in Wender’s The American Friend. He met Ingrid Caven, who was to play a diva in several of his films. This is a documentation of a part of modern European film history and a good analysis of artistry and how it corresponds to the individual behind the camera. A wealth of archival footage brings us close to many directors and actors in Schmid’s circle. If you’ve never seen a Daniel Schmid film, you are sure to want to after watching this portrait of his life.

Cecilia Bartoli stars in this ebullient Zurich Opera House production of Rossini’s first French-language comedy opera described by the international press as “pure, unadulterated fun” and reminds us of her comic gifts and her naturalness as a stage actor — as well as her total sympathy with the music of Rossini.

With the help of his assistant Anja, Ottocaro Weiss intends to put the plague on stage: circumstances beyond his control and a lack of fresh talent have forced him to close down his flea circus. For Weiss, the plague means the «extinction of everything that makes life miserable and low and freedom along with it. Unbeknownst to him, he has won the support of a patron who is of the exact opposite opinion: for Johannes Wagner, the plague is an organising principle, and, aided by his agent Moosbrugger, he is able to smuggle a new number onto the programme. Whereas Ottocaro Weiss means to represent the plague theatrically, what appears on stage is the scientific reality of the rat-borne infestation.

Music and dance nurture the story of a group of people who live in a popular neighborhood. The invasion of North American soldiers to Panama will break the tranquility of the place bringing a wave of violence with them.

Is the solution to Switzerland's future to integrate Germany into the confederation? After all, like Michael Ringier, CEO of the Ringier media group, says, blithely ignoring all minorities, we're very close in culture and language. Oskar Freysinger takes out his guitar and sings his answer. Politicians from French-speaking Switzerland and Ticino think expanding will help the country survive. The former German foreign minister thinks the two countries' traditions are too different. The banker Oswald Grübel is worried about Germany's debts, although he'd be prepared to take over its assets. With serious interviews interspersed with gags (boat people on Lake Constance, the last Habsburger as a peasant), Giaccobbo gathers off-the-cuff reactions which reveal a lot about the different mentalities. The movie laughs at preconceived notions, redefines neutrality and reflects on what designates a nation. Switzerland, which loves to teach the world a lesson, will soon helvetize the planet, oder?

Throughout the late 19th century and in the early part of the 20th, Russians of a wide variety of political persuasions contemplated various forms of revolution. Throughout the same period, they often had to seek asylum in other countries. This movie concerns Sergei (Roger Jendly), a revolutionary who kills a student in Russia and flees to Switzerland. Though he has the gifts and abilities to unify various revolutionary groups within Russia, once he has been forced to flee, they have no interest in him. When his presence in Switzerland threatens a trade agreement with the Tsar, he is tracked down and expelled.

A headlong dive into the deepest, silliest recesses of Abrantes’s unconscious.

Dea leaves rural Indonesia and her singing dreams to migrate to Hong Kong as a foreign domestic worker. The script is the result of a nine-months acting improv laboratory with a group of Indonesian women migrant domestic workers, who have been victims of domestic violence while working in Hong Kong.

Fifty years after graduating from school, 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 former school sweetheart, died in an accident on her graduation trip to the Rhine Falls. But was it really an accident? The evening turns into a murderous act of revenge.

Until recently, Europe felt safe under the US nuclear umbrella. But since Russia invaded Ukraine and Donald Trump was re-elected, transatlantic relations have deteriorated. Experts are calling for Europe to focus more on its own nuclear deterrent. But what options do nations on the continent have?

Jean-Luc and his old gang of 1968 pacifists, now in their seventies, reunite to make a film protesting against Swiss military export. After blowing up an arms factory they are brought to justice, but many hail them as heroes.

An epic family saga told by the women around the famous architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.

Emotionally stormy Bibiana, temperamental Claudio, sexually adventurous Harald, and secretive Tamara were close friends in their college days, but the four had a falling out and have not seen one another in close to a decade. As the four are edging into their thirties, Bibiana decides its time for a reunion, and invites Claudio, Harald, and Tamara to her apartment for a dinner party. However, after a long evening of conversation, Bibiana has a surprise for her guests...

Three kids are trying to stand strong. In a world where you don’t know for what you want to stay strong. Full of sexuality and the need to define their identity. “We are the children with no obligations, the most possibilities, with the most liberated freedom. We are children who build words. Children who give birth to children. We are children of our time, free from guilt.”

The film intertwines historical events and intimate memories. I observe how architecture represents the transformations of society and those who give form to this architecture. We follow the journey of Munio, my father, born in 1909 in Silesia, Poland, the son of a tenant farmer of a Prussian junker. At the age of 18, Munio goes to Berlin and Dessau to meet Walter Gropius, Kandinsky and Paul Klee at the Bauhaus. In 1933, the Bauhaus was closed by the Nazis, who accused Munio of treason against the German people. Munio was imprisoned, then deported to Basel. He left for Palestine. Upon his arrival in Haifa, he began a career as an architect and adapted European modernist principles to the Middle East.

A summer night celebration, the nightcap after the class reunion. The former high school clique meets again for the first time in 25 years. Amidst the joy of reunion, the present and the past intersect. Old issues shine through the seemingly superficial chatter, and a dark shadow hangs over the exuberant mood. The "incident" was one of the reasons for the sudden breakup of the group.

In preparation for a feature-length film about windmills, an assistant director travels through the Vaud region to search for locations with windmills. The research leads to a serious engagement with the meaning and purpose of windmills, which has something Don Quixote-like about it in the age of nuclear power stations. The transitions between document and fiction flow constantly and result in a charming and intellectual mixture of seriousness and fun, determination and coincidence, weightlessness and the weight of meaning.

Driss and Zahra leave their fisherman's village to take their six-year-old son, Ayoub, to the emergency room of the Casablanca's public hospital. There they meet Driss' brother, Houcine, with whom they have been in conflict for years. The doctor diagnoses a brain problem requiring immediate action. This is the starting point of a painful journey exhausting each one. Are they ready to do everything to save Ayoub's life?

Harald Reichenbach sets off around the globe in a sailing boat collecting garbage from the sea with local people. Using a press, he compresses what they find and pours it into resin to form ‚G-Cubes’. He then takes the garbage back as art to the people who created it – consumers in industrialized countries. Nothing on the journey goes exactly as planned, however, and Reichenbach finds himself teetering between art and activism.

In 1975 French Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker Pierre Dominique Gaisseau traveled to Panama to make a film on the indigenous island-dwelling Kuna people. Accompanied by his wife and their daughter, Gaisseau lived with the Kuna for a year, gaining their trust and filming their most intimate ceremonies. He promised to share the resulting film with the community, but that never happened. Fifty years later, the Kunas are still waiting to discover “their” film, now a legend passed down from the elders to the new generation. One day, a hidden copy is found in Paris…While uncovering this fascinating story with humility and warmth, Swiss-Panamanian filmmaker Andrés Peyrot succeeds in capturing a true sense of culture and place. The result is simultaneously a cautionary tale raising questions around how and why documentaries are made and for whom, and a testament to the power of what it means to see yourself on the big screen.

Maurizio is a young university student living in Zürich, with a passion for diseases. Unlike many others, he can see an inherent beauty in them. Afterall, what difference can exist between a flower and an infection, if they are both a gift of nature?

A little tiger decides to take a long journey in search of his stripes.

A workout on the sun deck, a conga line in the dining hall, a photo shoot with the captain, or a beauty contest for all ages: fun around-the-clock is guaranteed on a cruise, while you float along with your hotel room. The sea-faring holiday fortresses have come into vogue and business is booming. In the towering ship’s wake, we are left behind with a hoard of digital memories and a cloud of exhaust fumes on the horizon.

Over a dozen students at this school in Quebec were radicalised. To tackle the issue, a pilot project was launched to heal divides within the student body. It's a hybrid cultural model, made up of the many cultures of its students.

Swiss collector Uli Sigg has played in the time of economic opening of China by Mao an essential role, which is still continuing. To better understand China, in 1980 as an entrepreneur and business expert to the country called Sigg art turns to and wears for years the most important collection of contemporary Chinese art together. THE CHINESE LIVES OF ULI SIGG granted for the first time a comprehensive insight into the exciting and extraordinary life of the entrepreneur, diplomat and art collector. Contemporary artists like Ai Weiwei, Zeng Fanzhi, Cao Fei, Fang Lijun Wang Guangyi or consider him a friend and mentor to whom they could entrust their works, to protect them against the arbitrary destruction of the authorities. The majority of them are over the Sigg museum M + in Hong Kong, which expected to open in 2019 and the works will be presented to the general public.

Frustrated with her life, a Parisian tells her philandering husband about her lover.

Abstinence leads to suffering, falling off the wagon means death. Tinou must adhere to a strict regimen to qualify as a recipient of a new liver. Aschi is also suffering: from the lacklustre present, which seems to render his brilliant past all the more magnificent. But he retrieves the past in a letter from South Africa.

TSR documentary on the 1979 expedition to Algeria in the Atakor massif (Hoggar desert), organized by Geneva mountaineer Michel Vaucher and Jean-Blaise Fellay. The climbers make a dozen ascents including the famous summit of Adaouda (which means "finger" in Tamasheq, the Tuareg dialect), by several routes. Then a new route on the peaks of the southern Tezoulegs. They discover the volcanic geological characteristics of the Atakor massif and meet the nomadic inhabitants of the region, the Tuaregs, who are increasingly settling in the town of Tamanrasset.

A hairdresser is being recruited during World War I by the Swiss military where they turn this soft civilian into a 'real man'.

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

It is April 1974 and Julie Dujonc-Renens, young feminist journalist and the cunning Joseph-Marie Cauvin, leading reporter for the Swiss radio, have been sent to Portugal to investigate Switzerland’s aid to poor countries. Sparks fly during the bus trip with Bob, sound engineer approaching retirement. The projects financed by Switzerland prove to be calamitous and the workers’ revolution that suddenly breaks out doesn’t help, obliging our heroes to disregard first the radio’s management, and then their own codes of conduct.

A battle-scarred, has-been Hungarian cop, tormented by his memories of nearly killing an innocent woman in his custody, enters into a Faustian pact in which he trades his soul for a handful of "magic" bullets that always hit the mark. A mysterious and mythical story.

No coffee, no TV, no sex is a dramatic comedy. It is the story of Arno, a 27 year old living in the Geneva squats. His best friend, Maurizio, obtained a residence permit for Switzerland through an convenience wedding. Nina, Maurizio’s girlfriend, is French but would also like to live in Geneva: she faces the same administrative obstacle. In order for her to obtain a permit, Maurizio convinces Arno, for the sake of their friendship, to marry her out of convenience. Reluctantly, Arno accepts and Maurizio, unsuspecting, leaves for a few days. Alone with Nina, Arno, usually shy with women, falls in love with her. She falls in love with him. When Maurizio returns, Arno cannot hide the truth from him. He and Nina end up telling him about their relationship. They reconsider the arrangement and try to settle the dilemma together…

When the distinguished psychiatrist Robert Block discovers that his young wife Carole has betrayed him, he is thrown completely off balance. His jealousy hinders him from caring for his patients as responsibly as he should, until Léo Debond , a psychotic and depressive single, seeks his help. Robert sees him with a mixture of compassion and secret contempt. After Carole wants to leave him for good, he takes advantage of Léo’s trust and dependence and makes him an accomplice in a secret plan aiming to end his own pain.

A featureless street on an industrial estate in Bonn – desolate, unfinished and inconspicuous. The street bears the name of a child. It is meant to commemorate the racially motivated terrorist attack that this child did not survive. A public memorial, consigned to no man’s land. A film against collective amnesia.

An exhausted militant wants to take a break from the incessant frenzy surrounding him. His country’s dictatorship is on its last legs and chaos reigns. His wife Sylvie leaves their country for France. She writes about the new democracy struggling to be born back home. His daughter Joyce must hide out in the deserted childhood home in the solitude and infinity of the Black Beach. Several adversaries – the militia of a hazy regime in his native land and the Paris police – wage a strange game of chess in which he is the pawn. Threats abound and he’s haunted by his past, his fears, dead friends. He has three allies: his wife, his daughter, and an old girlfriend from his fighting days.

The documentary follows a crew of snowboarders for six weeks in the Chugach mountains, and showcases what it takes to ride these unique Alaskan mountains: the waiting, the stress, the dangers, everything that goes into it and is usually never shown. It also retraces some of the history of this unknown discipline and pays tribute to the pioneers. But the film really focuses on the human aspect and why these people do what they do.

TWO OR THREE THINGS I KNOW ABOUT EDWARD HOPPER is an immersive experience in 3D, that takes its viewers on a journey into the world of Hopper, sharpening their senses for some aspects of his unique work.

In the far future, a professor of quantum physics is about to undergo surgery to remove his brain tumor, and is offered a backup of his brain for safety reasons.

This insightful documentary feature from PJ Letofsky serves as a profile of iconic Austrian-American Architect Richard Neutra, whose work and legacy have helped shape the modern understanding of design, architecture and the interconnected fabric of nature. Today, Richard's legacy lives on through his son, Dion, who has taken up his father's mantle after nearly three-decades under his mentorship.

A Swiss right-wing populist and a veiled, Kurdish Muslim asylum seeker swap bodies before an election.

The Desert Ark (L'Arche du Desert), a variation on Romeo and Juliet set in the Algerian desert. A young couple must face inevitable conflict when their rival families discover their secret love. Taking refuge in a cave, they listen to the sounds of a senseless campaign of violence and murder, which is the culmination of the extremism that has long divided their two communities. Nominated for the Golden Leopard at the 1997 Locarno Film Festival.

Jullo, Edo, and Chiara: three teenagers among thousands. Three teenagers who live for sport. Jullo is his skateboard, Chiara conquers the world on skis, Edo is a graffiti artist. One day, Jullo, Chiara, and Edo suddenly discover their own lives, each in their own way. Fears, dreams, surprises, loneliness, insecurity, expectations, instability, imbalance. Then a moment, a second, a click. A click that leads them to rediscover themselves, that leads them into adulthood, or that relentlessly sweeps them away.

An expatriate in Turkey, Claire pays the services of a smuggler to flee the country with her only daughter, whose custody she has just lost. But he abandons them in a dilapidated house in the middle of the forest.

The adaption of Arthur Schnitzler's brilliant study of the moral illusion and reality in a small town near Vienna at the end of the century. - After the famous radio adaption by Max Ophüls in 1954.

'if you only had one year left of your life, what would you do?' This question asks Swiss author Franz Hohler. His answer: 'Make death your adviser to live life to the fullest.' He is one of several carefully chosen Swiss citizens who give us an insight into their personal views on life and death. Besides these colorful, oftentimes funny quotes we meet Tom, a 50-year old male that has been diagnosed with incurable brain tumor. Contrary to what one would expect, Tom takes his sickness not as a burden but as a chance and lives his life happier than ever before. This to the surprise of his family and friends and above all - himself. The film encourages people to live life more consciously.

With noise-canceling headphones, they communicate with an inaudible counterpart. Decoupled, they move around the room and meet their surroundings. Intimate stories and needs are discussed. The personal blends into a shared portrait.

The first emotions in love with a young man of seventeen: Thomas who understands that his life belongs to him at last. Four young women contribute to his sentimental education.

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

A Donatello award nominated documentary following nine Italian survivors of the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Students at an academy of singing, dance, and music are subjected to strict rules and arduous challenges in an atmosphere of fierce rivalry as they pursue the dream of becoming show business stars. The clandestine relationship of Lisa and Damiano is likely to cost them the opportunity to participate in the final contest and will have to decide whether to sacrifice love to achieve success.

Are humans capable of understanding the suffering of other species? A cinematic manifesto against species extinction, framed as an artistic and personal warning.