Discoveries from Switzerland World Cinema

ISLANDER'S REST is a bitter-sweet, affectionate tale of innocence lost, bottled-up desires and the comfort of recycling.

At an exhibition, graphic designer Stefanie is thrilled by the work of John Heartfield, the inventor of political photomontage 100 years ago. While trying to understand his life on the run, she suddenly finds herself in Heartfield's studio.

Romane is 15 years old. She suffers from a respiratory disease and begins a treatment at a specialized thermal baths. One night, she hears a strange whistling coming from the surrounding forest. Romane persists in seeking out the origin of the continuous humming that only she can hear. As she nears the source of it, her breathing changes.

The film takes us back in time, to a relatively recent yet forgotten period in history, when many women like Lina were forced to fold in the face of unfair and blinkered authorities. The victim of an administrative internment aimed at re-educating her after her so-called "depraved behaviour", Lina finds herself completely abandoned, confused and humiliated. In present day, when she is 60 years old, for the first time in her life, our brave protagonist can finally "spill the beans", thus freeing herself of a burden that has threatened to destroy her all these years.

Shut inside their cars, two women face off in a silent duel that is fought out in the intimate violence of their stares. A wholly female duel punctuated by the refusal to drink, eat and sleep; more obstinate than the sun of Palermo and more stubborn than the ferocity of the men who surround them. For, as in every duel, it is a question of life or death... It’s a Sunday afternoon. The sirocco is blowing pitilessly in Palermo when Rosa and Clara lose their way in the streets of the city and end up in a sort of alley: Via Castellana Bandiera. At the same moment, another car driven by Samira, crammed with members of the Calafiore family, arrives from the opposite direction and enters the same street.

While a trial involving murder, manslaughter and armed robbery is being conducted inside the courtroom, the two daughters of the accused are sentenced to wait outside in the hallway.

His last big journey took him from Stein am Rhein to faraway Japan. Theo Plakoudakis and Marco Salituro had developed the script especially for Mathias Gnädinger. And so the popular actor filled the role of "Big Summer" with a lot of heart: The former wrestling king Anton Sommer is forced by the ten-year-old boy Hiro to accompany him to Japan. Hiro wants to become a sumo wrestler like his father. Zurich-based Stefan Jäger has staged a modern fairy tale that becomes an endearing homage to Mathias Gnädinger. He died on Good Friday 2015.

Totonel (10) and his sisters, Andreea (14) and Ana (17), are waiting for their mother to come back home from prison. As they grow up, each of them learns how to survive on their own, hoping that when their mother returns, the family will be reunited.

Never seen before: an opera in Zurich station, amidst the throngs of passengers. When lyrical art comes down from its pedestal to meet the public.

An Italian descendent inherited 5000 hectares of virgin forest in Chaco Paraguaio. He tries to stop deforestation to intensive farming and livestock, while advocating for native Guaraní Nandevas.

A dead man is discovered in the machine room of the Randlingen sanatorium and nursing home. The man is Dr. Ulrich Borstli, the director of the institution. Constable Studer from the cantonal police takes over the investigation and soon realizes: it was no accident! The hospital director must have been beaten to death with a sandbag around midnight. The search for the perpetrator and motive proves difficult. The patient Pieterlein comes under suspicion because he has been on the run since the crime. However, Studer doesn't really believe in this solution and examines the friendly façade of the psychiatrist Borstli. He soon realizes that the solution must lie in the treatment methods of the nurses and doctors...

The chef Patrick inherits an old, run-down hotel on the Wolfgangsee and wants to convert it into a music hotel with the help of the employees. While there is fierce intrigue and a few love affairs, the hotel gradually takes shape.

Reimagining of the Don Quixote saga. A professor is working on a study about knights in early Swiss history on behalf of the Swiss National Science Foundation and becomes a knight himself in order to better imagine their world. Accompanied by the keeper of a scrap metal yard, he takes to the field against modern highwaymen, giants, and lindworms—against highways, environmental pollution, nuclear power plants, reservoirs, and the tanks of the Swiss army.

Oscar, not quite a child anymore, scavenges for scrap metal for his father. He spends his life in improvised landfills among what remains of leftovers. Worlds apart, yet close-by, there is Stanley. He tidies the church in exchange for a monetised hospitality, picks fruits, herds sheep: anything that keep his foreign body busy. Oscar, the young Sicilian, and Stanley the Nigerian don’t seem to have much in common. Except for the feeling of being thrown into the world, to suffer the same refusal, the same overwhelming wave of choices imposed on them by others.

Niki has two kids, two jobs, and no money. After a fire turns her life upside down, her children are placed in foster care. Banned from contact, she assumes a new identity risking everything to stay close to them.

Twelve talented young mountaineers, five geologists from the University of Lausanne and four mountain guides take an unprecedented risk in Patagonia. Trained by the great climbers Ralf Weber, Ueli Steck, Denis Burdet and David Fasel, the young people are collecting rock samples from the granite walls of the Paine Towers, which are up to 1000 meters high, on behalf of science. The challenges are enormous: Climbing a big wall at the highest level of difficulty, cloudy weather, relentless wind that tears at material and nerves - and an urgency that also pushes the group to their emotional limits. "Flying High" not only documents an extraordinary undertaking, but also shows up close what happens when something happens that can happen after every meter of altitude climbed: a fall.

Paraguay's lush soy farms are battlegrounds between huge agri-business and small farmers. The GMO beans fatten up cattle in rich countries so steaks remain cheap. But the pesticides used are destroying the crops of the campesinos and harming their kids.

For decades, Carlos Santana has been thrilling audiences around the world with his timeless blend of rock, blues, Latin music, and jazz. In 2011, the legendary guitarist performed on one of the world’s most prestigious stages: the Montreux Jazz Festival. A performance of rare intensity, filmed in high definition.

Heartbreak affects us all. Oscar-nominated director Christian Frei teams with famed anthropologist Helen Fisher to examine the power and resilience of love despite it all.

The story of a family that is forced to flee the ČSSR in 1969 and seeks a new home in Germany.

Spring 1978, Gilbert Baker is creating the first rainbow flag in his apartment which will become the symbol of the LGBTQIA+ community.

Is the city of Zurich suffering from ‘density stress’? What is it like to live in mega cities such as São Paulo, Mexico City and Tiflis? Filmmaker Thomas Haemmerli broaches the topics of city development, architecture, density, housing market, xenophobia and gentrification from an autobiographical perspective. The path of his life has led him from a childhood in the villa district of Zürichberg, through his teenage years as squatter to flat shares, yuppie apartments and finally second homes in various cities. Only recently having become a dad, he plans to further enhance Zurich’s price appreciation by purchasing a huge, extended city apartment… This multifaceted essay not only humorously questions the filmmaker’s decisions, but also those of the right-wing conservatives, who are afraid of losing their space to immigrants, and the political left, who fail to embrace modern-age architecture.

A mysterious lonely man and a young rebel woman, confront each other in a psychological drama about suspended identity.

When Anna awakes one morning at this place without time nothing was as before. She found herself being controlled by a strange force. Controlling her body, her mind and her soul.

The story revolves around the confusion that arises when a supposed gold discovery in Valais divides the village community. The plot combines elements of a cultural film about old customs in the Lötschental valley with a naive storyline that achieves a strangely powerful effect through its simple realism.

This new atmospheric documentary by Lionel Charlet plunges us into the world of an exceptional plane - the F/A-18 Hornet. For six months, in Switzerland, Norway and Sardinia, Lionel has shot original footage of this fighter jet in action. The feeling of flying is real, the missions are varied, the poetry of the lights is enthralling... A powerful, finely worked soundtrack adds to the richness of these extraordinary high-definition images. Ice Hornet will delight all aviation fans. It will enchant nature-lovers who will fly through landscapes in unbelievable 3-D.

Looking for easy money, three young dropouts auction themselves on the Internet. One sells his future, one sells his past. The third sells his soul. What starts off as an unlikely trick turns into a nightmare when they discover they've sold their very existences.

To escape from a lack of perspective in Kosovo, Hana decides to resort to the services of Emir, an illegal smuggler in Serbia that will drive her to Hungary. On the way, complications arise as Emir's unscrupulous associates try to take advantage of Hana's vulnerability. In the midst of the frozen winter, Hana's courage and determination and Emir's principles and beliefs will be put to the test.

This is the story of the quiet disappearance of a public service in France: the telephone box. Barely forty years old and already totally "out".

The film tells the story of Verena Stadler, a young woman who lives in a small Swiss village. Her mother, Katharina Waser-Stadler, is a strong and independent woman who supports Verena in her development. Verena falls in love with Wilhelm Waser, a man from her community, which leads to conflicts and challenges that they must overcome together.

Zibilla, a young zebra adopted by a couple of horses, is the laughing stock of her new schoolmates. She ends up hating her stripes. When she has her stuffed toy stolen, she takes off without a second thought to look for it and that is where her adventures begin...

RROMANI SOUL traces the true origin of the Rroma people. Through rituals, song and dance we follow emblematic figure and "Queen of the Gypsies" Esma Redzepova to Macedonia, south of France and finally to India. The film reveals for the first time ever that the true and unique origin of the Rroma is Kannauj in Uttar Pradesh, India.

It should have been just another day, but Ruben’s scheduled meeting with Dave is making him nervous. Fearful imaginings haunt his morning. He forgets to lock his door, misses the bus and when he enters the office he sees a deer waiting for him.

The key to the communal laundry room in the block of flats on the Rue de Genève 85 in Lausanne serves a much greater function than merely unlocking the door. This encounter between a symbol of typical Swiss mentality with a penchant for order and the tenants who have been housed here by the city’s social services department is not something to be taken for granted. Although the laundry room is normally located in the cellar, the tenants in this building share a tiny laundry room off the entrance hall because the cellar is reserved for prostitution. To maintain order and cleanliness, the landlord hires Claudina, a new “laundry woman”.

While, during World War II, European Jews were being dragged by the Nazis to the extermination camps and most people bowed their heads, some brave men and women risked their lives to save them: a journey through the world and history in search of those who, by their heroic and pious deeds, deserved to be known as the righteous.

Santiago de Cuba, January 19th, 1819. Coming from Lausanne, Enrique Faber, a Swiss doctor and surgeon, arrives on the island, a Spanish province, hoping to find his son, who has been kidnapped…

Four female artists have been politicized by experiences with war, violence and suppression and integrated them into their work, using their most personal tool: their own bodies.

Claude Goretta directed “L'invitation” in 1973. For filmmaker Lionel Baier, born in 1975, it is like a “travelling companion”, to adapt Serge Daney’s expression. He feels it is definitive proof that a Swiss can be deeply Chekhovian. The young filmmaker goes to Geneva to ask his elder how he achieved the whoosh of water effect in the film, why attention to detail matters so much, and how to film great actors such as François Simon. This encounter with Claude Goretta – but also with Isabelle Huppert, Nathalie Baye, Michel Robin and Frédérique Meininger – leads one of the greatest of Swiss filmmakers to open up about his work.

The film is set to bring forward once again the well-worn images of the summit talks between Reagan and Gorbachev in Geneva. It is a reproduction of the days during the summit. On the one hand, pictures are gathered from the perspective as an onlooker in Geneva, on the other hand, the old television footage is processed.

Nina and her two friends share trepidations and desires, amid adolescent games and self-discovery. As the girls engage in ever new challenges, Nina immerses herself in her own hesitations.

"Bluebeard" (German: "Blaubart") is a 1951 black comedy film directed by Christian-Jaque and starring Hans Albers, Cécile Aubry and Fritz Kortner. Based on the fairy tale "Bluebeard" by Charles Perrault, it was a co-production between West Germany, France and Switzerland. It was made using the Gevacolor process. A separate French-language version, "Barbe-Bleue", was also made.

17-year-old Edith is celebrating at her friend's house in Zurich when she is dragged to a nightclub by the unscrupulous seducer Jean, who gets her drunk and abuses her. When she becomes pregnant, she asks her father, who is a gynecologist, to perform an abortion. He initially refuses, but eventually agrees to perform the procedure—with fatal consequences.

Between 1931 to 2002, Switzerland issued some six million seasonal residence permits, known as "A" permits, to immigrant workers. This status carried drastic rules, such as a ban on family reunification and a stay in Switzerland limited to nine months a year. In open letters, former seasonal workers and their children recount the impact this system had on their lives.

The history of skiing is an amazing journey through small and big events starring strong and avant-garde people who were not afraid to break with the prevailing social prejudices of their time and invented a new sporting discipline.

An investigative portrait of the master of cinematic melodrama, Douglas Sirk. His life was the ultimate melodrama, from which all his films were inspired. Through the testimonies of those closest to him and the unpublished accounts in his wife's diary, we get closer to this man surrounded by mystery.

Claire and Pierre's marriage hits the skids after Claire, pregnant with twins, feels that one embryo is crushing the other and decides to abort half the pregnancy.

The location of the sanctuary of Artemis at Amarynthos has long remained one of the last great archaeological enigmas of Ancient Greece. This vast Artemision is mentioned in several ancient texts, which even go so far as to specify the distance that separates the sanctuary from the ancient city of Eretria. But despite the efforts of numerous scientific expeditions since the end of the 19th century, no trace of the sanctuary or its temple has ever been found. In the 1960s, a young archaeologist - Denis Knoepfler - set out in search of the lost temple of Artemis. His investigations soon led him into the hinterland of the island of Euboea, well beyond the limits of previous expeditions. It would take five decades of searching, unshakeable faith and moving tons of earth to finally unravel the mystery. In 2017, a tenacious Swiss-Greek team of archaeologists formally identified the sanctuary of Artemis, where Denis Knoepfler had predicted it lay buried.

When Frank emphatically points out security problems in e-banking to his boss and tries to help an elderly customer recover money she lost on the Internet, he loses his job, is publicly defamed as a fraudster, and ends up in pretrial detention.

Late at night, the psychologist Eliane Hess is called to the hospital to take care of Yves, an eight-year-old boy, who just has lost his parents and siblings in a car accident. Eliane is both shocked and curiously drawn to the traumatized boy. As time goes by, she loses the professional distance to the patient, and when Yves' relatives begin a heavy dispute about the boy's future, Eliane makes an unorthodox decision, that throws her life off track.

Final series for the national championship. The team of Genève-Servette faced a challenge: to win th title. An exemplary captain suddenly pursued by bad luck. A fragile team stops marking and does not know where the tragedy struck. An uncompromising coach desperate to regain the favor of the gods of hockey. Here's what members attended the ASMS guest on May 31 in Geneva at the premiere of the film by Pierre Morath and Nicholas Peart, "Les Règles du jeu". The film, which was a great success at this event, enters the intimacy of a hockey team to discover the brutal reality of professional sport.

An obsessive mother, on the verge of a nervous breakdown. A father, carefully blotted out from all the family photos and a dreadful child-psychiatrist with unconventional methods - This is the summary of young Hazel's life, secretly attracted to boys...

Bern, 1979: a tower block called Tscharnergut. Together with a few friends (among them famous Swiss actor Stefan Kurt), director Aron Nick's father and uncle shoot the idealistic Super 8 film "Dr Tscharniblues" ("The Tscharni Blues") – a wild, unvarnished self-portrait of their generation. 40 years later, Nick gathers the friends at Tscharnergut and asks what has happened to them and their ideals in the meantime. What have the achieved? What have they lost? Past, present, and future clash and form a journey of personal disappointments, hopes, and a collective search for identity. In "Tscharniblues II," Aron Nick discovers a kind of friendship that can weather anything.

After partying together, four female friends and four male friends meet up. The previous evening is reconstructed. Questions arise around guilt, responsibility and consent.