Discoveries from Switzerland World Cinema

Two men and a young girl meet at the end of the world

The traditional healers in the Swiss and French mountains.

Interweaving stonework and filmmaking, Beavers evokes memory through hammer strokes and chisel sounds that shape both image and rhythm. In this dialogue of repetition and variation, the film carves out a space where emptiness itself gains form, allowing vision beyond sight.

Documenting the lead up to the Swiss popular initiatives in 1989 to abolish the military, the first such popular vote in history. Showing events organized by the military, political discussions and a play adapting a novel by Max Frisch, treating the issue.

Autumn 1977: the Bernese officer trainee Flükiger is found dead. Who is to blame for his death? The RAF or the Béliers, was it an accident or intentional? The director goes in search of clues and tries to shed light on the mysterious events surrounding the vote to form the Canton Jura.

Juliette refuses to go to school. She doesn’t want to walk through those hostile doors. The girls at school push her around, they make her life miserable. She is unwilling to live anymore, because living makes her suffer. Only her tender imagination allows Juliette to escape this anxious reality.

An artist develops feelings for her muse, and it drives her mad.

A young man who disguises himself as a girl in order to gain access to a girl's College.

Toshio and Shizuko Omiro, both over seventy years old, have lived in Kawasaki, Japan since 1981. With their free-spirited lifestyle, the improvisaton duo continues to pursue their vision of changing the world into a more peaceful one in an inappropriate and unseemly way.

The seemingly idyllic region of Ravnice, at the north-western tip of Bosnia and on the EU's external border with Croatia, hides a dangerous past with uncleared war mines. Migrants seeking a better life, are often pushed back across the border from the EU into the surrounding woods, finding themselves lost in the village. Local villagers open the old school building to offer them unofficial, temporary shelter and safety. Despite this ongoing crisis, everyday life continues in Ravnice, marked by daily routines.

Surreal animation with sand and metal slivers by Ernest Ansorge, Gisèle Ansorge

In Georgia, two stranded Nigerians, Obinna and Afame, navigate the sleeping city of Tbilisi after a long night out. However, as day breaks the true colors of their ambiguous affection begin to show. In this way, they find solace despite their hostile environment.

Camille returns from a business trip. Young and rich heiress of a cosmetics company, Cosmos, which she has taken over since the death of her father, she discovers that Vincent, the man who shares his life, took advantage of his absence to leave and move his business without even leaving him a word of farewell. Determined to win back her former lover, she finds an unexpected ally in the person of Zac, Lena's betrayed fiancé, whom she met fortuitously at the Bois de Boulogne, while both were in the process of to spy on their ex. Zac is a broke writer, lacking inspiration: they make common cause to recover their lost loves ...

A playfully inventive jigsaw puzzle of a movie, Boys Are Us follows heartbroken teenager Mia, whose older sister Laura persuades her to take revenge on the male sex. Their plan involves Mia seducing a boy and making him fall in love with her before cruelly discarding him, although the predatory Laura can’t help but complicate matters by toying with the boys herself. Can Mia follow through on their plan? Does she want to?

Ana feels like she is suffocating, oppressed by school, boys, societal constraints. She escapes, taking along her friend Marilou despite her better judgement. Venturing into the forest, the two adolescents discover the force of sudden, intense friendships.

The story of a peasant family in Switzerland in the eighteenth century. The father plunges his family out of jealousy into ruin. The events are hardly noticed by the village population and so he can steal clean from the affair. Nevertheless, his crimes do not go unpunished.

Dr. Claudia Keller works in the research department of the global chemical company Beyler. The company has pinned all its hopes on the development of a revolutionary lifestyle drug called Defaminol. The slimming pill promises consumers easy weight loss. Shortly before the launch of the new miracle pill, Claudia begins to have doubts about possible side effects. She tries to convince management to hold back the drug, but no one listens to her. A nightmare of lies and loss of trust unfolds, and Claudia Keller must decide how far she is willing to go.

Donusa is a small island in the Aegean, visited by the mainline ship once a week. One winter day a young German photographer, Stefan, arrives and soon feels strangely attracted to a local girl called Eleni. The stranger’s presence works as a catalyst shedding light on Donusa’s conventions.

Marvin Gaye: Live in Montreux 1980 is a taped performance of singer Marvin Gaye's performance at the Montreux Jazz Festival, recorded on July 17, 1980. Gaye included this performance as part of a European tour. Gaye performs a majority of his hits from his recent disco-funk hits "Got to Give It Up" and "A Funky Space Reincarnation", to his duet hits with Tammi Terrell including "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" and "Ain't Nothing Like the Real Thing", in which Gaye re-interpolated the songs as a somber tribute to Terrell, who died over a decade before, to sixties Motown classics such as "I'll Be Doggone", "Ain't That Peculiar", "How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You)" and "I Heard It through the Grapevine", to seventies standards such as "What's Going On", "Trouble Man" and "Let's Get It On". The Montreux set was later released as a CD/DVD in 2003.

How does it feel to be alive? Bloc B is the setting for nine encounters, somewhere in the satellite city “la Bourdonnette”, in the outskirts of Lausanne. The film was written for some of their residents and their neighborhood. In order to know what it feels like to be alive.

Paris, 2017: While the new president is being elected, the state of emergency lingers. It sneaks through the capital, on the lookout for old and new monuments to make its own. As the city struggles to regain its innocence, it gently slips its way into everyday life and seeps into the constitution.

“It would be hard to find anything greater, more significant or more moving anywhere in musical life today: total harmony of mind and heart, poetry and outcry, fear and consolation, knowing and feeling,” declared the Berne paper ‘Der Bund’ after this stunning performance of Mahler’s ‘Resurrection’ Symphony in August 2003 by the newly founded Lucerne Festival Orchestra. Claudio Abbado had formed this ensemble from famous instrumentalists, celebrated chamber-musicians and experienced soloists from the world’s best orchestras, and the event was sold out months in advance. The ‘Neue Zürcher Zeitung’ reported: “Once again the applause at the end was unequalled; the immense final chord … broke a tension that had lasted over 90 minutes without relaxing for a moment.”

Pico discovers black spots on his neck. He goes to the doctor. A trip to hell begins. His counterpart is a young and arrogant doctor, eager to make money. Pico starts to doubt in the decisions of the god in white.

Screen adaptation of the play Marivo. Sylvia, incapable of loving affairs, should, according to her father’s plan, marry at all costs. It is for this purpose that Father invites Dorant to spend a relaxing weekend in Switzerland. To find out his true nature, Sylvia decides to change into a maid's costume. Dorant, also in doubt about the future bride, comes up with a similar plan! Gentlemen become servants, servants become gentlemen ...

A "milieustudie" about a girl going to the famous Cafe Odeon and trying to make ends meet.

Alone in an ancient castle, a cleaning lady scrubs in silence, trying to erase the heat of dreams she never dares to speak of. But the walls seem to watch, and the silence, once safe, begins to murmur her secrets back to her.

Women of mature years talk about their marriage, their first time, their intimate relationship with sexuality. In the repetition of these ancestral rituals, the director questions her own lack of marriage, of children, and with it, a chain of mother-daughter relationships that is dying out.

When a real estate salesman is threatening the peaceful idyll of an allotment garden area, their inhabitants make a stand to protect their little paradise.

When the innkeeper Egli hears that his daughter has set off on a boat trip with the sailor Lukas, he sets off in pursuit. He confronts the two and offers them the chance to take over the "Ochsen" inn. However, given the constant friction at home, the young couple soon change their minds...

A pain management specialist in a Berlin hospital laments how difficult it is to see if black skin has turned blue. The patient, 15­year­ old Arlette, doesn’t understand German. Her knee was injured in the war, and unknown wealthy Germans have helped pay for her trip to have surgery in Europe. The camera follows Arlette on her journey, from her worried family in Central African Republic to the desolate rooms of the hospital and the rehabilitation centre. The girl’s gaze is captivating but impenetrable, and the easily bored teenager surrounded by adult strangers is only cheered up by an interpreter who knows her mother tongue. The story takes a gloomier turn when it transpires that rebel forces have taken up arms in Arlette’s home country.

Terrorist Palestine organization hijacks a jet.

"Along the coast of the Bering Sea a community of whale hunters are struggling to survive keeping alive a millenary tradition. Surviving one of the most extreme environments of the planet."

René is sitting in his car driving through his drab reality. Suddenly, he has to sneeze. He pauses and listens. After a few quiet moments, he murmurs, “Bless you”. Then he moves towards the camera and continues: “I am a scream without an echo.” The film is the tragicomedy of a man searching for his echo, the way out of his loneliness. All paths are blocked and his quest becomes more and more of an odyssey. Evading his own insanity and narrowly escaping death, he gradually notices that the search can only end with oneself.

Film tells the story of how Switzerland came into being - albeit in a slightly different way to the historical circumstances we have known up to now: William Tell proves himself a national hero against his will in the midst of the comic chaos of court intrigues, mishaps and misguided love of country. Habsburg occupiers and Swabian tourists stand in the way of the Confederates' fight for independence, but a parodic all-round attack ensures that all patriots learn their history lesson - and in the process are relegated to their respective national borders.

Roger Closset is a man who obviously loves his family, though that doesn't always make them feel better. Dad is an obsessive type with a short fuse and a long list of curious ideas, and his wife and children must often bear the brunt of his eccentricities. Roger works as a reporter, a job he doesn't like which doesn't pay especially well, either. One day, Roger learns an area business association is sponsoring a contest for a family that can break a world record, with the grand prize being a new car. Suddenly, Roger gets a brainstorm -- if his son can open and shut a door 40,000 times in 24 hours, the car will be theirs. 15-year-old Michel, however, is not at all happy to have been drafted into this new responsibility, especially when dad builds a practice door in the backyard and finds a trainer to teach Michel how to open and close it with greatest efficiency.

City people set off into a warm late summer night. Glances meet in a library. At a workout, two men discuss where to buy love. A couple kisses intimately. She bites him. No sooner has he bought a match than a better offer calls. Doubts arise. A couple explains themselves in therapy. At breakfast, his match chews her egg so loud that he freezes in disgust. The electrifying looks in the library lose their power. Full of hope they wander into the unknown. Only the dance makes them temporarily forget who they are and what will happen.

A family plays Twister in a bunker in order to decide whose arm to eat next.

Josef Nötzli is a shy and somewhat awkward man. He has been working as an accountant in a chemical plant in West Berlin for 26 years. But Nötzli originally comes from Switzerland. Nötzli started out as an accountant and remained in this position. Due to a misunderstanding, Nötzli suddenly makes someone else's career. At last, Nötzli is able to put his knowledge and concepts into practice. With his ideas, he quickly steers the badly damaged company back into the profit zone. But it is precisely at this moment that Nötzli's high-flying career comes to an abrupt end: the mysterious misunderstanding comes to light and Nötzli is dismissed from his post, accused of deliberately obtaining a position by fraud. Together with his colleague Neubauer, Nötzli ends up back in the accounts department. Now nothing can keep him in the company. He leaves the chemical plant with his friend Neubauer. But is this farewell final?

A violent road trip, with desperate characters, struggling with misanthropy, religion and private intimate dramas.

The exploitation of young men as prostitutes in the district around the Roman coliseum is the focus of Simon Bischoff's documentary and fiction piece that spares no close-up view of male anatomy. This latter trait reveals just as much about the tenor of this film as it does about the body. Several years earlier, Bischoff met the main 17-year-old protagonist here, "Er Moretto," when he was just a 13-year-old runaway. The intervening years show how he changed into a streetwise vendor of sex, and Bischoff also details how the 17-year-old is picked up by a middle-aged man to be his companion. Fiction segments do not fare as well as the documentary aspects of this work, which in the end, seems at least ambiguous, if not questionable, in its intent.

Four European truckers meet at a rest area when news interrupt the cozy atmosphere: Italy has closed the borders for Eastern Europeans. Suddenly, two of the friends are unable to continue their journey. The search for a solution puts the group's strength to the test and the rest area becomes the center of European politics.

On the roofs of a Tibetan monastery two boys let fly a kite, but suddenly a shot rips the relaxed silence, and one of the two guys gets shot, the "Golden Boy" which is the fictitious successor to the Dalai Lama. The monks act immediately and bring him out of Tibet to secure his body. In the meantime, the Berlinese mountaineer Johanna and her Swiss friend travel to the monastery to stay there for some days...

Marathon runner Jonas Widmer is looking for a way to overcome his tragic past. As a result, he becomes more and more entangled in an ominous double life. The true drama about a well-known top athlete, who evolves into a serial offender.

May 2021: The world sees a way out of the coronavirus pandemic. Manuele Bertoli takes over as President of the Ticino cantonal government and enters his last term of office with a great deal of optimism. But things don't turn out as he had hoped.

Walid, an overweight Lebanese man, is caught in a destructive spiral. He works at his uncle's tennis club but is sent away to build a tennis court. His encounters with Laith and Maya, with whom Walid shares more than he thinks, lead him to find the path back towards hope.

About a man going from early childhood to old age in the time it takes to freshen up.

Could "On Running", the sneaker brand that Roger Federer has teamed up with, hold the prize for greenwashing across all categories? The sneaker success story presents the Cloudneo as the first sneaker to be entirely recyclable, durable and circular. Sure, these shoes are made from castor beans. But as for the rest...Our investigation reveals that On is far from meeting the industry's sustainability standards. The same goes for the myth of circularity. From the factory producing these shoes in Vietnam to the Arkema site in Marseille classified as a dangerous area because of the bromine, chlorine or ammonia used to transform castor beans into plastic, we are in reality light years away from a product that is good for the planet. Investigation in India, Vietnam and France.

A Dakota carrying US generals, their wives, and a girl takes off from Vienna bound for Pisa. A storm drives the DC3 over the Swiss Alps. Miraculously, the pilot manages to fly around the mountain peaks without any sense of direction until the plane crashes on the Gauli Glacier, triggering the most spectacular Alpine rescue to date. American military personnel disable their own and attempt to conquer the glacier with tanks. But the Swiss are not deterred by the US. A small mountain rescue team climbs to the accident site under the most difficult conditions. For the first time, a rescue plane lands on skids on the eternal ice, and Switzerland is celebrated by the world press.

Two male graffiti artists are partners in their work, but they are also having a sexual relationship with each other which they haven't disclosed to others.

Swiss television documentary on the first years of the dictatorship, filmed (in color) in 1977 by a team led by director André Gazut and journalist Claude Smadja. Strongly critical of authoritarianism and the failures of the economic model that was beginning to be adopted, the report shows different aspects of the ideological and technical implementation of the military government. From the purge in universities to the precariousness of the Minimum Employment Program, from the revenge of employers in the countryside to the lamentable composition of the constitutional commission, the show is full of conversations with personalities close to the regime (Jaime Guzmán, Maximilianio Errázuriz, Manuel Valdés, Ruy Barbosa, Arturo Fontaine Aldunate, among others) which is interspersed with testimonies from residents and farmers, victims of violence and poverty.

Police investigator Bettina Käser is investigating the murder of Gottfried Rösli in Langenthal. His daughter Käthi Güdel found the old farmer dead at the Lochmatthof farm, shot with a pellet gun. Everything points to Käthi's husband Sämi having lost his temper: he had been in a nasty argument with his father-in-law. But Bettina Käser has her doubts about Sämi's guilt. Together with her Zurich-based assistant Roberto Egger, the investigator sets out to find the perpetrator. However, the revelation of the truth holds a surprise in store for Bettina Käser herself.

Leonidas, a family man retires from the public sector. He goes on vacation alone, as usually. There he meets the wife of a friend of his, who lives in Switzerland. They become emotionally involved, but Christina goes back to her husband. He follows her, but soon decides to come back to Athens. Christina after a while comes to Athens, seeking their reunion. While Leonidas initially clashes with his family for her, in the end he compromises and decides that the dream is not for him.

A boy and a girl are locked in an enormous abandoned building in a rundown area. She is a prisoner and the local clan leader has forced him to be her warder. Despite their youth, both of them have grown up too fast. Veronica acts like a mature and open-minded woman whilst Salvatore is like a man who wants to hold on to his job and lead a quiet life. Thus, when faced with the violence of this incarceration, the two young people have different reactions: Veronica is restless and rebellious; Salvatore is more remissive and accommodating, either out of fear or realism. They are both victims but it is almost as though each blames the other for their reclusion. However, as the hours go by, their mutual hostility is transformed into an inevitable intimacy, consisting of reciprocal discoveries and confessions. Between the walls of that isolated and frightening place, Veronica and Salvatore fi nd a way to rekindle those adolescent dreams and ideas put aside too soon.

Two young women from very different backgrounds journey into the countryside seeking respite from unsatisfactory lives and relationships, but ultimately find that there is no way back to the world they once knew.

Impaired vision-friendly documentary about blindness.

Jorge leaves his home and family in the outskirts of Lima to try his luck in the goldmines of the Andes, chasing the promises of the mother lode. We follow Jorge through a journey full of omens, where reality and magical thinking blend together, as he discovers that the myth of wealth is built on sacrifices that become ever more tangible – while the boundaries between victims and oppressors get progressively vague and blurred. Mother Lode is a fable about the banality of the descent to hell in times of neoliberalism; it is a paradigm of a relentless world in which everything can be sacrificed in the name of profit.

Franz Hofnagel has been a prisoner in a psychiatric institution for 22 years, where he was sent by his own lawyer. The fact that he has become fat during his time there and from the medication suits his plans... his lawyer will not recognize him when he uses his first vacation in so many years to take bloody revenge on the fraudulent lawyer for robbing him of his farm, his wife... ultimately his life. He thinks.