Discoveries from Switzerland World Cinema

It all began on a couch. He watched her undress and they made love for the first time.

Short film about a city woman visiting the countryside.

When a lantern lights up on a country road in the jungle, a group of insects goes crazy – which proves to be handy for the hungry bats in a nearby cave.

The successful filmmaker Yu Hao is always on the move and travels the world from Beijing, until she falls in love with idyllic Appenzell – and moves to Switzerland for love. Through the lens of her camera the Chinese discovers the unknown Appenzellerland and meets people, who live in harmony with nature, cultivate traditions and are rooted in their homeland. These encounters confront Yu Hao with strong doubts, for she has never felt at home in just one place. Can this change in Switzerland?

A wealthy man buys a hotel that is not very profitable. To check that everything is in order, he gets himself hired as a hotel porter without revealing his identity.

On the island of Reunion, Lunet and his grandfather Dadabé set on a quest to turn a hen into a dodo bird, whose magic feathers might save the boy’s seriously ill mother.

Amine Diare Conde fled from Guinea to Europe at the age of fifteen. His voluntary work makes the 22-year-old the best-known asylum seeker in Switzerland.

A permission, an eternal return, it is in this suspended context, out of space and time, that the gathering of three young men happens, under the bright and suffocating lights of the bank district and the luxury boutiques of the city of Geneva, a symbol of a cold and radical social cleavage. Between masculinity, violence and ethic, everything seems to be made in order for the friends to deconstruct the universe, alone, at the top of the world.

The Live at Montreux series continues with a travel through time to June 22, 1969, featuring a performance from "The First Lady of Song," Ella Fitzgerald. Featuring fully restored black and white footage and remixed audio in 5.1 and DTS, this program presents a stunning performance from one of the most versatile jazz singers of all time. Joining Fitzgerald in this performance are Tommy Flanagan (piano), Frank de la Rosa (bass), and Ed Thigpen (drums).

Railway stations are like islands, suspended between space and time. In the heat of Cairo, keeping calm helps, in Zurich, air conditioning or dancing. In both places, people are passionately living out their lives at the train station, their little cosmos. Episode by episode, the film consolidates into the collective rhythm of everyday life, uncovering stories from two countries whose shared poetry develops into universal human energy.

Thomas Hirschhorn, one of the few Swiss artists of world renown, often touches on social wounds with his provocative works. In 2013, Hirschhorn built a monument for Italian philosopher and communist Antonio Gramsci in a public housing project in the Bronx. The contentious artist collaborated with neighborhood residents whose everyday life is impacted by poverty, unemployment and crime. Conflicts and misunderstandings are bound to arise as Hirschhorn’s absolute devotion to art is confronted with the resident’s lack of prospects and fatalistic outlooks. The «Gramsci Monument» becomes a summer-long experiment where diverse worlds collide: blacks and whites, the art elite and street kids, party people and poets, politicians and philosophers. A nuanced film about art, politics and passion.

This documentary show the work, the worries and the joys of a family dedicated to viticulture, the Potterat, living in Lavaux. Three generations live together, keeping the old traditions

The wild Seventies. A quest for higher consciousness, spirituality and sexual freedom. In England, young Hugh Milne hears the voice of spiritual teacher Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh on an audiotape and travels to India in search of his own self. Sheela Patel, a young Indian woman, is brought to the charismatic guru by her father. At 21, she knows: all she wants is to be with this man. In his Ashram in Poona, Bhagwan urges his disciples to meditate and practise tantric sex in order to reach a higher plane of consciousness. Hugh watches the guru's ascent as his bodyguard. Sheela becomes his secretary and the powerful boss of Bhagwan's model community born in the mountains of Oregon...

The father tends his large garden with the utmost precision. The mother irons shirts and regrets that the father never wears T-shirts. The father likes order, always knows best, and has everything under control. The mother prays and talks of her loneliness. The two are fundamentally different, have opposing views and interests, and have been married for 62 years. Closely knit yet poles apart: this is the ambivalent standpoint from which Peter Liechti turns his lens on his elderly parents and the story of their marriage. Alongside conversations that shift from slapstick to insanity and observations of daily life in his parents’ cramped, lower middle class apartment, a puppet theatre is also established as a second location. This forms the stage for scenes between mother and father to be reenacted by rabbit puppets; as a puppet, the son can also react in explosive fashion.

The two friends Solange and Marina lead lifestyles that couldn't be more different. Solange, an introverted psychology student, clings to an unhealthy relationship. Marina, an extroverted bartender, seeks happiness in quick one-night stands. Unfulfilled in their everyday lives, a spiral of emotional self-destruction develops from which the two can hardly escape...

The Saturday evening show is based on Marco Rima's current stage program, "Just for Fun." It is embellished with humorous film clips that serve as an introduction to the next stage act and tell their own story. In the approximately 120-minute TV show, the audience is presented with a fictional day in the life of Marco Rima, which is completely exaggerated and humorously exaggerated. These insights into Rima's everyday life are complemented by numbers from the best-of stage program "Just for Fun" and correspond to the daily fictional events in the comedian's life. The show begins with the clip "Fudi vo geschter." This is a Rima classic and, for most of his fans, the highlight of his stage shows. This climax leads to the finale, where Marco suddenly searches for a punchline on stage—a nightmare for any stage performer.

For Sina Andri, a dream is coming true. As a young helicopter pilot, she has been offered a job at Rega. The only downside is that she has to complete her probationary period at the base in Samedan. Sina fled from there in her youth after her first boyfriend took his own life and she was blamed for it. Sina's return brings back memories for those involved. A new tragedy is looming.

Documentary film by Remo Legnazzi on the subject of emigration using the example of a Sicilian village

Two completely different new retirees embark on an adventure across Germany on foot with a tent and sleeping bag to deal with the transition from working life to retirement. The result is a humorously told road movie that is about physical exertion and disputes between the protagonists, but also about feelings of freedom, hospitality and the longing to break away from everyday life.

"The word 'revolution' to us Frenchmen is not a vague term. We know that Revolution is a rupture, that Revolution is an Absolute. There is no such thing as a moderate revolution, there is no such thing as a planned revolution—as one speaks of a planned economy. The revolution we are announcing will overturn the entire existing order or it will not take place at all..."

With this new film, Felipe Monroy, a Colombian director living in Geneva, continues his work on the memory of his country. Back in Bogota after many years of absence, he starts revisiting his family’s past, tinged with a violence that echoes that of an entire nation. So, as the peace process then ongoing between FARC and government is perhaps about to turn the page after more than 50 years of war, the director starts his own effort at reconciliation, of which the film is both the instrument and the result. What can be done with poorly healed wounds? And what place can film take in this perilous exercise in forgiveness? It is simultaneously as son, brother, Colombian and filmmaker that Felipe Monroy tackles these questions and there lies the beauty of the film. It manages to look at the ghosts of the past straight in the eyes, adopting the contradictory sentiments that it provokes in its author and that it invites us to share.

Dušan Hanák's final film: a bitter documentary about the history of Communism in Czechoslovakia.

Near Geneva, seven girls on the verge of adulthood recall in their rooms the words and dances of TikTok that shaped their youth. Between intimate and collective memory, they drift from room to room, dancing through a final suspended night as they search for connection and identity, pushing their gestures to the edge.

Hanka visits her lonely grandfather Bobek. For her, it becomes a journey into the past; for him, a confrontation with his life. At the dinner table, they open jars of homemade preserves. As they eat the fruits of the past, Bobek tells the stories of his lost love.

Eliane Walther's puppet theater has been presenting fairy tales for children since 2008. She creates a magical and poetic world with simple means. Everything is created by hand in miniature form, from the witch's house, the protagonists and the books to the vegetable garden. During theatrical performances, Eliane Walther varies her own voice for each character. This brings the wonders and adventures of the stories to life and delights her audience.

This film by Yannick Bacher tells the passion of brothers Frédéric and François Nicole for climbing. Through the sites of Cuzzago (Italy), Zurich, Murg, Pelzli, Montreux, St-Loup, Yverdon-les-Bains, Saint-Triphon or Erde, we learn to know these 2 living legends better, their life choices, their philosophy... United by blood ties, those of fraternity but also by the same passion, that of the rock, of climbing. Fred made climbing history by pushing back the difficulty ladder in the discipline of bouldering. François him, founded a family and carried out a parallel professional career. But both have never stopped exploring, traveling and climbing.

Summer. A group of young people danced all night in a rave party. In the morning, they have to go home.

Sascha’s name wasn’t always Sascha. But now it is. Sascha doesn’t identify as a man or as a woman, but as trans non-binary. A story about what it means to live in a society that wasn’t expecting you. A glimpse into a life that allows us to question our own categories. And a film about what it means to be oneself.

Algiers, Bab el Oued, 2016. 16-year-old Habib dreams of becoming a veterinary. But as he didn't study, he decided to train a ram named 'El Bouq' to become a sheep fight champion. Samir, 42, doesn't have dreams anymore, other than surviving the hardships of his daily life by selling sheep and try to make some money. As the Eid celebration approaches, Samir has the unique opportunity to maximize his profits, as the whole country will buy a sheep to be slaughtered. But for Habib, it's another story. Will 'El Bouq » become a champion? Or will he face a more tragic destiny?

After the Nazi gold and the bank secret, the practices of commodities trading and extracting companies based in Switzerland will be the reason for the next defamation of the country. Large parts of the world trade in commodities are handled by companies based in Zug and Geneva. They are known to pay very little taxes and to defy responsibility for environmental damages caused in the extracting countries. TRADING PARADISE shows how this business works and how NGOs try to improve the transparency and liability of these commodities giants.

Large Christian crosses stand at the summits of Swiss mountains, billboards displaying Bible verses occupy public spaces in cities. The filmmakers have never been comfortable with the presence of these religious symbols. In 2009, mountain guide Patrick Bussard sawed down a cross in the Fribourg Alps – and was severely punished by the courts for doing so.

When his younger sister, a single parent, moves into the second apartment with her 5-year-old daughter Nina, an unexpected friendship develops between Josef and the uncared-for little girl.

The Baselstrasse is a street in Lucerne. People call it "Rue de Blamage" – it's a noisy street tucked into a narrow space between a hill and a train track. The people who live here don't usually mingle with the rich and famous, but even the roughest haunt can be a home to those who live and work there – and Baselstrasse's two kilometers of asphalt are no different.

In reality Emil and Larissa would never have been a couple she is an idolized singer, he is a shy outsider. Ironically, Emil is just getting to know Larissa when she dies unexpectedly. He pretends to have been her boyfriend and finally gets the recognition he has always yearned for, with the added bonus of a surrogate family in the form of Larissas. Things would be just great if Emil didnt fall in love - with Larissas sister Nora. The more he gets to know her, the harder it becomes for him to pretend.

An imaginary journey through alpine ice, distant seas, and submerged labyrinths.

Rosie is a 12-year-old girl whose ugliness makes her the laughing stock of almost all her classmates and the victim of incessant bullying. One day, she is saved from a fresh attack by a one-eyed crow. Following the bird into a strange, dark forest, she meets a witch who will grant her dearest wish.

Christian Frei's documentary traces the tragic tale of the giant Buddhas of Afghanistan's Bamiyan Valley, which stood as monumental landmarks for 1,500 years until 2001, when the Taliban declared that all non-Islamic statues in the country be destroyed. Despite international protest, the statues were blown up. Through interwoven narratives from past and present, Frei's film sheds light on the disturbing consequences of religious fanaticism.

Tina is an employee at the (fictional) TV station CH7. She actually wants to make serious films, but the station mainly assigns her to trashy productions. Frustrated by this, she starts shooting her own film with her friends Diego and Sebastian—using methods that are not entirely legal. They involve uninvolved people in the plot against their will and act in disguise. The equipment is stolen from the station.

More than 10,000 street children live in magical, bustling St. Petersburg. But here's Larissa, with her Cirque Upsala: she takes these outcasts and catapults them to unsuspected heights. From the Streets to the Stars takes us on a fascinating journey, from the depths of the Russian slums to the limelight of the circus world, via the adventures of a Swiss tour. It follows 6-year-old Danja, the rising star of the circus; Mischa, who is taking on responsibility for the first time in her life; the enigmatic street child Nastja; and the troubled Igor, whose single mother is completely overwhelmed by her 4 children.

A hermit looks at a large book in the forest and repeatedly immerses himself in the visual world of Hieronymus Bosch. After he has had a vision of the Resurrection of Christ, he takes wing to the present day. As a factory director he immerses himself in the world of machines. We experience the factory and meet his family. As he brings his daughter to the airport, a bird flies across the sky. This completes the narrative arc begun as the hermit gazes at birds in flight at the beginning of the story.

The path to Yusef Lateef was a journey into the unknown. We were aware that he is one of the great maestros of jazz and one of the last of his generation still alive. In an era of black culture that probably found its strongest form of expression in music, he was a contemporary and companion of those musicians who helped to shape and renew jazz: John Coltrane, Dizzy Gillespie, Charles Mingus, Cannonball Adderley. Now, at the age of 84, Yusef Lateef lives withdrawn in his house in the woods somewhere in New England – in a room full of musical instruments. He still plays his saxophone today, as he has done for most of his life. (Humbert & Penzel)

More than a land, it is from the lake that this son comes. Raised by a father fisherman, he learned his noises and currents, maybe also its hardness at the same time as that of adults. Lake is also a border, but in the water his drawing is lost: in the fishery, "profession of free men", Savoyards and Vaudois find themselves in confreres, and if out loud we only talk about nets and fish, in silence we sometimes enter the Resistance. During the war, Switzerland was sent to refugees, without always understanding what is happening, or why they have this look. After the war, the son will contribute to another history: elected municipal, he participates in the emergence, in Lausanne or to Thonon, of a new left. According to the novel Gens du Lac de Janine Massard, published by Bernard Campiche

Three birds struggle with life's challenges - each in their own way.

Portraits of three single fathers.

Fragment 53 is a feature-length documentary film on war considered in its necessary and universal dimension, faced both as an actual and archetypical event.

The world we have just entered resembles a futurist machine. It is a colossus of concrete and glass, with a heart deep inside, a computer heart pulsating with an endless stream of data, while hundreds of beings in its labyrinthine veins are busy or trying to keep the coursing data under control… MUBI

Rarely has a movement triggered so much controversy and yet engendered so much fascination as the Gothic scene. Dressed in black, members of this subculture converge at Gothic dance balls, listen to Death Metal and flock to festivals. Their outfit ranges from the Victorian romantic with ruffles and frills to the lacquer-and-leather-look. Provocation or a philosophy of life? Religious circles call the Gothics “graveyard vandals”; fashion designers draw inspiration from the skull-and-crossbones look. The documentary film portrays the diversity of this scene and the peaceful, respectful people who have chosen to take a closer look at death and mortality.

Join a courageous potter wasp on an enthralling journey! Witness this fascinating insect's tenacity and perseverance as it navigates its dangerous realm teeming with challenges and predators.

The son of Valais mountain farmers, Bernard Crettaz, was an imminent ethnologist and sociologist. Creator of the "cafés mortels/death cafés", Bernard Crettaz has made death his life's work. He was known as "Mr. Death".