Discoveries from Switzerland World Cinema

What is tradition? This is the question posed by yodeller and food researcher Meinrad Koch from Canton Appenzell. In search of an answer, he embarks on a journey.

Cairo, a city of more than 20 million people, has recently gone through multiple political, cultural and economic upheavals, forcing Egyptian society to reinvent itself. In Egypt, people don't live on their own and it's only after they get married that they can leave their parent's home to create their own household. Whatever their intimate feelings might be, marriage is an inevitable step towards independence.

A couple makes love in a hotel. She lives in Switzerland, he lives in Belgrad. What’s been destroyed by war will be reborn in this hotel room.

In this musical documentary we are shown a period in the cultural history of Uruguay after the dictatorship ended, told through the story of Tabaré Rivero and his rock group. There are anecdotes from people who took part in that story and archive material, and we are treated to an intimate and amusing reflection about the role of the artist in contemporary society, especially in Latin America.

In the heart of Russia, the city of Magnitogorsk is home to the Kombinat, one of the largest iron and steel factory in the country. Here, Gabriel Tejedor films the day-to-day lives of Lena, Sasha, Guenia and their families, while this new generation of young parents wonder about their living and working conditions, which seem pre-determined by the Kombinat and its State capitalism.

For more than one hundred years, the Swiss Social Democratic Party and the trade unions shaped Swiss working-class culture. In the seventies, this culture completely collapsed. The working class of yesteryear are called foreigners. An essay by an immigrant child from a former working class stronghold.

A visual epic about subliminal longings and the aesthetics of suffering. A work of atmospheric images and sounds dedicated to the retina, the eardrum and the soul. The young Inuit - the sea seems to have washed him up one day, to some place forgotten by God and time. Time, which is commonly called life, sticks to his fingers. Three steps behind him leaps the parasite of eternal suffering. The story begins in this enraptured sphere, focusing on a series of episodes in which the young man's fate takes its course: in a strange world that knows its own laws.

Laurianne is waiting for her work colleague to pick her up – and for the result of her pregnancy test. While she tries to cope with her everyday life, she starts to struggle. Not with the decision of what to do, but with this responsibility that her body brings with it. And the question of how alone she is with it.

Encounters on the Milky Way shows three cattle breeders from Mali and Burkina Faso during their trip to Switzerland where they meet with two dairy farmers from the Swiss Lake District and a cheese manufacturer in the Berne's Oberland. Back in their homeland, they tell their friends and neighbors about their experiences.

“I’ve been a robber, a thief, a thug. I blew my veins out, I drank, I drank and I fucked chicks. I never stole from the poor. I’m HIV-positive since 16 years. I’m repenting over time. I cleaned myself from my sins. I committed offenses but I never took a human life away. Not yet. Haven’t got an abortion either. These are mortal sins - and as for the others, I paid already. I’ve been the worst of bitches but in this life already I’ve seen the light. My name is Stela, I’m 42 years old and I spent 10 of them in jail. Chaos is my life.”

Liv Sandor, 38, following an argument with her boyfriend, sets off to wander the city, observing passers-by and reminiscing about her past loves. In all her relationships, there was always a turning point, when things started going downhill. On the streets of Zurich Liv faces her fears, joys and demons. In her third feature film, Swiss director Anna Luif tells the tragi-comical trajectory of an independent woman who learns to love on life’s emotional rollercoaster. A rhythmic, colourful, collage-like journey into the mind and soul of modern women.

For the past ten years, the Théâtre Equestre Zingaro has been combining travelling cultures, in which it was born and proffer so much inspiration. Marked with the heritage of its imaginary ancestors, the Zingaro Tribe has little by little turned into a wandering people with ancestral cultures. With Chimère, the "Zingaros" are travelling back in time, guided by horses towards the shores of Hindu civilization, towards the desert plains of the Thar and the origins of a nomadic people.

Noise musician Joke Lanz has a loyal fan base. And a dreadful image: his stage performances see him taking a beating, emitting deafening screams or exhausting himself till the blood flows. For the privilege, he denies himself all luxury in his personal life. How does someone end up living this way? This movie explores the life a sensitive artist haunted for decades by a trauma: when he was 12, his father shot himself on the roof of their house. Joke has been trying to come to terms with it ever since. This also affects his own role as a father, which is equally fraught with problems for him. The shock of becoming a father himself following the birth of his son became the trigger for his life’s project “Sudden Infant”, in which he has involved his son Céleste, now an adult, since his earliest childhood. This is a movie about fathers, sons, and what happens when traumatized sons become fathers. And become musicians whose art is, in some measure, a form of self-therapy.

An animated cartoon about the Creation myth reviewed and corrected by two women. God the magician has decided to create a paradise: Switzerland. He covers it with trees and cows, until Adam is born. After exploring his paradise, Adam creates Eve from one of his ribs. Man is shown as an erect penis, woman by a limbless trunk.

Loosely following the Greek myth of the Flight of Icarus, Georges Schwizgebel opens his directional career with Le vol d'lcare, a short animation of LED lights.

Gilberto Gil is among Brazil's most famous musicians, having influenced an entire generation in South America and beyond. Now in his seventies, he is serving as Brazil's first black Minister of Culture. Preoccupied with many realities of the modern world, such as racism and poverty, he embarks on a tour through the southern hemisphere— from aboriginal communities in Australia and the townships of South Africa, to the Brazilian Amazon— seeking to promote the power of cultural diversity in a globalized world.

Documentary about ReDraw, a small metal band from Switzerland.

For one evening, Aurore will have to confront the boy she once loved and admired, to confess what is on her heart and learn to respect herself.

The airport, a melting pot of various symptoms of our times. In this sanitised place, the promise of beautiful faraway destinations contrasts with the omnipresence of procedures and controls. A scene of transience and nostalgia, where globalisation meets solitude. Against a backdrop of complex machinery, the social strata interweave and the destinies of the protagonists overlap.

Ambassade questions the role of diplomatic relations and territorial representation. Through the prism of the American hostage crisis in Iran between 1979 and 1981, this film focuses on Switzerland’s role as an intermediary in resolving this international conflict. Pascal Décosterd was a young Swiss diplomat sent to Tehran in 1979. Today, recently retired, he is embarking on a journey to try to understand the events of which he was one of the actors. Flavio Meroni was number 2 of the Swiss Embassy in Iran, today he is writing a book on negotiations to free the hostages. In their company we visit places in the United States, Iran and Switzerland, we meet the protagonists and retrace the different stages of these three years that shaped a new global balance. Behind the scenes of these events, where small and great history mingle, Ambassade offers insights into the importance of the human being at the heart of major diplomatic mechanisms.

Daisy patiently waits in her parents' car when she witnesses a robbery and realises that the robber is getting in the car to take flight.

A love story between a young Serbian woman and a young Albanian man set in the Kosovo War 1998.

When filmmaker Elettra Fiumi inherited her father Fabrizio Fiumi’s archives, she discovered a man she knew nothing about. Fabrizio, along with the group of radical architects called 9999, imagined architectural innovations and anticipated a future that is still forthcoming. He was also founder of the Florence Film Festival. In coming to know her father, Fiumi unveils a visionary genius we don’t know enough about.

A young man contemplates if he should go out with his friends to drink or just stay home and remain sober.

During the usual drinking-out evening 2 friends are having a hard time remembering what their chat is about.

The debut performance of Cory Wong at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 2023.

8mm film by Swiss artist Roman Signer.

At the Geneva Exposition fairground, the Water-Toboggan, a sensational American attraction, is enjoyed by members of the Lavanchy-Clarke family and the Swiss painter Cuno Amiet, but no one is aware of them since they look just like everyone else.

Some people think of Switzerland as a heaven on earth, but what do the Swiss themselves imagine life after death will be like? To answer this question, documentary filmmaker Stéphane Goël spoke with large numbers of his compatriots – all of them in the twilight of their life – about how they picture the hereafter. The result is a series of remarkable, poignant and funny conversations in which the interviewees open up about their dreams, passions and fears.

Once upon a time O is haunted by a reoccurring nightmare and goes for a walk in the woods. O knows about the eerie tales of this particular forest but could not be bothered. O meets a monster called Love. As the weather changes and and a storm arises O falls for a motoprince. The Morning after, O wakes up and vomits a dead butterfly.

The location is the same as Laveuses, and the vue is an example of a home movie, with people playing or fooling around, fully aware of the camera. When you have a Cinématographe Lumière, why only use the Kodak Panoram? The child’s pushcart bears the name Helvetia, the naturalized Swiss version of the Sunlight brand, whose factory was launched in Olten in October 1898.

A lonely character in a deserted world watches as it goes up silently in flames.

As in his earlier films, Alvaro Bizzarri tells the story of a seasonal worker in "Touchol" and describes his torn life: here his place of work, there his home and family. Sensitively captured images show a young foreigner at work on a motorway construction site, at his place of residence in a noisy, cramped shanty town, and in his difficult search for new accommodation.

Also known as Around the World with Nothing On, this cheerful Swiss-made travelogue once again demonstrates that despite running around naked all goddamn day, nudists are not sexual perverts but, instead, decent folks who just love wallowing in nature. In fact, the only thing a nudist really has a jones for is Lust for the Sun!

Moleman 3 is a documentary diary about a journey from the underground to the cultural surface. Music styles and artists ignored by record labels and the mainstream media didn't have much chance of getting wide recognition back in the day. The digital revolution changed everything. The internet and digital technology, accessible to everyone, reshaped the music industry completely. The significance of record labels which controlled mainstream music has changed and decayed. For genres building themselves up from the bottom, success was once unimaginable without a record label and money. As of today, thanks to the digital revolution, it can easily be done.

A young couple is overjoyed as they await their first child. After a routine examination, a possible disability is diagnosed.

Four dozen of our contemporaries - and ten simple questions. And each of the forty is so different from the other that it is impossible to make a general portrait of our time from the mosaic of their answers! So what brings us together, what makes us a society and a people? Are we ready to accept others as they are?

Is a classic but biting description of the city Lausanne seen from the inside in its imagination and its history by a native.

Five New York divas close up. The thing that in addition to their friendship links these gifted, confident and beautiful women; a painter, an actress and three musicians, is their shared homeland, former Yugoslavia.

Set during one feverish night at the Zurich Festival in 2010. The final of the Football World Cup is approaching. Mary wants to see the game, but her boyfriend Johnny is not in the mood. He has just lost his job and is badly depressed. They start to fight and their ways part. On their journey through the night they come across shady characters and turbulent events, tragically, they miss each other again and again. An adaptation of "Casimir and Caroline" by Odon von Horvath.

Concert du 25 octobre 2013 à Bâle en Suisse. Avo Session

African immigrants from Switzerland meet secretly to share experiences.

Wally's life is increasingly turned upside down by her mother's alcohol addiction. Helplessness, excessive demands and desperation shape her childhood - a daily struggle for survival.

Shortly before the end of the summer holidays, a country boy spends his savings on his dream of a city hairstyle – with surprising results. A story about bidding farewell to childhood and the poetic end of a summer.

Three short stories explore how the second generation of the Indian diaspora navigate their lives between two worlds; a generation that does not just need to survive, but desires to truly live. Conflict ensues among and between generations on topics of self-expression, generational tax and equality as the less favoured do not compromise and the arguments escalate as egos clash in families.

A woman is killed in an apartment in the middle of the night.

What becomes history, what feeds memory, what shapes an era? Images found in the dustbins of history. Taken out of context, fragments, testimonies and unpublished documents intermingle, interweave and collide. They take on a new meaning, a dimension of authentic proximity. The peregrination touches on the advent of the atomic bomb, the military trials at the end of the war, the lie detector, the discovery of the Majdanek camp; Einstein, Lenin's embalmer, the KGB agent, the American spy rebuilding his life in Russia, the Yugoslav war sniper all have their say.

Gnaoua music and tradition was a source of inspiration to various musicians such as Jimi Hendrix, Carlos Santana or Led Zeppelin as well as to the writers of the beat generation and to Jazz icons like Archie Shepp, Randy Weston or Peter Brötzmann. For the first time a real traditional night long Gnaoua Sufi Ritual (Lila) was allowed to be captured on video.

On the 3rd of April 2014 flash floods hit Honiara, capital of the Solomon Islands. My 30 minutes long documentary looks at the aftermath of the flood and shows what happens in a poor South Pacific nation when 10'000 people, most of them illegal settlers, are left homeless and conflicts arise.

In a Greek museum, a visitor gets lost in the ancient story of Ariadne through a painting on a plate. She takes Ariadne's place and confronts the Minotaur in his labyrinth.

Exposes the dichotomy between Exxon's elaborate publicity of its clean up operation and the actual effectiveness, giving voice to the people most affected by a tragedy, and the community that lives with the effects of the spill.

Just as Lolo, a gay Italian-Secondo, is getting ready to spend a romantic evening with his lover, his Italian Nonna makes an unexpected appearance.

Ten years ago, activists wanting to experience a collective way of life besieged a wooded countryside near Nantes in order to block the construction of a new airport.

In his classroom a philosophy teacher opens the discussion on the place of religion in society. Out of his course he faces the realities of the street.

Wanner, a man of independent means, has a mistress in Geneva. However, in order to spend a few days with her without risk, he decides to open a sales branch of a long-defunct company. He therefore hires a "trusted" employee in Geneva to look after the office premises, including the bedroom, and to provide his mistress with everything she needs. This arrangement works quite well at first, and Wanner enjoys this sweet diversion to the fullest until... well, until his wife wants to visit the branch and, above all, meet his business partner. Where can he conjure up a partner so quickly?

In south-eastern Spain, there is a wall separating two worlds: a healthy world, and a sick world, once deemed contagious. The sanatorium of Les Fontilles used to be a sanctuary for people suffering from leprosy. Callisto Mc Nulty criss-crosses this border seeking out witnesses from the past and present, who through their stories become the keepers of a disappearing world.