Discoveries from Switzerland World Cinema

Two wannabe gangsters can't decide on the coolest thing to say before shooting Michel.

The mythical figure of Srikandi, a female figure from the Indian Mahabharata epic that changes gender to live and fight as an equal among men, is the inspiration and role model for this anthology of stories on the state of alternate sexualities in Indonesia, the country with the largest Muslim population in the world. The result is eight highly personal and profound perspectives on lesbian, bisexual and trans-identity life in Islamic Indonesia.

Fluids of the human body.

Invited by the then 74-year-old James Danaqyumptewa, two Swiss artists come to witness and document the non-violent resistance of the Hopi in Arizona, combining sketches, photography and animation. At once a message in a bottle and a cry for help.

Two younger musicians are wondering where there pop star careers went after becoming fathers. So they decide to meet older musicians from the Swiss scene, from Hardy Hepp to Barry Window, from Düde Dürst to Valerie Claus, from Christine Lauterburg to Bruno Spoerri, incorporating musicians from other and earlier scenes.

Vladimir and Olga raise ducks on a small isolated farm in the countryside. They hope for a child, but this expectation soon turns into a nightmare.

8mm film by Swiss artist Roman Signer.

A machine starts up amidst a deafening roar. What could it possibly have to do with Valentine's Day, celebrating love and lovers?

A film wants to be science fiction. By searching the unfathomable universe, the film twists our understanding of the terrestrial world completely. Parallel worlds open up in grotesque ways, and doppelgangers try to hold the world(s) together.

In northern India, an ancient, holy peepul tree is being cut down by seven loggers using handsaws and axes.

The portrait of eight young protagonists that have to deal with everyday female issues and those still to come. Eight different personalities confront each other and learn many lessons from their encounters. What keeps them united is the shadow of the night, intimate and mysterious, and the magical and invisible bond which unites all women.

An unsure American girl finds love in Paris, in spite of being repulsed by an assault as a child, and is able to overcome it.

Linus, a convinced monogamist, and Christa, an equally convinced polygamist, are a couple with a passionate, conflict-ridden relationship. They are torn by big feelings that are often provoked by themselves and keep their lives on the go in ever surprising ways. Their most important caregivers are: Sybil and Franz, who have always believed in the romantic ideal of love, André, the tolerant old 68-year-old from the Jura, Ka, who loves to play with fire, and Ewa, Linus' (ex-)wife from Vienna, as well as their son Sebastian.

A portrait of the British artists, two living sculptures, filmed in Paris on the occasion of their exhibition at the Sonnabend Gallery.

In the Jura region, permission is granted to kill a pack of wolves. The gamekeepers set out to fulfill their mission, but shepherd Fabrice chooses a different path. He wants to protect his sheep without weapons and save the last wolf.

{Anne-Marie, rhythmician, art-therapist and organist, is an amazing musician. At the moment where I realized an interview was needed for my ECAL entrance contest, my mind directly thought of her. With years of experience, she tels us about all the memories she has and explains to us the beauty of this endangered profession.}

Thanks to the friendship of a seagull and the love of a mother Olga, Oliver, a young person with Down syndrome, transform his difference and his extra chromosome into a real "More" in order to make her dreams come true. "Say gull-angel, when will Olive have the wings to fly?"

A young poet meets the same woman on a park bench every morning at 10am.

When a girl's mother falls ill, she must use her imagination to cope with her grief.

Above the home of the director's grandparents in Italy there’s an apartment that has been started to be built. (If there was a window right here, you would be able to see the sea). What would have happened if the director had grown up there instead of in Switzerland? The director deals with their own South Italian roots, being queer, longings and losses.

Wolf and Noah, brother and sister, meet every Sunday and pickpocket. After robbing a passerby in a shopping center, they meet Monica, a woman in her sixties who invites them to her home. An unexpected bond is created between the three.

This autobiographical film, standing on the borderline between reality and fiction, explores diverse forms of faith and spirituality. Director Irene Dorigotti guides the film dressed in a Boy Scout uniform – a reminder of her family heritage – as she travels through her native Italy and remote areas, meeting spiritual leaders and ordinary people. For her, these encounters mark decisive moments in her spiritual journey and in her discovery of the role that religion can play in the life of contemporary man. Poetic images of landscapes, dreamlike passages and fragments of personal history, together with poignant music, create a powerful statement about the nature of humanity.

Shanghai, 2016. Four Chinese college graduates are brought together through an art project: Xi Roulan, an artist who invites strangers to her home. Qian Kecheng, a freelance illustrator who thrives on the freedom the megacity has to offer. Jiang Bo, a graphic designer, looking for steady employment. Cheng Minxian, a young woman working at one of the city’s most renown event agencies, while living with her parents.While eager for life experience they yearn to lift their careers off the ground. Unified by their passion for life and self-determination, they long for an escape from anonymity.

8mm film by Swiss artist Roman Signer.

Restaurant, sun and acrobatics to enjoy sunny holidays.

With his vivid oil paintings, Albert Anker captured Swiss folk life like no other. Together with musician Endo Anaconda we discover the "Anker-House", Anker's old studio.

Amadou, a 16 year old from Guinea, has just arrived in Switzerland. Far from his friends and family, he must adapt to his new life and go back to school in an integration class. Louise Carrin paints the portrait of a young man who must reconcile his migration journey with the torments of adolescence, its joys and heartbreaks.

Concert filmed at the Event Halle at Messe Basel on November 3, 2017 during the Baloise Session Festival.

Pulcinella is poor and tormented by his wife. But one day a magical fish bites his line and promises to satisfy his every desire if he lets him live. From that moment all the couple's dreams come true. Until due to too much greed...

The NAGRA (Swiss National Association for the Storage of Radioactive Waste) plans to build a permanent waste disposal site in Wellenberg, Canton of Nidwalden. A regional citizens’ action group is formed to protest against it.

It's a movie, a documentary, an exploration of the European summits, a road trip guided by seven snowboarders and many friends rediscovering the pleasure of snowboarding... and sharing a unique thermos.

A few leagues from Seldwyla, in the Zurich countryside, two children, Sali Mantz and Vreneli Marti, form an inseparable pair of playmates. Unfortunately, their farming parents, who have always been friends, are at odds with each other over the purchase of an adjoining field.Sali and Vreneli don't see each other again until much later and fall in love, but their parents still hate each other fiercely. Despite everything, the young couple will try to live their forbidden love.

A little bird leaves its nest in pursuit of a leaf — but when a famished fox follows, the bird learns that sometimes you need to think on the fly!

In 2023, filmmaker Taro Spirig traveled through China. He filmed himself and the people he encountered, hoping to capture something of their existence. A year later, Spirig saw footage of his late grandfather that his mother had shot. When he saw the love and grief in every frame, the director realized that this was what really mattered. The traces his grandfather left behind can be found in his mother's films.

A short documentary that explores the challenges of being a female in the Metalcore and Hardcore scene. This scene portrait features three personal voices: a singer who shapes the audience from the stage, a merch designer who infuses her trans and queer identity into the scene and bands, and a guitarist who has found her place in the scene as a safe space to release her energy. The film spans four countries and showcases eleven voices in total, including attendees, musicians, and artists.

Daughters, sons, mothers and fathers want to break the decades-long silence in their families. They search for files, go to archives, rummage through documents and study photo albums. They come up against powerful authorities, prejudices, overburdened families and desperate struggles of mothers for their children.

Ninety-eight years after the painter Walter Spies visited the island of Bali for the first time, his spirit returns to the island. But with Spies came tourism and modernity to the island. The film tells a cinematically undiscovered story about Bali, its rise to become the Eldorado of global tourism and the desperate efforts of its people to preserve their cultural identity in the furore of globalisation.

Victor, a young man in deep distress, meets Kim, a mysterious character, at a crucial moment in his life. Together, they begin an unexpected journey.

A grieving king seeks a new wife as beautiful as his late queen. Hunters present three candidates, but the chosen princess demands impossible gowns (sun, moon, stars) and a coat of many furs. She flees in the fur cloak, works in the palace kitchen under the name Allerleirauh, and secretly attends royal festivities in her enchanted dresses, leaving behind a ring and spindle as clues. The king uses these tokens to trace her identity, removes her disguise, and they marry.

Bolivia in the 50's : on the Island of the Sun, in the midst of Lake Titicaca, Alberto Perrin films the indigenous community recently emancipated through the agrarian reform and the 1952 revolution. 2010: Carmen Perrin, his daughter, returns to the inhabitants the films shot by her father. No nostalgia, because the ancestral rites and the spirit of liberty continues to enliven the community, despite the pressure of tourism. A memory is emerging, gestures are invented, ties are woven in the landscape sanctuary.

A journey through the times and spaces of the Hotel Jugoslavija.

Two brothers survive in a caravan lost beside a deserted road. One of them is an offbeat altruist, the other a disabled, mute, and talented sparrow. In this natural and gloomy setting, where everything blends together, something unexpected will alter the order...

Out of paranoid fear of a nuclear disaster, an elderly couple isolates themselves from the outside world in their small suburban villa. An apocalyptic retreat told with a touch of humor that occasionally makes you shudder and smile at the same time. Will the couple find a way out of their isolation again? A chef who described the quarantine situation as early as 1970.

Konrad Zuse. Filmporträt des Computerpioniers und seiner Maschinen

In a world where we often experience places on screens before we actually visit them, the film questions the fine line between perception and reality.

A Chinese researcher and her documentary crew enter a small Swiss village to investigate the local Carnival tradition and its possible link to extraterrestrials. As an outsider in this closed community, she encounters things she didn't expect, and the line between reality and daydream starts to blur…

The story of how the Collector project was born and how the world collapsed

Happy, Laura carries her crafted robot home and dreams during homework that it comes to life. An inquiry with ChatGPT sets things in motion, and K.I. solves the world's problems in its own way.

“Brother Klaus” takes an approach to St. Niklaus von Flüe (1417-1487) on various levels. From the sparse evidence and quotations from his surviving mystical texts, especially the tower and well vision, a portrait emerges of a multi-faceted personality of historical relevance, who developed from a farmer and politician into a deeply religious mystic. This is a film about a visionary who went his own way, but who has been labeled by posterity as a defensive father of the country (“spiritual national defence”) or a pacifist (peace movement), but who has also often been kitsched into a devotional figure. The film director does not deny his point of view, but lets the images speak for themselves and the viewers draw their own conclusions.

Embark on a cinematic adventure through the frozen expanse of the Arctic as the fascinating story of muskoxen is unveiled. Filmed over the span of three years, the documentary explores the strength and beauty of muskoxen and the extraordinary resilience of these mighty creatures.