Discoveries from Switzerland World Cinema

For nearly 50 years, reporter, writer and photographer Laurence Deonna risked her life to capture the noise and anger of our times.

A female director explores the connection between the life and work of Federico Fellini and Jungian analytical psychology. Through Fellini's The Book of Dreams and other autobiographical texts, she weaves together the fragments of a dialogue between Fellini's feminine interior voice, the Anima, and the shadow of his unconscious, documenting Fellini's inner quest through the dark parts of his psyche.

The boxes for the return into her home country are packed and stand around her bed since years. But will she ever know again, if it’s day or night, if she’s awake or asleep, if she’s breaking out or just running into a trap?

Between Jesus' childhood and the beginning of his mission, almost twenty years seem to have been lost to history. This work attempts to take a journey through the 'silent years' of Jesus, suspended between history and legend, between ancient texts written in Sanskrit, legends, and stories that recount his possible travels to the East.

"An attempt to make a portrait of my wife." (HHK)

1997. Tiger, a Serb living in Germany is best friends with an illegal Albanian refugee, Kiki. A natural hustler, Kiki sweet-talks his way into odd jobs and women's hearts. The bond between the two men appears unbreakable, but the combination of Tiger's malicious father, who despises Albanians, and Kiki's new German girlfriend conspires to draw them apart. Then fate steps in and Kiki is deported, but the final straw comes when Tiger's father threatens to send Tiger to fight in the Balkans.

Quotations from the brochure of a school for actors: “We expect the students to use the free space at school to explore the roles they play in their everyday lives, but also all that is alien to them, both the imaginable and the unimaginable.” And: “It is said that an actor’s school is a place to discover what Man is, and what he might become despite everything.” In the words of Kathrin Bohny: “I never thought of training to be an actress in that way, but I'm curious to find out how it will be.” The film: a young woman, learning to know herself, and of what she is capable. The wide path she follows, in the four years that her training as an actress lasts.

The title means "The last postillion (stage-coachman) of the St.Gotthard-pass". A company of select people joins the horse-driven coach for crossing the center of the Alps over the traditional path high on the mountain valley. It is the time of railways as the means of modernization. A tunnel is going to be built. The new fast way would render useless the small transport industry from which local people had made their living. The great mountainous landscape is the background for the conflicts which arise between rich and poor, local traditionalists and foreign modernizers. The daughter of a local, who is opposed against the tunnel, would like to get engaged with a tunnel engineer, but is also coveted by a local favored by her father.

Shot over six weeks in December 1971, and January 1972, the film consisted of interviews with Protestants, Catholics, politicians, and some soldiers, combined with TV news clips of bombings and violence. The deaths of four individuals formed the central focus of the film, which Ophüls described as ‘an old, middle-aged, humanistic, social-democratic attempt to give people an idea that life after all is not that cheap’. The BBC refused to transmit the completed film on the grounds that it was ‘too pro-Irish’ (Sunday Times, 5 Nov. 1972). (via http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/othelem/media/docs/freespeech.htm)

A constantly moving camera dives deep into Rist's mouth and pops out of her anus, only to whirl back up to her open mouth - giving you the sensation of being swallowed and expelled, swallowed and expelled, into infinity.

On Montana’s Blackfeet Reservation, a ten-year-old boy watches as screens consume his family. When the lights go out, he glimpses what he’s been missing – and makes a choice that could change everything.

A female-led research team embarks on a quest to uncover the chemical secrets that make plants bloom instantly.

A group of high school students must break into their principal's office to destroy evidence before the devastating parent-teacher conference that same evening.

During a graduation party, four teenagers are confronted with their angst. They find themselves locked up, they wonder if it might be their last night.

On an aircraft, a passenger recalls the pictures which he just completed. These images are seen by a fly. And time that passed to identify himself in comparison to the insect makes him doubt his own vision.

Part of FIFF's section "Une Histoire de Fribourg : Terre de hockey sur glace"

The film creates a portrait of this major Swiss artist through an organic, poetic presentation of themes that dominated her life and her art: transformation, creative crisis, trust in the unconscious, her creative process, dualism, nature, the playful and the role of women.

A masked killer stalks his victims, driven by the belief that you can't escape your past.

Working day of young shoeshiners in Bolivia.

Using films and clips from interviews, the film documents the history of the Israeli state, and in particular, the place of women in Israeli society. Looks at six particular women who emigrated from Tsarist Russia or Poland in the 1920s to "build the country by building themselves."

In a remote countryside in France, Hugo, a marginalised and drug addicted young man meets Sandrine, a single mother of a little girl. Quickly, they fall in love and for a while each of them has access to a form of peace and happiness. But the social and psychological tensions specific to their environment leave them little respite.

Alois Diethelm-Signer from Sattel is the last Swiss tree ladder maker. He has been producing tree ladders for orchards since 1966. He used to make up to 300 ladders a year, but today he still makes a good 40. Despite declining demand, he continues to work, supported by his wife, out of a love of the craft.

Thirty years after Srebrenica, a filmmaker who fled to Switzerland as a child embarks on an intimate journey to the roots of his identity through the story of Hasan, one of the few survivors.

Madness and anarchism in Alain Klarer's L'Air du crime are too often self-oppressed, having forgotten to live free in their minds. Elena's "terrorism" and Robert's gratuitous quest are all irrational acts perhaps, but ultimately free, a form of rebirth. Yet, some will not be able to bear this madness, chained like Stutz to a coherent structure. Thus, the film moves towards lyricism. First through Peer Raben's music, then through Hugues Ryffel's images. A play on color and light, contrasting a cold, gray, metallic frame and lighting on the rational side, and a sublime, extraordinary blue towards Lake Lucerne, on the side of night, dreams, imagination, suicide, and freedom. Even if the simple narrative sometimes takes over from the madness of the film, it remains a very rich first work, a vast fresco of symbols and ideas.

A man of the cloth falls madly in love with a prostitute, a love that plunges him into a murderous frenzy.

A satirical Swiss cabaret show by the ensemble Kabarett Götterspass, blending original sketches, songs, and witty dialogue to comically explore and lampoon typical corporate event themes—office rituals, team-building clichés, and managerial absurdities. The live performance, featuring artists like Beat Schlatter and Patrick Frey, delivers sharp humor aimed at workplace culture and the quirks of business gatherings.

The four seasons

Amid landscapes of confused memories, Doctor L, a missionary in southern Africa, recounts his journeys and adventures in the bush, intensive evangelisation efforts and surgical operations at the end of the 19th century. 150 years later, four inhabitants of the region send him a letter in the form of sound capsules, evoking a past whose traces can still be keenly felt.

The film is about a man (Arben) suffering from a traumatic event from his youth during the Kosovo war. He overcomes the past and looks toward the brighter future….

The two Zurich photographers Cortis & Sonderegger meticulously recreate iconic images from international photographic history. They then photograph these artful bricolages along with the tools and materials used to create them.

An outdoor theatrical performance for all ages that was staged on water and land at Port Barton and the park of the same name in Geneva in 2007. It is the story of two young women in the 18th century in the West Indies, one a noblewoman and the other a slave, who find themselves transported across the seas in search of a legendary treasure that could enable them to save the lives of dozens of enslaved children...

Through scootering and self-development, a young boy in quest of identity explores his relationship to his body and emotions. Made from content collected online, the film follows his character’s attempts to respond to his existential dismay.

In his film Walden (Special Jury Prize in the Documentary Film Competition, KVIFF 2018) Daniel Zimmermann captured the paradoxical migration of wood from Europe to the Brazilian rainforest in order to draw attention to the absurdity of the globalised world. The Swiss conceptualist now dedicates his Spheres to the deconstruction of the artist’s ego. In a field not far from a housing development, a man prepares to throw a long, thin pole up into the air, thus embarking on a metaphorical journey to the depths of his being. This formally distinctive film examines details of the surroundings as its camera slowly and continuously pans 360°. The viewers, on the other hand, are invited to turn their attention inwards, to glimpse beneath the socially and culturally determined exterior of the human personality

This is a passage through life. Through the writing of these two characters, through dance, through the need to bring one's body to life and express a feeling, an emotion, and to free oneself to move forward, turn a page and make a beautiful memory. While keeping the image alive, grainy and true.

The story of Yugoslav football team who participated at the 1990 World Cup in Italy.

The Spanish friends of filmmaker Adrien Bordone were born in Switzerland and were forced by their parents to ‘return’ to Galicia after finishing school. Twenty years later, the filmmaker and his friends explore the reasons for this remigration.

Baghdad, early 1990s, in a reality where humans have been replaced by cyborgs, a young couple and their newborn try to flee their country where war has just broken out.

A Swiss tale about a clumsy shepherd with his flock of sheep who live alone high up in the mountains and the mysterious turn of events on the glacier at night.

The tourist train runs along the quays around the Jet-d'eau of Geneva. A succession of historical facts appear. Two lines cross each other.

A couple of friends go camping in the woods when they accidentally discover organs and body-parts in a cornfield. Soon, they are stalked by the infamous Ghostface and killed one by one. Will they escape the woods alive?

An interview of Heidi Bucher during the making of Untitled (Herrenzimmer), conducted by her son.

“Here are some Images” is an short film exploring the interplay between internal and external images, using hand-processed 16mm footage and musings on perception and memory.

Described as a film of telepathy. Only a few fragments survive at the Museum of Modern Art.

At the age of 75, Gabriel Pitteloud is one of the few chimney masons who create handcrafted fireplaces in cut stones. For the man who, for 40 years, has been making the stones sing, the profession has distilled into a philosophy of life.

"Robert Creep. I do anything. 24 hours a day. You ask for it, I'll do it." That's the message on the answering machine. After abandoning his friend George in a critical situation, Robert follows the daughter of a rich dog food industrialist, Jane, who invades his dreams and deals in a strange form of business.

Margreet Honig, eighty-four years old, is an internationally sought-after Dutch singing teacher. She teaches all over Europe and works with world-famous singers. She has developed her very own way of working.

8mm film by Swiss artist Roman Signer.

One night, Pierre decides to go out of his house to follow a strange white light. His family does not agree with that.

"Replica" shows still images of photographs of the marble plaques used in the identical reconstruction of Mies Van der Rohe's pavilion designed for the 1929 Barcelona International Exhibition. The film is projected between two mirrors that diffract it and produce a negative architecture, in which one image covers the other. Like in the famous Rorschach test, the duplicated veins in the marble are potential images in their own right.

A man recalls his life's story while on a train.