Discoveries from Switzerland World Cinema

Temptation, in a futuristic world dominated by insects.

Marie and her husband Paul are expecting a child, but because she hasn't yet reached the third month, Paul doesn't want her to tell anyone about it. Even her mother.

Rudolf Buth, 86, leaves his 45-year-old apartment due to loneliness and moves in with Pauline Pappert and Therese Heinze, also 86, who have lived together for ten years. Initially, their different lifestyles clash, but the women win Rudolf over with empathy. Rudolf charms them, with Therese feeling the need to educate him and Pauline enjoying flirting. However, their joy is short-lived. The documentary “Ménage à trois” captures their story of finding companionship in old age.

One year after our worship leader Debora Sita went home to be with Jesus we want to look back at her impact on ICF Worship and highlight her "Legacy".

Behind closed doors, Juan lives their fantasies through Elise, with an intense and strange fascination. While Elise and Marius are flirting during a night out with friends. Juan is drawn into the introspection of a wicked game, and must regain control of their body to access their desires.

Impressions of the small village of Grimentz in the Val d'Anniviers in the canton of Wallis. The eye follows the Gougra brook past alpine farms and the village, past humans and animals, work, landscape and local architecture.

"Of Loving and Lying" is first and foremost about love. Director Annina Furrer traces our need for deep, lifelong connection in marriage and partnership and examines the widespread desire and claim for sexual fidelity. In doing so, she encounters a reality full of slips, flings and secret love affairs, in a world of dreams, longings and fantasies. How it is that practically all couples hold the concept of fidelity so dear and yet a surprisingly large number do not adhere to it? If we really want to love and grow old together, shouldn't we perhaps leave behind entrenched ways of thinking? Overcome inveterate possessiveness and strive for a new concept of fidelity? A fidelity that is not necessarily understood as sexual fidelity, but as trust, tenderness, honesty and freedom that we give each other as lovers?

An anthology of short films led by girls who find their own way in life: A chance meeting at a swimming pool sparks a change in the life and perspective of a young refugee forever, the morning after the night before has two unfamiliar girls questioning how they awoke in the same bed and a beautiful, carefree adventurer disrupts a homebody's monotonous lifestyle.

After the loss of their father, two young women, Diana and Luna must come to an agreement on the inherited property: the family home. Unable to negotiate their differences, they decide to settle their dispute over a hunting excursion.

Two former cartoon stars, Thomas and Jeremiah – a cat and a mouse – are now leading a quiet life far from the media. Their earlier sadomasochistic relationship has now been replaced by daily disputes. They allow themselves to be interviewed for the first time in many years.

When the coronavirus hit Europe in 2020, Laura and Daniel were not ready to spend 24 hours a day together in the same place. After the first days of romantic and culinary idyll, their relationship begins to suffer, with jealousy and bursts of ego undermining what seemed like a perfect love story. With complicity and empathy, Supertempo depicts an experience shared by many.

Peter Entell has been almost compulsively filming his father Max for years. Max is a cheerful man, a hug addict, who suggests to his son that he direct a film about old age called “It’s Fun to Be Old”. Getting Old Stinks is a moving filmed letter taking the form of an imaginary correspondence with the director’s absent mother, of whom all that is left are some photographs.

Over 65,000 km of hiking trails stretch through the whole of Switzerland, whether in the mountains or in the lowlands. 26 cantonal hiking trail organizations are dedicated to the topic and organize hikes for young and old. They also maintain the signposting of the hiking trails.

The portrait of a 97-year-old father with many facets: Poet, soccer player, winemaker, theater founder.

Aleister and Joana spend their days together in the skate park. Tomorrow, Joana will go away. Tonight, they want to have fun together again. But all day long Aleister has been seeing visions of an old man walking the streets with a bow and arrow. A flowing film, told in large pictures, which explores the realm between friendship and love.

Summer is ending at the public pool "Rössli" and it's hard to let go.

A cowbell makes working places swing… What connects people as different as an optician, a musician, a sheep breeder? A story from the Swiss Alps.

Long-haired activists fight each other with rubber swords in the desert and peacefully build a geodesic dome. Meanwhile, the soundtrack advertises a visit from the local recruiting officer.

A shot film about the Swedish seaman in Buenos Aires.

Nights can be long inside Naomi and Ram’s room. Tonight, they have invited Marina over and their messy space is under scrutiny. Exploring intimacy as a personal playground and the skin as an intimate map, Naomi’s docile body unravels in the tension inside a room she keeps grasping and losing. The small child within her is itching to giggle through the night, before the break of day.

Oscar, 18 years old, is passionate about horse racing. At night, he dreams of winning horses and bets on them every day with success at the popular bar in his neighbourhood. When one evening he sees a former lover of his mother's, everything falls apart. The return of this man in his life causes Oscar a real emotional shock that brings back dark memories and tragically affects his premonitions.

The diligent soldier Mr. Pete does everything to meet the high standards of his baroness. To satisfy her insatiable lust for speed he shovels madly on their trip on her new iron horse.

This one-minute short about funerals, bursting bubbles and black holes shows us how grief transcends through time and space.

A study of the shape of music.

The Quintessence considers the scientific study of outer space as a narrative, and analyses the hidden dreams and expectations of those shaping contemporary research about the universe.

Peter Wächtler's silent film "Untitled (Vampire)" is a mesmerising portrait of a solipsistic vampire and the secluded life he leads in a castle high in the mountains. In his diaristic accounts, existentialism meets the small comforts of consumption culture in the most bizarre yet plausible manners.

Senior Bernardin chases after an unknown man but is unable to complete the task at the crucial moment. He finally saves him although Berndandin had reason enough to kill him. The film was made during a workshop organized by Béla Tarr.

This warm documentary narrates the intense life of Alfonsina Storni. A polyphony of intentional voices to account for the impossible: the first person who narrates to refer to the voice of the poet; his great-granddaughter recites from the present; several testimonies of their biographies explain their behaviors, their positions, their tendencies. However, the interesting thing is that nobody can give an exact account of who Alfonsina was and how she thought.

Since 1952, the Greek cooperative KTEL has run 80% of the country’s public transport system completely independently from the state. Catherine Catella and Shu Aiello crossed the country to meet employees of a company that was shaken up by the economic crisis. From general assemblies to daily journeys, Leoforio documents the multiple conditions of a model that is organising its resistance.

They were killing nature, so she had to kill them.

This intimate and uniquely probing film portrays the relationships that develop between five pairs of driving school instructors and students in Lausanne, Switzerland. Their distinctive attempts through their obligatory interactions to teach, learn, connect, satisfy and understand reveal their individual personality and circumstances. ~ Full Frame Documentary Film Festival

The first film made in black-and-white. Made using my own printing technique. Beforehand: This film, which is basically romantic or, even more, a fairy tale film, with carriages, horses, handmade glass lanterns, as solemn as a merry wedding, with an old Rolls Royce standing at a slant completely drunk and whose magnificent big headlights sit crooked on its fenders. An atmosphere of dancing around and returning and light, lamps and life. A film that even takes its audience to Paris, past the Louvre and into the nights of the boulevards; again and again, light, lamps and life. The film is light-hearted: the sonorous tone indicates a change, difficult to under-stand, a threat or do I hear right? Again and again, the streets, the domes of the churches, the palace wings of the Louvre, the National Library and the small opening in the wall at the Palace Mazarin which leads to the small park with its Picasso statue. What happens in Paris?

A young student takes lessons with a piano teacher.

Yann, 11, with a unique personality, lives with his two parents in the south-west of France, near Bayonne. Yann has autism, his schedule is busy and well orchestrated to give him the opportunity to have as much autonomy as possible. Supervised by specialized educators, he navigates between speech therapy, occupational therapy and surfing sessions ...

The hills of Lausanne, Switzerland, have become a Mecca for roller-skaters and Ivano has become a prince among them. Ivano rises above the ordinary and often dead-end choices that most young people face today.

Henkel ad by Pinschewer.

Deaf children (led by the special needs teacher Mimi Scheiblauer) perform the nativity according to Luke.

SIREN ISLAND is a real find-stream-of-consciousness from Switzerland. Director Isa Hesse-Rabinovitch creates a moviegoer's 'Morpehus Descending,' a dream trip on stepping stones of the drugged self into an Underworld/Underground of floozy female 'chanteuses,' drag acts and the lunatic fringe of showbiz. Mostly set in New York but also slithering for surreal variation through the skull-piled catacombs in Rome, this narrative fantasia is pure association-of-ideas in film form. (...) –Harlan Kennedy, 1982 Venice Film Festival, Film Comment

Full of hope, Fahed arrived in England from Algeria back in 2001. Fifteen years later, his dreams of prosperity have evaporated and he finds himself in a midlife crisis, no longer knowing where his home is. Will Fahed, the director's cousin, return to his place of birth?

Tom visits his parents with his girlfriend to break important news. But his father has set different aims for his son, so the afternoon comes to an unexpected end.

“Tell me that story again." "Story? What story, honey?” This playful montage film focuses on the motif of the hat to take us on a short excursion through classic film history. At once, it is also the self-portrait of a cinephile and all that he keeps under his hat: a desire for love, passion, romance.

A Kafkaesque journey through a drug addict's attempts to join the Eurovision song contest.

Tamás lives in Zurich, alone— by choice. He has never wanted to get too close to people. All this changes when he meets Norika, a beautiful woman who appears in his life almost by chance. But she just as quickly disappears, leaving no trace. Before he knows it, Tamás has been implicated in Norika's disappearance by her sister Annika, who claims Tamás had made a habit of following them. Reality seems to shift based on each person's perspective, casting the nature of the crime into progressively murky territory.

A short film attributed to Jean-Luc Godard concerning the ZAD surrounding the proposed Aéroport du Grand Ouest, decrying our capitalist society.