Discoveries from Switzerland World Cinema

Marat works as a personal driver in Almaty, capital of Kazakhstan. When he hits a Mercedes, the nightmare begins. The loan he accepts to pay for the damages puts him at the mercy of a Mafia boss.

A librarian, a gangster's ex-lover and a woman who has recovered from a coma spend an eye-opening summer in Paris.

During World War II, Switzerland severely limited refugees: "Our boat is full." A train from Germany halts briefly in an isolated corner of Switzerland. Six people jump off seeking asylum: four Jews, a French child, and a German soldier. They seek temporary refuge with a couple who run a village inn. They pose as a family: the deserter as husband, Judith as his wife, an old man from Vienna as her father, his granddaughter and the French lad, whom they beg to keep silent, as their children. Judith's teenage brother poses as a soldier. The fabrication unravels through chance and the local constable's exact investigation. Whom will the Swiss allow to stay? Who gets deported?

A drama set at a Swiss ski resort and centered on a boy who supports his sister by stealing from wealthy guests.

Maria, a Mexican migrant, is pregnant. Her husband Giorgio is sterile. She conceals the pregnancy from him out of fear he might suspect infidelity. Caught between doubt and longing, both seek tenderness elsewhere. Fascinated by the unknown, their feelings drive them into the depths of love. There, where only trust can prevent them from losing one another.

A native of Sennwald, Anna Göldi arrived in Glarus in 1765. For seventeen years, she worked as a maidservant for Johann Jakob Tschudi, a physician. Tschudi reported her for having put needles in the bread and milk of one of his daughters, apparently through supernatural means. Göldi at first escaped arrest, but the authorities of the Canton of Glarus advertised a reward for her capture in the Zürcher Zeitung on February 9, 1782. Göldi was arrested and under torture, admitted to entering in a pact with the Devil, who had appeared to her as a black dog. She withdrew her confession after the torture ended, but was sentenced on June 18, 1782 to execution by decapitation. The charges were officially of "poisoning" rather than witchcraft, even though the law at the time did not impose the death penalty for non-lethal poisoning.

After his father is murdered by the Nazis in 1938, a young Viennese Jew named Ferry Tobler flees to Prague, where he joins forces with another expatriate and a sympathetic Czech relief worker. Together with other Jewish refugees, the three make their way to Paris, and, after spending time in a French prison camp, eventually escape to Marseille, from where they hope to sail to a safe port.

This odd film is a major representative of an even odder film genre: direct-to-celluloid opera. It was commissioned by the Portuguese master of style, director Manoel de Oliveira from composer João Paes. Musically, it ranges from 19th-century romanticism to popular, modernist and even "post-modernist" styles. In the initially tame story, a host-narrator tells the story of a wedding between the two lovebirds: Viscount d'Aveleda and the beautiful Marguerite. However, what happens in the bridal chamber is incredibly bizarre. The events after that are even stranger, and the wedding guests and family indulge in cannibalism, among other perversions.

Frank, a man of action who worked his way up all by himself, dedicates his life to work. No matter the place or the circumstances, be it day or night, he’s on the phone, handling the cargo ships he charters for major companies. But when he has to deal with a crisis situation, Frank makes a brutal decision and gets fired. Profoundly shaken, betrayed by a system to which he gave his all, he has to progressively question himself to save the one connection that still matters to him: the bond he’s managed to maintain with his youngest daughter, Mathilde.

In a Swiss church, Antonio Carrera is getting married to the pretty daughter of an Italian Mafioso, when army police officers march in and take him to the 15 week compulsory Swiss military training.

When Singapore was founded in 1965, its leader Lee Kuan Yew famously said that it will “not only become a Metropolis, but it will last a thousand years, and it is people who calculate, and think in those terms, who deserve to survive.” Half a century on, as breakdown engulfs many of the world’s cities, Singapore carries on glamorously. But at what cost?

Matt, a smart student, has to prove his innocence after being forced to take part in a bold heist at a famous London auction house. The consequences take him on a journey across London to escape the twisted web he finds himself caught in, discover the truth and gain his retribution. How will the audience decide to act when everything is turning against him?

Crossed portraits of three women each living in the aftermath of the events of May 1968.

In 17th century Europe, an era of scientific discoveries and distant colonisation, two French soldiers and young Spanish nobleman Alejandro are tasked with delivering the portrait of the Infanta of Spain to the young king of France, Louis XIV, in order to seal a fragile alliance between the two crowns. The journey to Versailles is long and arduous and the path back to civilisation and the emerging modern world remains uncertain.

The story of Francois Roussel, a young playwright, who can't choose between three women.

A classical musician demands that his beautiful daughter and his young son follow in his footsteps despite their personal wishes.

It's 1922. A weather observer and his wife live in a remote cabin high in the Swiss Alps. As this drama begins, they are being joined by a third person, an Austrian who coveted the job the Swiss man had won in this bleak location. Not only that, but he also has his eyes on the Swiss man's lovely wife. The Austrian has charm, so he wins some hospitality from the couple. The three live together for a little while, but the rivalry between the two men soon erupts with tragic consequences.

An American filmmaker travels to modern day Berlin to make a film based on a real-life incident from 1942 in which 13 Jewish prisoners from a concentration camp were promised freedom if they appeared in a German propaganda film. Unfortunately, the Germans lied. The psychological process undergone by the modern filmmaker while shooting the story provides the basis of this arty and challenging film.

A criminal gradually integrates himself into a broken household by methodically asserting control over a teenage girl and her lonely mother.

The full story of the 1972 Munich Olympics Massacre and the Israeli revenge operation 'Wrath of God.' The 1972 Munich Olympics were interrupted by Palestinian terrorists taking Israeli athletes hostage. Besides footage taken at the time, we see interviews with the surviving terrorist, Jamal Al Gashey, and various officials detailing exactly how the police, lacking an anti-terrorist squad and turning down help from the Israelis, botched the operation.

On an impulse, 60 year old Charlotte leaves her husband stranded at a gas station in the middle of nowhere. A deep and driven instinct has her setting off, away from her old mundane life as a grandmother, a mother, a wife, and towards a new and different life. Little does she know that her granddaughter, Jo, a wonderfully whimsical child, is hiding in the back of the car. Charlotte’s spontaneous escape triggers off a journey, not only for her and her granddaughter, but also for her husband Paul and daughter Alex. As Paul and Alex pursue Charlotte and Jo across the countryside, they stumble into their own mishaps, self discoveries and emotional confrontations.

Ambulance-chasing lawyers takes on the case of a convicted murderer who, just being released after doing 27 years in jail, claims he was innocent.

Evocation of the life of Bernadette Soubirous, the eldest of four children, who, at the age of fifteen, experiences a religious vision at the Massabielle grotto near Lourdes.

A nameless man receives phone calls intended for someone else and ends up pretending to be that person, while a female character rebels against her author.

Up until the middle of the 19Th century, poverty stricken mountain farmers from the Ticino area of Switzerland frequently sold their children to Milan as chimney sweeps or spazzacamini. That is also young Giorgios fate. He is forced to climb through pitch black chimneys, flinging down the soot with his bare hands. But he does not lose heart. Together with his buddies sharing in the same misery, he establishes the association of Black Brothers. They stick together, struggling against their penury and getting involved in fights with the street gangs of Milan. The film tells of the gripping adventures of the chimney sweep boys and their spectacular escape back to their native land.

After eighteen years of marriage, Alice finds herself confronted with the fact that her husband Frank feels more and more attracted to men. Not only Frank, but also she and their three children undergo an irreversible change.

A serious crisis has shaken Spain since the referendum on self-determination and the proclamation of the independence of Catalonia by the government of Carles Puigdemont, bold actions firmly fought by the Spanish government by applying the constitutional article that allows it to place a region under guardianship. While Spain is on the verge of implosion, Europe is holding its breath.

On November 20, 1979 at 5:30 in the morning, hundreds of armed men take over the Grand Mosque of Mecca, transforming the holiest shrine of Islam into a fortress and a trap for almost 100,000 pilgrims inside. This was the beginning of the siege of Mecca…

Glacier pilot Hermann Geiger flies over a four-thousand-meter peak in the Valais Alps and observes a glacier collapse. The next day, three rope teams climb through this glacier to Dent Blanche. However, Dr. Gruber, accompanied by his wife, a young engineer named Gisler with his girlfriend Monica, two young men named Charly and Roby, mountain guide Perren, and the athletic Englishman Puckle get caught in a storm. Due to the weather conditions, Gruber slips and drags the other participants down with him. His wife, who had stayed behind in a hut, alerts the mountain rescue service. The storm initially prevents glacier pilot Geiger from taking action, but he then risks a breakneck landing to rescue the group.

A young teacher in Zurich in the 1950s falls in love with a transvestite star but is torn between his bourgeois existence and his commitment to homosexuality. He joins a gay organization that is eventually seen as the pioneer of gay emancipation in Europe.

Lisa is moving. Upheaval all around: Her mother flirts with a handyman. An eccentric woman seems to be preparing for a glamorous event, a family next door returns from vacation, and a girl documents the adventurous day. As boxes are transported, walls painted white, and furniture is assembled, underlying problems in need of fixing are revealed, a to-do list expands, and desires and needs flair up.

A Carthusian monk, dedicated to silence and meditation for the last 25 years, must travel from France to Jakarta to get a signature that will renew the property lease for his monastery. Terrified of his experience on the airplane, he gets off at its first stop, New Delhi, plunging into the strange world outside his monastery walls.

The insurance salesman Vincent Baumann, a cold-blooded careerist and minion of a merciless system, becomes a victim of the very corporations he is representing. Degraded to a henchman he grimly struggles to get back on the job market. He fights to climb the social ladder. In the process he realizes that there are other values than income and success. He decides against his previous ideology and for another human being, for Lisa Sokulowa. They don’t have a future. But they celebrate a small triumph against the dominance of the ruling system.

This complex allegorical tale tells the story of man’s quest for spiritual meaning. When God enters the body of 1980s filmmaker Simon Donnadieu, his wife Rachel realizes that something has gone awry, but chooses to remain faithful to her erratically-behaving husband.

A young physician becomes lonely when his workaholic wife ignores him to concentrate on her professional career. He is befriended by an older female artist who is fond of hallucinogenic mushrooms. When his wife is late for their anniversary celebration, he drinks and takes mushrooms with the artist. He wakes up to find she has died and is fearful he may have accidentally killed her.

At the far end of the Alaskan peninsula, for filmmaker Roman Droux a childhood dream comes true. He discovers together with the bear researcher David Bittner the universe of wild grizzlies. The two adventurists face bears at smelling-distance, experience the struggle for survival of a bear family and witness dramatic fighting scenes. Driven by a desire to explore the unknown the film tells a personal story of wilderness, framed in breathtaking pictures of unique creatures.

Maryam accidentally killed her husband Nasser and is sentenced to death. The only person who can save her is Mona, Nasser's daughter. All Mona has to do is appear on a TV show and forgive Maryam. But forgiveness proves difficult when they are forced to relive the past.

A 13 years old girl is forced to go living with another family for reasons unknown.

Jack and Julie live in a bare Parisian flat. By day, they make love; by night, Jack is a taxi driver while Julie wanders the city. One day, Julie meets Joseph, the daytime cabbie, and soon Julie spends her nights with Joseph and her days with Jack.

Ana, her mother and grandmother live in a small town in southeastern Spain where all three are regarded with suspicion.

The title of this twenty-minute video by Jean-Luc Godard and Anne-Marie Miéville, “Freedom and Fatherland,” is the official slogan of the Canton de Vaud, in Switzerland, where the filmmakers live and grew up. To fulfill their commission from a Swiss cultural festival, they adapted a great Swiss novel, “Aimé Pache, Painter from the Vaud,” by Charles Ferdinand Ramuz, from 1911 (about a local artist who goes to Paris for his education and then returns home) and extruded its autobiographical analogies to Godard’s own life and work. Using a choice set of clips from Godard’s films to coincide with events from the painter’s life, verbal references to modern times and to Godard’s own—Sartre, the late nineteen-sixties, the cinema—and images of the Swiss terrain, which plays a decisive role in the work of Pache, Godard, and Miéville (an important filmmaker in her own right), they produce the effect of mirrors within mirrors.

Thierry, an ethnologist specializing in the Sami people, travels to his native Switzerland with his partner, Sophie, to attend his grandmother's funeral. There he reunites with his family and discovers that he has inherited two million Swiss francs, but that in order to obtain it, he will have to pretend to adapt to the Swiss values and lifestyle that he had rejected. To do so, he agrees to undergo a sort of crash course provided by his Swiss cousin Aloïs, who seems to have his eye on Sophie.

Filmmaker Marcel Wyss explores the potential of psychoactive substances in mental health treatment, blending documentary and animation to navigate personal demons, scientific breakthroughs, and the shifting landscape of therapy.

Six Palestinian stand-up comedians write and tour a comedy show exploring the unlikely, often dark humour that surrounds the complexity of Palestinian identity. What starts as a blending of comic traditions to encourage honest and open reflections through the shared enjoyment of laughter becomes an existential imperative to survival and sharing common humanity.

All Friedrich wanted was to propose to Heidi, his supervisor, on a business trip. But while rehearsing on an airplane toilet, he and his ring drop out into the sky over the alps. Only to land in a very strange fairytale world. Come to find out, Middle Earth is right in the heart of Switzerland! To make matters worse, the quirky inhabitants mistake Friedrich for Frido the Tellyhobbie. Before he can say Tolkien, he‘s on a mission to save the world from an evil wizard who wants to dip the whole planet in one huge sizzling Swiss cheese fondue. A mission so crazy… it just might wake the hero in him. A spoof of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy set in Switzerland.

Michael, a young medium, falls in love with Alice, who is shaken by the recent death of her life companion. The two are forced to confront their "ghosts" in order to get their lives back on track.

A weekend alone at home with the children - and already breaks out of the mess with Papa minor. For while Moll pushes overtime in the chocolate factory, between his children and the offspring of his boss a merciless battle breaks out: for cotton candy, homework - and the most famous circus dog in the world.

Before his journey into exile Jacobo Arbenz, the overthrown President of Guatemala, is presented to photographers stripped down to his underwear: an image seen around the world. Arbenz had led the successful 1944 revolt against the military dictatorship, a regime that had oppressed Guatemala since colonialism. Arbenz, the son of Swiss immigrants, was celebrated as a national hero. Elected President in 1950, Arbenz was not a member of any party - he didn't issue any manifestos. But he began to fulfill his promises - farmers got their own land. 'The first act of justice since colonial times,' said Arbenz. In the early 1950s, with the Cold War intensifying, then Vice President Richard Nixon said, 'Arbenz is not a Guatemalan President.' Nixon called him 'a foreigner, manipulated by foreign powers.' The young President of Guatemala was soon overthrown, declared a traitor, and chased out of the country.

Over a 50-year career and more than a hundred movies, filmmaker John Ford (1894-1973) forged the legend of the Far West. By giving a face to the underprivileged, from humble cowboys to persecuted minorities, he revealed like no one else the great social divisions that existed and still exist in the United States. More than four decades after his death, what remains of his legacy and humanistic values in the memory of those who love his work?

Two happy families, a quiet beach and a house in the hills above the Adriatic Sea. It could be so perfect. But when teenager Finn has a breakdown it brings turmoil not only to the friendship between the families but also to the relationship between his parents Helena and Adam. Eight days in August that change everything.

Unable to meet all the demands of his job and family anymore, Mathieu feels he's in a mid-life crisis and hurriedly leaves for the forest. His relatives are left by themselves, faced with his sudden departure and their choices.

By drawing a parallel between the Indian Durga Puja festival and other forms of celebrating the divine feminine, Santa Shakti reveals the Sacred Power beyond languages and religions.

Davud returns from war to find everyone in his village has succumbed to a strange illness and has decomposed. His sister, the only survivor, is slowly rotting away herself. Davud is troubled by his memories as a soldier, as he confronts the only true question: is surviving the same as living?

The 1000 days of George W. Bush's presidency from the 9/11 attacks to the iraqi quagmire.

Set in 1961, during the height of the US-Soviet space race, an ambitious USAF test pilot is recruited by NASA for a daring suborbital mission in an X-15 hypersonic rocket-powered aircraft with astronomical implications.

Simon, a prison guard at St. Mau, loses the trust of his inmates after a tragic accident during a routine chase. Years later, haunted by his damaged reputation, he falls into self-destructive habits in a desperate bid to reclaim his lost esteem. Unexpectedly, he reunites with Lena in a dangerous, abandoned site, forcing him to confront his past mistakes.

Diane Kramer is led by one obsession: to find the driver of the mocha color Mercedes which hit her son and devastated her life. With a few belongings, some money and a gun, she goes to Evian, where she's learned the driver lives.

A young man does everything he can to get his old Opel Astra through the vehicle inspection - but what begins as a nostalgic cleanup turns into a farewell road trip to the scrapyard, accompanied by an unexpectedly compassionate inspector.

A love triangle of jealousy in the Parisian art scene of the 1930s is brought to life in a stylish docufiction about iconic artist and architect Eileen Gray, who built her modernist dream house on the Riviera, only to be upstaged by Le Corbusier.

Anna has just buried her beloved aunt as California waits once more for the big quake to hit. Unsure of where she is going, she climbs into her old convertible for a trip through the desert. Along the way she meets a series of bizarre characters, including two dancing glitter girls, a crazy jogger and a heartbreaking crooner. Anna's friends and family also appear repeatedly to her in her car for imaginary conversations. The levels of time and perception, of the past and present, begin to merge and the trip increasingly becomes a journey into Anna's consciousness.