Discoveries from Switzerland World Cinema

A Korean restaurant in Switzerland. The restaurant owner is sick and the chef in the kitchen is serving a single customer. A Korean chef who doesn't speak German. Misunderstandings arise due to lack of language.

An inexperienced team of agents has to get a hold of the infinite energy source within 48 hours. If not, their identities will be revealed. Time is of the essence – but they lack the know-how.

A story about a lonely penguin's quest for refreshment on a hot and sunny South Pole Sunday.

A manager launches an experimental choreography that brings together various individuals suffering from mental illness. The dance quickly becomes a therapy that allows them to express themselves and to introspect on their repressed fantasies and fears.

8mm film by Swiss artist Roman Signer.

8mm film by Swiss artist Roman Signer.

Swiss Army gunners practicing.

"Gross national happiness is more important than gross national product", declares the King of Bhutan. Can happiness be decreed? We accompany seven Swiss musicians to this mountainous Himalayan country. Between concerts, we meet Bhutanese people in their daily lives, who tell us, as if in passing, what makes them happy. Are we capable of finding happiness elsewhere? Does the advantage of globalization lie precisely in the erasure of the elsewhere? The whole world is in the here and now, and distant horizons are always close to us, transported by SMS...

While staying in Switzerland, a Dutch director is overcome with a numismatic passion at the sight of the one-franc coin. This coin, which has hardly changed in appearance in decades, bears national symbols that remain obscure to him and the Swiss people he encounters. The director weaves all these life stories and symbols into a hilarious investigation.

A surreal non-binary fairy tale. The Queen of the kingdom calls on her knights to fight a fierce and dangerous dragon.

A nightmare wakens Luca on his wedding night and confronts him with dark childhood memories. At the worst moment he struggles against his deepest fears as on the first day after his wedding his marriage is already challenged.

A palliative care team visits homes of terminally ill patients to help them come to terms with the inevitability of death.

In a decadent Circus in the middle of a large city today, the "Strongest Man in the World" can no longer lift his elephant. Every artist does his best, but the once successful circus has lost its public. The trapeze girl decides to risk her own life, in a desperate attempt to help the man she loves find his lost self-confidence.

Elsa, 14, has to face such violence every day. Her parents are unable to help, almost unable themselves to cope with the anxieties of their own lives.

Monte Amiata is a residential complex in the Gallaratese neighbourhood in Milan, designed by architects Carlo Aymonino and Aldo Rossi at the end of the 1960s. It was created with the intention of representing a parallel microcosm, a sort of alternative city of the future. In referring to its unusual colour and shape, its inhabitants call it the red dinosaur.

Filmed in London. For Annette Carle. Details of landscapes, roads.

The scenes take place in the Ile-de-France (Paris area) social security office (CRAMIF). From October to December of 1992, we filmed the "Invalidity" and "Occupational Accidents" departments, as well as the mail room, the typists and the archivists. This "real life" is nothing but real, so real ; eight hours a day in the office for those who are called the "laborers of the service industry".

Kitsch author Johannes J. Bachmann is disappointed with life. He no longer has any ideas for his books, which are hardly read by anyone anyway - with the exception of his cleaning lady, Mrs. Hauser, who is constantly nagging him to continue his stories. His wife is gone and he has no more money either. His godchild Leo is also at the end of his tether and can no longer look to the future with confidence. So the two decide to leave together. Of course, things turn out differently: a robbery takes place in the bank opposite and the strange gang of gangsters hide out in Bachmann's apartment of all places. But the two hostages, Johannes and Leo, don't behave at all as expected. They are simply not afraid and rebel against the hostage-takers. This completely confuses the robbers.

Before summer break Maria quit talking. Far away from vacation activities and swimming pools she hides in a world where the living rarely visit.

A small, computer-crazy employee falls victim to a diabolical plan.

Triple Grammy winner David Gray plays on the bill at Zermatt Unplugged - the extravaganza that marks the end of the skiing season and which has become known as 'the world's most civilised music festival'. The event is now in its fourth year and has properly come of age, attracting thousands of skiing and snowboarding music-lovers to this glamorous resort in the Valais region of Switzerland.

“Everything is in motion – inertia doesn’t exist!” Jean Tinguely cast a spell over the public with his works his entire life. His poetic machines and moving sculptures have fascinated people all over the world. His courageous life inspired an entire generation. Barely 20 years after his death, the “bande à Jean” remembers the artist and his time.

Living in the West Bank of Palestine, a filmmaker suffering from chronic headaches consults a psychologist in pursuit of a cure. After being treated, Raed Andoni is inspired to apply the same cure to his entire war-torn homeland. Andoni's quirky personality and the cast of characters around him lend immediacy and poignancy to the life experiences of everyday Palestinians struggling to endure endless military occupation and economic isolation.

Tim is 23 years old. He stammers a lot. His friend is a charmer. For Tim, seducing a girl is an ordeal.

{In the middle of Switzerland, Zeb meets the road of Mark. A hitchhiker who meets a racing car driver, a human against an other human.} } Created on the words: ROAD - SWITZERLAND - PASTA

Jimmy loves nature and Charlie hates Jimmy.

1815 – The Indonesian volcano Tambora erupts. The ejected ashes create an invisible veil that slowly envelops the globe. One year later. Somewhere in Europe lives Anna (16), the oldest daughter of a large peasant family.The young peasant girl and her family face a year without summer.

Daniel and Samuel are two brothers: one is European, the other is Cuban, the first now a man, the second just a boy. They share the same father, a man who fled Germany, the collective memory of Nazism, during the Years of Lead. Reinhold Stockburger has lived for many years in Cuba, an island from which he has never returned. Three generations face stormy family ties and a fundamental passage of life: death.

Zofira Kiniorska conducts a concert entitled ‘Classique et engagé-e-x!’ (Classical and politically engaged!), devoted to women composers. For the occasion, the Polish conductor has devised a programme ranging from Mel Bonis to Sandrine Rudaz, with saxophonist Valentine Michaud as soloist.

Wounded in combat, 10-year-old Atum is sent to Switzerland for treatment. But the young kadogo (child soldier) has only one obsession: to escape as quickly as possible to rejoin his brothers, who have remained in Congo! Together with Flore, a 10-year-old girl suffering from leukemia, he decides to flee the hospital...

Horror short from 1989.

A visual poem magnifying the Amazigh culture, a historical tale about the seismology of the city of Agadir and a story about our planet earth itself and its own life, created for the Museum of the Reconstruction of Agadir.

The film, whose title is borrowed from a collection of poems by Jorge Luis Borges, resonates with his meditation on art and identity, assembling archival images of the "person" being looked at and gazing, which are then interpreted by artificial intelligence, at random from messages and hashtags.

Ticino is not the epicentre of fashion, but between the 1930s and the 1960s, it had a fashion designer who achieved national and international success. The Luganese Elsa Barberis dressed the modern woman taking shape in those years, anticipating and inspiring the fashion of the decades to follow. But all this was not enough. Elsa has been completely forgotten by our memory. How is it possible that a talented figure like hers fell into oblivion so quickly?

An Albanian family struggles to stay afloat and integrate in Switzerland. In the process, the learning disability of the youngest family member puts the family to an additional test. The parents lack the time and money to support her in school. The older sister, who is still a child herself, takes over the responsibility and puts her needs in the background.

A letter, a broken heart. The sound of the rain. A black cat, a plan.

8mm film by Swiss artist Roman Signer.

8mm film by Swiss artist Roman Signer.

What does it feel like to be 13, having to spend summer holidays at home? You can go to the pool, read magazines and sink into boredom… or fall madly in love for the first time.

The film tells the adventurous story of an Arab-Swiss music project, of the search for nuances in times of the clash of cultures between the orient and the occident that is cited from all sides.

The waves have washed up a skull from the sea. A rambler tries to connect the find to a nearby mill. The film as a whole is association and mood.

Dr. Basil Feurchtegott operates an complete stranger on the kitchen table in his vacation home, and suddenly finds himself in a very dangerous situation. However, the doctor hasn't felt so alive for a long time. 'The Man', a contract killer, had just traveled by train across the border to Switzerland. In a high rise building 'The Man' accomplishes his job, but is injured. Beneath a bride the two men meet. Fuerchtegott finds the hurt 'Man', and shortly afterwards operates him. The patient rewards him by granting him a favor. A dark net of mistrust, chance, misunderstandings and ignorance unravels towards a catastrophe. Fuerchtegott resumes his job inconspicuously but guilty in the circle of men in white coats, but one of them is missing...

In the middle of Atacama Desert, vestiges of the last nitrate industry are​ ​found, while the residents witness the crash of an industry located in the driest​ ​place on Earth.

A series of photographs of a tree illustrates the passing of the seasons of the year.

In today’s Western society, homosexuality is largely accepted, and the dream of starting a family can be fulfilled by same-sex couples. But how does starting a family actually “work” as a same-sex couple of two men and what does everyday family life look like? The documentary “papa & dada” follows up on these questions and transports us into the world of same-sex couples, their companions and families.