Discoveries from Switzerland World Cinema

Documentary film about the work of Swiss glacier pilot and rescue pilot Hermann Geiger.

A self-destructive and lonely rock musician discovers he has a daughter. Her recently deceased mother leaves custody to him. Before his daughter arrives, he decides to take a journey to discover her mother's past, but also his own.

A documentary showing the difficult life in the city of Kolkata (India)

A girl asleep in a field. A table in a kitchen. A river. Fish in an aquarium.

Switzerland’s best-known hacker maia arson crimew fights fearlessly and successfully against injustice online.

(Robbery) assault, car accident, rape: The list of traumatic events that turn you into a victim or perpetrator is endless. These are encounters that leave deep scars - on the body and on the soul. Perpetrator and victim remain connected to each other as if by an invisible rope, welded together by the (monstrosity of the) crime. Despite this bond, perpetrators and victims often only meet in the courtroom. One in the dock, the other as plaintiff or in the witness chair.

Hêlîn, Selin, Firat and Serhat are siblings who grew up in a village in central Switzerland. They carry their family living-room out into public space: first the colourful carpet, then the couch, last of all the hot Çay. A new story takes shape where anger and resilience find their place unfazed alongside othering and fear.

Alina's stepfather, a Nigerian who works as a chef in Zurich, is arrested for allegedly dealing drugs. Visits to the remand center take their toll on the patchwork family. Is he guilty?

There is a schism between the capacity to understanding and the necessity to simply observe. As one of the most famous ethno- and anthropologist in the world, Claude Lévi-Strauss battled for this. While he was travelling in the 1950s to meet very different cultures and people, he has always refrained from establishing judgments based on his own comprehension of things, a philosophy that would be very well welcomed in the everyday life of all of us. Mostly, he was the first to coin the notions of the denaturation of culture - in reference to the predominance of western culture over more traditional ones.

This film reflects the condition of gay men in Kosovo. It is an experimental documentary that allows you to travel through the journey of gay men who have to hide and embrace their sexuality in secrecy while facing a strong mentality and a traditional way of thinking that erases their right to express themselves.

Black and white 16mm film, 3 min. The Batuco Wetland in the Metropolitan Region of Chile is constantly in danger. Nevertheless, it persists. Commissioned by IU Libraries Moving Image Archive in honor of the 100th anniversary of 16mm film.

Eager to create a monumental work of art, a shaman remains blissfully unaware that she is painting her murals in the mouth of a vain weather presenter.

In 1937, the young French engineer Jo Dupuche landed a job in Ecuador, with the promise of a better life. While he stops on a Caribbean island, he discovers that the mine where he was hired has gone bankrupt and finds himself penniless. Trapped with his wife in the tropics, the couple must cope. While his wife finds work thanks to white settlers, Jo is housed in a ghetto where he forms a romantic relationship with a young prostitute. Shot on 35mm in Cuba at the end of the 1980s with all the constraints inherent to the country, this TV film paints an uncompromising picture of colonialism in line with the eponymous novel by Simenon (1934).

In the smoke of vapes, the desires of young people take shape, and they try to satisfy them by riding their electric scooters at night.

The work begins and ends with a shot of a snowy mountain under a full moon, which renders it into a glowing majestic mountain. As starting and as end point, this image symbolically represents the concerns and leitmotif of I speak the night: a cyanotype reflection on perception, imagination and on artistic expression of the collective real, external world, in relation to the subjective inner life of each individual.

The film is about the failed attempt to get a film restorer in front of the camera and to shoot a documentary with him. The man tries to concentrate, smiles at the camera - but something always distracts him in the end.

In a sterile room, an experiment unfolds, juxtaposing the intricate life-giving complexity of the soil beneath our feet with the obsessive reliance on technology. This short film delves into the interplay between nature, technology, and human labor, revealing the profound connections and divides that shape our existence.

The history and life of the soldiers involved the world’s highest, less known and most absurd war. This conflict began in 1984, a battle for the control over the Siachen glacier located at the extreme northern edge of the Indian-Pakistan border. Twenty years of conflict to maintain sovereignty over a few hundred square kilometres of ice, rock lost somewhere in the middle of the Himalayas.

A love letter to a childhood friend, a charming 3-way that puts a couple to the test, a first kiss that could change everything... Get your fill of emotions with volume 5 of Les Inshortables! From Israel to Italy and Taiwan, discover six never-before-seen short films from around the world.

Upon entering the harbor, the voyager leaves the exceptional condition of the boundless sea--this traversable space of maritime immensity--to come ashore in an offshore place, in a container world that only tolerates the trans-local state of not being of this place--nor of any other really--but of existing in a condition of permanent not-belonging, of juridical non-existence. He comes to signify the itinerant body, bound to string along a chain of territories, never reaching a final destination. Probing the protocols of access time and again, he moves through non-civil places, waits for status in off-social spaces, only to remain suspended in the post-humanist lapse. What used to be a state of temporary exemption--survival in the fluid time-space of legal deferral--has slowly consolidated into the prime mode of migratory subsistence. The site of this existence is connected but segregated; it is the world system of contained mobility. (Video Data Bank)

An investigation into urban space from the perspective of young people in Lyon.

This short movie is about pro skier and activist Elisabeth Gerritzen, whose fights are as important to her as her sport. In the mountains, she is Elisabeth the skier, in the streets, she is Elisabeth the activist. She lives her two lives very separately and makes sure those two sides do not interfere with each other. Until the day she becomes world freeride champion. The activist then meets the sportswoman when Elisabeth decides to use her title and the attention around it to come out publicly.

It’s the beginning of summer, and Juliette, 17, freshly graduated from high school, is about to leave for scout camp. In her backpack, she doesn’t forget her essentials: tarot cards, some stones, a pendulum and her telephone. Juliette, who has 40’000 followers, defines herself as a modern witch. Between swims and beach parties, the young woman heals her friends’ sunburns, asks the universe for help with her university admission, and draws cards to figure out the path she and her friends should take in their lives.

'i STiLL BELiEVE iN CELLULOiD.’

The return after thirty years of two incurable globetrotters, Gigi and Guelfo, causes a certain uproar in some Lugano families. Serene and light-hearted, Gigi has no wrinkles on his face or conscience and with his ironic and good-natured philosophy he passes unscathed through the traps that his relatives set for him so that he can get his head straight. Guelfo, on the other hand, longing for tranquility, marries a beautiful widow with children but will immediately have to deal with a reality very different from the one he was used to. Dialect comedy by Vittorio Barino and Martha Fraccaroli from 1988, ideal prelude to "Ol mond l'è pien da sorpres".

The lovingly compiled collection of shells, the life's work of Maria Cândida Consolado Macedo, comes to life in a rhythmic ritual of hand-processed 16mm footage and trancelike sounds of capiz shells.

At the convent, nobody has ever seen Sister Esther smile, which explains the nickname she received! But Sister Austere is also known for her steadiness, and it is her who is chosen one day to go out and look for the young novice Mathilde, who just escaped from the convent. However, this little trip will turn out to be far from trivial for Esther, whose big secret will eventually be revealed.

A remarkable collection of examples of dissolute, free, experimental, and avant-garde films. Hassler added dream and fantasy sequences from more conventional films to fragments from complete or incomplete and far-reaching experiments. Images were taken from reality on 16 mm and 8 mm film stock to create a new reality.

In the 20th century, authorities in Switzerland placed over 100'000 children and adolescents in homes and foster families. The measures were implemented mainly for moral reasons and affected socially marginalized families in particular. The parents had hardly any success in legal proceedings against these decisions. Instead of fighting poverty, the state fought the poor. In the participatory ethnographic documentary "And then we were taken away", two men in their sixties talk about the administrative foster care they experienced as a child. They lead the audience to the homes, locations of their tumultuous youth and to their favourite places. Through their biographies, the men document how out-of-home placements shaped their childhood, youth and present.

Time of My Life is a movie documentary project born and initiate in spring 2011 in West Switzerland. Ski, skateboard and snowboard movies are usually made to impress and show only one aspect of these sports: impressive tricks and bluebird skies. Skiing and snowboarding are much more than that. With this film project project, we want to explore the back stages of the show and wish to give a more complete and authentic vision of the riders experience. The movie guideline is to catch and film what is behind skiing, snowboard and skating, what is behind these passions.

Tatum, a young man in his forties suffering from a deep depression, is hired as a museum guard. Tasked with looking after a sculpture that exerts a mysterious fascination on the public, he gradually falls under its spell himself. He protects it as if his very existence depended on it, at the risk of losing touch with reality.

In The Ecology of Science Fiction, Renee Hendrix, Tobias Dekker, and Marlene Fischer compare images of the future in cinema with PR videos by Elon Musk and co.

At an exhibition opening, artist Shuang Li receives messages from her virtual doppelgängers.

Giovanni Barbieri, a successful doctor, deals with a personal crisis when he has to tend to a patient who was stabbed by Giovanni's son.

"Lucid Dreams Of Gabriel" is a surrealistic and non-linear story about a mother achieving immortality through her son, unconditional love, and the fluidity of time. The film portrays a moment of transition, from life to afterlife, with the story being told from three different perspectives - a mother, her son, and the messenger who can alter the time. Simona and her son Gabriel travel through three realms - a present moment (at 24 fps), supernatural world (at 48 fps) and a lucid dream (at 48 fps) - in order to discover the purpose of their lives. But, in order to fulfill that purpose, Simona must give away her life afore. Through an afterlife mirror, Simona views the last few minutes of her life with her son. Later, as Gabriel falls asleep, Simona receives a small gift of time from a Messenger. As the sands of time quickly run out, she appears to Gabriel in his dream, in order to deliver a message that he will never forget.

Archival footage of a family turns into the poignant testimony of a woman who sees herself fifty years later. The director’s grandmother, now aged, shares her memories about life as a woman, the hopefulness of the 1960s, and the changing landscape of a town in the south of Italy troubled by a polluting steel mill. As the past is fading, remembering becomes seeing for the first time.

This film was conceived as a means of initiation for schools and organizations specializing in film culture. It is the first in a series designed to introduce the main technical and aesthetic aspects of film creation.

Three children compose a story about a whale that jumped out of a mountain lake and went on a balloon trip.

Asleep in his castle an old man is woken up by a strange flicker merging reality and fiction.

A young woman faces her fear of pregnancy when she can no longer ignore the presence of the embryo in her freezer.

In 2013, an auteur film caused a scandal because of its sex scenes. Morgane Frund was sixteen and one of the angry viewers. Ten years later, she's ready to settle the score with this film in the form of a video essay.

A broken phone and the digital memory of a broken relationship. Both fragile, both recomposed to reveal the fragments of a first love that seems to fade away. Through the careful manipulation of discarnate metal components and the director's attentive look on a found intimate archive, a parallel movement of lingering and resistance to the ephemeral. A playful reflection on what remains.

Engaging with objects from everyday culture is a hallmark of Peter Volkart, both in his art objects and in his films. Volkart stages mysterious journeys that venture into unknown territory and penetrate the consciousness like will-o'-the-wisps, as in "Terra incognita." His short films have a magical appeal: they have been shown at numerous film festivals in Switzerland and abroad and have won many awards.

All the characters from the Théâtre du Passage's 2022-2023 season arrive at the same time in the theatre's forecourt.

An audiovisual poem about life, death, body and nature, totality, loneliness and connectedness.

A young man's journey of healing through art.

Guido lives without thinking too much. He undergoes life without asking questions, between his little job as a cashier in a grocery store and his small apartment where he lives with his red fish. His family has been divided since his father had a child of an extramarital relationship. When the Patriarch dies, Guido finds himself forced to accompany his eight-year half-brother with the mother of the latter, in Italy. A poetic and human road movie.

A young caregiver reverts to a fantasy world to cope with the grief of losing her mother and to escape from the drudgery of the care home where she works.