Discoveries from Switzerland World Cinema

Aladdin’s parents separate when he is three. His father moves with him and his brothers to Tangier and re-marries. Then he leaves the family again and goes to Holland. Aladdin ends up on the street, sniffs glue, polishes shoes and keeps afloat by stealing. Years later, his father returns and finds Aladdin completely down and out. The boy steals from his own father and flees to the mountains, to Ketama. When an inner voice leads him back to Tangier, his father, to whom he is indebted, is dead: the trauma of his life. Desperate, he searches for a father figure and finds him in Felix, a foreign writer, who takes on the role of the magician in the story of initiation “Aladdin and the Magic Lamp” from "Arabian Nights". He helps Aladdin to come up in the world and leads him to the discovery of his creative power – his “magic lamp”: Aladdin takes up painting and finally manages to reach his long-awaited getaway to paradise, Europe, where he meets his princess and marries her.

Some things are not what they seem - even if we encounter them every day.

Captured then released, a pike develops a fascination for humans. Made from content collected online (netfootage), the film proposes, through absurdity and humor, a reflexion on human nature by exploring its most beautiful qualities as well as its worst faults.

Deborah, Audrey, Som and Linn have very different life paths but one thing in common: they are intersex. In Switzerland, where they live, political and medical institutions maintain their invisibility. Without a law banning genital mutilation, their right to self-determination does not exist and being themselves is a struggle. Under the benevolent gaze of the director, they tell us about their path to self-discovery and self-acceptance. Intimate confessions and affirmed claims are here a militant act aiming at breaking the taboo, together.

Five friends are invited to the father's house of one of them. They decide to film their weekend to make a little souvenir. Nothing goes as planned and their film will become proof that strange, violent, mysterious, and scary things exist.

8mm film by Swiss artist Roman Signer.

Through a computer screen we travel through the streets of a bygone Mariupol, the recurring presence of a bicycle is intriguing. Who does it belong to?

8mm film by Swiss artist Roman Signer.

A panorama of Swiss animation from 1920 to the present, created for the Swiss Confederation's 700th anniversary. A look at the very roots of the national identity through some of the most memorable films.

Captains of industry now call the shots where green fields once sprawled. They keep their workers like slaves in large underground factories. Yet, the slaves are preparing themselves for the battle for freedom. An anti-capitalist tale.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, internet and media artist Constant Dullaart built his own platform as a response to existing social media. It’s a place where you can genuinely get together with friends, rather than just being a target for clickbait or competing with others for likes and comments.

“For my career I go to ballet, jazz dance and martial arts. I also play the piano and do solo singing and I go to a Russian school so I can speak French, Russian, German, Swiss-German and a little bit of English and… I think that’s all.” 8-year-old Julie dreams of becoming an actor and a singer. She works hard to achieve this. The film follows her day-to-day life and, if nothing else, raises the question of whose dreams are being pursued here – Julie’s or those of her overambitious parents.

A young girl is forced to share her family home with her abuser.

That winter, no snow fell on Saint-Florent-le-Vieil. But it was very cold. According to custom, Aélia, the young bride, is pursued by the entire wedding party. She takes refuge in the church she has just left. Suddenly, she discovers the cold presence of a stone effigy. Months passed. Aélia seemed wary of her husband. The village gossiped. One day, she saw two white peacocks mating. The next day, she gave herself to the effigy. She was overcome with a sense of immense wonder.

Eliott, 30, is sent to Alaska for maintenance work on the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, which crosses the state from north to south. Confronted with the grandeur of the wild expanses, Eliott gradually loses his grip. His work-related trip becomes a rite-of-passage adventure, the reason for which might lie closer to madness than he could ever have imagined.

Echoes chronicles the experiences of mothers who represent three distinct aspects of the story: A Chinese mother who abandoned her baby; a white, middle-class North American mother who adopted a Chinese girl; and a Canadian mother preparing to “pick up” her baby from China. Each one of these mothers shares her experiences and struggles reconciling the powerful emotions and ideas that both abandonment and adoption, from an alien culture, entail.

At a time when Germany, Italy, Spain and Switzerland have decided to move away from atomic energy and focus on renewable energy, France - the most nuclear-powered country in the world, with 70% of its electricity produced by its reactors - is planning to invest in new EPRs. Is this choice really compatible with the ecological transition? Although nuclear power plants do not emit CO2, their dismantling at the end of their life generates pollution of another kind: exponential quantities of contaminated waste, the reuse of which remains hypothetical and the storage of which is highly problematic. Not to mention the risk of disaster, as at Chernobyl or Fukushima.

A traveller gives an antiques dealer a magic vinyl record: "It reads your mind and plays your lost memories". Obsessed by this endless record, he listens to it again and again.

Andrew Phillip Wolfensberger is a radio presenter on Winterthur community radio. Andrew's show Highnoon (the most flourishing and creative period) has been on air for six years and is famous for the song of the week - Andrew singing citizens' letters published in a local newspaper. The film is an essay about Swiss identity, community life, and the relationship between the man and the city.

Häns'sche Weiss, who passed away last year, was one of the greatest representatives of gypsy jazz. For French guitar virtuoso Biréli Lagrène, he was even the decisive inspiration for learning to play the guitar. Weiss's longtime bassist, Vali Mayer from Zurich, and guitarist Holzmanno Winterstein invite Biréli Lagrène as a guest of honor to revive the musical works of Häns'sche Weiss. A tribute to gypsy jazz!

Jordan 1970: Like a political tract, the film exalts the Palestinian revolution through the role of the combattants, women, workers and children. Revolutionary songs and poems punctuate the people's struggle for liberation. This film defends a cause that was very little supported at that time. 'Biladi, une révolution' is one of the very first (if not the first) films on the issue.

For twenty-four hours, Geneva becomes the living backdrop for a contemporary drama: by day, a place where life is good; by night, a refuge for the marginalized. Five characters will meet there, connected by the night shift of a pair of cops. Hans, a police officer nearing the end of his career and worn down by life, tries his hand at compassion, while Dan, his young partner, struggles between prejudice and discovering the other.

The small swiss village of Mitholz got destroyed in 1947 after an Ammunition depots of the Swiss Army exploded. After decades of secrecy, the population learned in 2018 that the danger had not been averted yet and that the residents need to leave their homes. A story about the abuse of trust and the mistakes of a government whose citizens pay the price for.

An adult male struggles to reconcile with life while sheltering at home with his teenage sister. His constant attempt to hide from a threat that lies beyond the property line, further complicates his relationship with reality.

In her eponymous film “Ground” (2020), Thornton outlines the coming into form of a reality in which the ground or base—like the ground of a painting or the physical ground that human existence has always been pulled toward by gravity—becomes undefined.

A young "social investigator" meets a bohemian Englishman who decides to move in with her, disrupting her daily life and challenging her lifestyle and values.

Rokhaya, a young director, returns to her home in Dakar to make a film about a local historical figure. Throughout her research, which consists of interviews with local personalities, discussions with her team and fictional scenes shot on location, we discover the story of Aline Sitoe Diatta.

Two recently drawn stick figures fight to erase each other.

Tonight, the theater school is presenting its graduates' solo performances. Lola is there reluctantly, accompanying a friend. But her friend doesn't show up. Lola waits, alone, sitting in the stands. The lights go down.

Franz, Thomas, Nick have been friends since they were young. Now they're thirty. Time when you have to be careful how you evade the seriousness of life.

What would happen if everything stopped? If the engine gears of the economy jammed for good? The Japanese island of Ikeshima is a place that seems to be ahead of its time, showing us a possible future. The few remaining inhabitants live in a surreal setting, clinging firmly to a normality that seems however to escape them. A dreamlike journey, which forces us to think about our relationship with the planet but also about social isolation and loneliness.

For 20 years, Oliver, a Frenchman, has lived alone and on his own on a small island that belongs to First Nations people. One day, three visitors land on the island and disrupt his peace.

The events that lead a man to commit suicide.

AI already plays a major role in the developed world, from transportation logistics to national security—but this is just the beginning. From Ireland’s "smart cities" in the European Silicon Valley to China’s dystopian Social Credit System, this film explores the vast potential unlocked by the world’s leading data experts.

After a long day at work they meet under thundering highway bridges. Equipped with rods and nymphs, the men hunt in the barren sweet waters of the suburbs for fish. But between concrete pillars and evening traffic, the fishermen's hearts find no peace and so they set off in search of the distant and dreamy murmur of the sea.

Damon Albarns 2014 performance at the Montreux Jazz Festival with his Everyday Robots project.

Melanie is planning the big deal with antique Mayan sculptures. The charming student always spends more money than she earns. To plug the financial hole, she has taken out loans on her beloved grandmother's farm - without his knowledge and with two different banks at the same time. But Willi Hubacher from the cantonal bank and private banker Doctor Tobler are on to her. They give Melanie six weeks to pay back the 160,000 francs - otherwise the farm will be put up for auction, and Melanie's flatmate Kolumbus finally gets the antiques delivered. Melanie already knows a buyer: her admirer, the French ambassador.