Discoveries from Switzerland World Cinema

From a mirador, Lucas is observing, touching upon a world growing around himself.

The filmmaker captures his environment with the camera, fearing he might be losing it more and more. Strict rules about using the entire clip length and its original audio track inform the editing process. The tableaus and their insistence in duration create a pull into an increasingly isolated state of perceiving the outside world in its unspectacular yet strangely unfamiliar intensity.

Painter, poet and playwright, teacher and freethinker, lover and traveler, Austrian artist Oskar Kokoschka (1886-1980) was a rare individual who remained lucid and passionate throughout his long life.

How can we better manage patients with diabetes, a chronic disease that affects more and more people around the world? Conducted on three continents, an in-depth investigation into an alarming situation.

Most people play it for fun, to them it’s a deadly serious matter. A small group of professional players from all over the country gather in Amriswil to crown the Swiss Minigolf Champion. Among them is the young and extremely ambitious Maja as well as Jörg, one of the most experienced players of the tournament. Far away from everyday life, the players need nerves of steel and a knack for selecting the right balls to deserve a place on the podium.

A short movie about dreams and the personalities we become in an unknown world where everything is possible.

Sad-is-fiction, Fredi M. Murer’s third artist film, takes as its subject the Zurich-based painter and poet Alex Sadkowsky. “Modern man leans neither to the right nor to the left; he just keeps walking” runs the start of the programmatic introduction – and, for the rest of the film, Sadkowsky does just that. He wanders through aeroplanes and through London, and leaps across rocky landscapes. Whenever he feels lonely, he carries with him an “animal metaphysicum”, which originated in his paintings. Sad-is-fiction portrays Sadkowsky as a visionary dreamer who – although he is in fact a father, artist, lover and, above all, a man with, to put it mildly, a gift of the gab – resists being pigeonholed in any way. In Sad-is-fiction,Murer works for the first time with direct sound and, for the first time, employs a colleague in the shape of cameraman Fritz E. Maeder.

A film about the transition of three trans teenagers, the upheaval it causes in them and their loved ones, as well as the quest for identity buried deep within them.

The view from a window overlooking a busy city street overlays varying geometric shapes moving against a brightly coloured background. Silence is punctuated only by street sounds. Camera original destroyed by Beavers.

Documentary film.

Listening, observing, touching, tasting. Moving through a space that is still pristine, undomesticated, that of the state of nature. He is there to reconnect with that state, she is doing a course on edible wild plants, another woman regrets spending her days in front of a computer... About 15 of them have set off for a week, with their rucksacks, to walk in the forest, to reflect alone or together on their existence constrained by a highly toxic consumer society.

Three best friends, Jimmy, Samy and Sofi, have the idea of a lifetime: transforming a chocolate vending machine into a pot-vending machine. Also, there’s a dog in the film.

When the highly trained assassin receives an order from his boss to kill a child, his life is thrown off balance. He makes a decision that will change his life forever...

Bobby Jucker's soap business is on the brink of collapse. The resigned manufacturer expects to go bankrupt soon. So he doesn't mind letting his wife take the reins and putting on an apron himself. Clara Jucker is tired of being a housewife anyway. Bobby is already gloating over his wife's failure. But Clara turns out to have a talent for business, and instead of impending bankruptcy, her husband now has to cope with his wife's success. What makes the situation even more unbearable is that Clara seems to get along very well with her new assistant, Binggeli-Braun. Bobby Jucker's envy is now compounded by jealousy toward his supposed rival. A fight is inevitable.

Gregory, is set to meet his fiancée and his prospective parents-in-law at a restaurant. He arrives late and the tension is palpable as they order dinner. Uneasy, Gregory excuses himself to the restroom. While enjoying sudden quietness, his life takes an absurd and tragic turn when he discovers a mysterious object in the trash bin.

Chief physician Leo Leu is under a lot of pressure. In a few minutes, he is supposed to give an important speech at a neurology conference. If he messes it up, he can kiss his ambitions of becoming clinic director goodbye. But he keeps getting interrupted. A Christmas party needs to be prepared, rehearsals for a nativity play are coming up, and a colleague is pestering him: Doctor Leu should be so kind as to play Saint Nicholas. In the midst of this chaos, former nurse Rita Kuster bursts in and confronts her ex-boss Leu with his sensual past. Leu reacts as quickly as he does clumsily: he lets assistant doctor Blättler in on the secret, who is supposed to take the blame for him. But an overexcited teenager, a gruff head nurse, a curious police officer, and a shot of Valium throw a wrench in Leu and Blättler's plans.

In memory of Jo Mihaly and the Grand Hotel Brissago.

Broadcast in 1972 on the program *Nom des chansons* on Télévision Suisse Romande, this documentary features a rare concert and performance by the French singer and poet, a key figure of the French underground. Combining sung and spoken poetry, theater and improvisation, it features her partner, composer and multi-instrumentalist Areski. In conversation with journalist Jo Excoffier, she reflects on personal fears, memories of the Algerian War, and intimate moments of everyday life.

Reflecting on the famous social experiment in Peckham, London, the film is a short visual experiment on shifting perspectives. At the same time, it is a love letter to a south London neighbourhood.

The film authors cautiously approach the village of Gossliwil in Bucheggberg, Solothurn, with its 160 inhabitants, and sift through traces of a rural culture of survival under modern conditions without romanticization. Knowledge of the destructive threat of industrialization and the mechanisms of a global food market for the farming world is included in the research. The farmers themselves have their say; at the same time, their tradition is traced in pictures, deliberate narrative rhythm, repetitions and sayings. The result is a clever analysis of Swiss agricultural policy, whose clear structure never slips into nostalgia; a highlight of Swiss documentary filmmaking.

In the break of a punctual smoker who kill himself, kind of...

This film is a brief portrait of a young girl. (1968, 16mm, Color, 21 min., Magnetic sound, 16 frames/second.)

In a brick house at the heart of a Rio favela, Sueli yells, scolds, consoles. Matriarch of a noisy clan, she watches over her children and grandchildren, unfazed by the gunfire bursts that set the pace of daily life. Around her, sudden deaths multiply, the children grow up, and the house keeps changing, shaped by never-ending repairs. Still, Sueli holds her ground.

Built within the 3D worlds of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, Condemned 2: Bloodshot, Call of Duty: Black Ops II, Saw II: Flesh & Blood, and Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, Pastinaca Videotapes Plantation’s machinima exploit each engine’s abrupt, uncanny atmosphere, creating bizarre collages that challenge any single interpretative move. Cold Cakes / 冰冷的蛋糕 / コールド・ケーキ is no exception and adopts the look of damaged evidence. Burnt-in timestamps, murky contrast, smeared textures, and VHS-like degradation give the film the texture of a copied, handled, and partially lost recording. Moving between domestic interiors, found footage, flickering images, bodily aftermath, cryptic imagery and open-world urban drift, the film assembles fragments rather than a linear narrative. Working through a text-first method that pairs written themes with archival and game footage, PVP reflects on suppressed histories, hoaxes, mockumentaries, and the erasure of inconvenient events.

Slip stitch, skip stitch, single stitch, and yarn over. Roommates in Switzerland for two years, Yoonsuk and Sunwoo spend Sunwoo's final winter knitting together. Leaving the last stitch unfinished, Yoonsuk at last begins her own "knock back."

Part of FIFF's section "Une Histoire de Fribourg : Terre de hockey sur glace"

In a dusty saloon somewhere in the American West, a quiet afternoon of poker and whiskey is interrupted when a bounty hunter named Annie Baker walks in searching for answers. She believes someone in the room knows who stole her weapons — and she’s not leaving without a name. What begins as an uneasy reunion with an old acquaintance quickly spirals into chaos when a drink meant for celebration turns deadly. As suspicion spreads across the saloon, every patron becomes a potential culprit, and the tension rises with every passing second. With guns drawn and trust evaporating, Annie forces the room into a brutal game of truth, where one wrong move could mean death.

1938 Hans Richter commission.

The performance of Delirio Amoroso (HWV 99) by soprano Kateryna Kasper, the Freiburger Barockorchester, and conductor René Jacobs is a prominent interpretation of one of George Frideric Handel's most celebrated Italian cantatas.

A rebellious teen, trapped in her mother's control, is drawn into a dark world where a mysterious stranger offers freedom through a twisted magic trick. But the price she pays forces her to question everything she has ever believed in.

The film looks behind the scenes of the welfare state and reveals the discussions marked by power and helplessness between experts and persons concerned.

How do young people travel beyond capitalist structures? Driven by a longing for freedom, they wait for hours or even days at freight yards. For others, these may be non-spaces, but for train hoppers, they are places of opportunity: If a suitable train comes along, they jump on.

Every year, thousands of toads make the arduous journey back to the waters of their birth to reproduce. They have to overcome numerous dangers along the way - from dangerous roads to other obstacles that turn their journey into a fight for survival.

Origins draw circles, language shapes memory – and sometimes the feeling of being different remains. Some lose their origins, others carry a heavy family legacy, still others feel foreign in their own land. Director Hao Hohl guides us through a mosaic of moments about belonging and what connects us.

The reputation of Zurich's Schauspielhaus theater is based on figures such as Bertolt Brecht and Therese Giese, who turned it into a bastion of cultural resistance during the Nazi era. After the war, the global successes of Max Frisch and Friedrich Dürrenmatt consolidated this reputation. But the architect of this glory has been forgotten: Kurt Hirschfeld.

A scientist is on the verge of a technological revolution that aims to bring dead matter back to life. A minor incident changes her whole life.

The complex relationship between humans and water. Compelling contrasts between wetness and dryness, fluidity and rigidity, light and darkness.

A mysterious gift from beyond crosses continents to a secluded chalet, where the fate of a couple unfolds in an unexpected and unsettling way.

Early experimental film from Claude Champion.

This is the story of a bird who could not lay an egg. What price will she pay to finally become a mother?

A brief history of humanity and a radical proposal for its future.

Luca has been carrying a secret since his teenage years. Now, he’s decided to finally share it with his sister – despite a deep fear that it might irreparably harm their relationship.