Discoveries from Switzerland World Cinema

A massive urban transformation is underway in India. As part of the government’s Bharatmala (‘Garland of Limitless Roads’) programme, highways are being constructed at an unprecedented rate—with the aim of opening up new territories to the emerging Indian middle classes.

Switzerland has always appeared as that fictional landscape, where it is difficult to find something that doesn’t work, nearly as a utopia. This is even more visible during the lockdown. Those differences and contrasts around the globe are brought to evidence thanks to a pandemic.

Rosa is sunbathing in her garden while the gardener is working next door. Rosa is watching the gardener, increasingly intoxicated by the tender way he handles the flowers.

Witness the first light and sounds of a new dawn breaking, as observed around the world one year ago. Patrick Shen’s cinematic meditation was created during the first COVID-19 lockdown by 35 artists from over 13 countries on May 3, 2020. With a soundtrack filled with environmental bird songs and ambient aural awakenings, the contemplative and collective portrait moves from darkness to light as a metaphor for hope and rebirth. 2020, United States, digital, nonverbal, 21 min.

Maurice Béjart is widely regarded as a master of modern dance, capable of fusing the classical and the unconventional with remarkable success.

As a hurricane draws near, a man seeks refuge in a supermarket.

The story of a middle-aged man who is seduced by a beautiful young waitress, who leads him straight to an inevitable family tragedy.

A lonely actor, Arturo, is unexpectedly embraced by a young boy named Mirko who believes Arturo is his father, leading Arturo to step into a paternal role despite not knowing the boy’s background.

Peter Wächtler's silent film "Untitled (Vampire)" is a mesmerising portrait of a solipsistic vampire and the secluded life he leads in a castle high in the mountains. In his diaristic accounts, existentialism meets the small comforts of consumption culture in the most bizarre yet plausible manners.

Starting from indeterminate, large public spaces, the film focuses on the lines, corners, and openings of a barren apartment, eventually landing without lingering on used items, a cloth, crumpled paper. Many shaky doors swing shut, to be quickly replaced by others. Pressure and suction emerge spontaneously from the rooms in front of the observer's eyes. In the mundane: table legs, the dark tobacco end of a cigarette. The film brings life into being and ushers in light.

Some dust flies in the last lights of a film projection.

At dawn, a group of friends meet on the rooftop of a school in Athens. It's their ritual. Overlooking the city, this symbolic place will be theirs until the next morning.

A life-like doll is talking on the phone in an entirely black space. A pantomime in which a cinema becomes a piece of theater. The viewer can only interpret the body language. One recognizable gesture leads to another, yet the underlying script remains a mystery.

A tomcat is looking for his lost friend. He thinks he can see him in the clouds and starts a cloud collection. He collects until he notices that he has been keeping the memory of his friend in his heart all along.

All floors of the exhibition house are filled with full-length video projections and a continuous sound track. Surrealistic representations of nature on the ground floor lead to a synchronized 3-channel installation on the upper floor, in which the world increasingly becomes a representation of inner states. The perception of a woman, who is not visible but whose thoughts are audible, is sharpened in solitude and she herself becomes more and more the subject of her own investigation. The exhibition ends in a protected, binaural listening experience in the attic.

A trip that will take us to 7 African countries (Ghana, Senegal, Rwanda, Mozambique, Kenya, Ivory Coast, Burundi) to meet powerful women determined to do everything possible to offer a better future to the African people. These women will explain how they think they are working to save the continent, which must resolutely embrace integration into the world economy because the years of totalitarian male rule in Africa have been catastrophic. A film that will make us understand that the future of Africa belongs to women.

Only a Child is an omnibus animation short that gives shape and colour to Severn Suzuki's original speech at the UN Summit in Rio (1992): a child's desperate call to action for our planet's future.

The morning after a wild party, David and Oscar discover that their roommate Robin is still dancing. What the heck is going on?

A serial killer terrorizes Zurich. Every night he pays a visit to a young woman who works at a gas station. He has mixed feelings about her..

Ibn Kenyatta has been in prison since 1974. In 2019, he reflects on his refusal to appear before the New York State Board of Parole. The words resonate from his cell with images of the Great Migration. The invocation of a life before walls. The images' epistolary narrative takes us from Alabama, his birthplace, to the New York subway where he was arrested and beaten. Before arriving to Haiti's spiritual world, his words pass through cotton fields and factories. We encounter Bobby Seale in prison, a youth who embodies his African heritage during the Vietnam War, while his fathers are murdered in the United States.

When young skateboarder Vincent meets a vulnerable animal at the bottom of a hole, the encounter will get him to confront his own fears of the unknown.

Julian lived as a harpsichord maker in a warehouse in Zurich for twelve years. Forced to move out of his live-in studio, he is confronted with his own neglect, with questions about his life so far, his future, and his purpose in life.

Hitler is not dead. He is hiding in the woods. With a gypsy woman. Their son is Donald Trump. Two nazi hunters women are tracking him down.

After years of absence, the Yakuza Gang around Max and Jay Jay are finally up to mischief again. And it would be all right for the naughty homies if the Deliquentes Clan could keep their hands off the big deal. The police, who are known not to shy away from losses, are getting closer and closer to resolving the case through the clever investigation by special agent Joe Miller ... But in this world, where violence is preferred over prudence, the barometer stands for death - and that's exactly what we're going to see. Bullenblut 2 is supposed to reveal how things really go on Winterthur's streets, nothing more and nothing less.

"Location: a ballet company, Mrs. Cordua training alone, training together with another person, head exercises, body exercises, leg and arm exercises, supporting herself, working in the ballet room, taking off her makeup in the dressing room, undressing, washing herself carefully, treating all of the sweaty places of her body (armpits, anus, genitalia), getting dressed, opera house corridors, canteen, driving through the city, typical buildings, shops, factory complexes on the way; apartment—opera house and back, her husband reading the newspaper, sitting, lying down, working, smoking, cooking potatoes, eating potatoes, opening the mail, drinking coffee, filming, caring for feat, mouth, while saying something amusing, hand movement (beheading gesture meaning it is finished), a TV film, dancer relaxing in private, smoking, discussing, disparaging, a TV film, drinking tea, the end: that certain shine in Mrs. Cordua's eyes!" (HHK)

Documentary about the 1980s Swiss watch crisis.

Luna wants to let her sadness come out when she hears a female voice, dapper and full of energy: “Do you speak Spanish?”. It’s Valentina, an extravagant woman looking for her way.

In a city of disconcerting nature, homeless animals are looking for shelter for the night. They take refuge in the Bear's house, creating an ephemeral community that will dissolve with the first rays of sun. A tale of exclusion as recounted by crossed destinies out of sync.

Im Schatten des Wohlstandes is about children; their illnesses – if that’s what we want to call them – are civilisational in nature: their parents have to abandon them to keep up with their jobs; frustration is the core of capitalism.

The Brazilian theatre director Augusto Boal is one of the most prominent representatives of political intervention theatre in the 20th century. In the 1960s he developed a theatre method which he called the “Theatre of the Oppressed,” which results in a socially liberating experience. His method redefined the relationship between the actors and spectators in that spectators are urged to emancipate and liberate themselves from their passive role. The film illustrates what this means in practice using various theatre groups from all over the world, including Switzerland, as an example.

Expeditions to the heart of the country with the author Pedro Lenz, who lives above the Flügelrad Restaurant next to the railway station in Olten. An oscillating snapshot of the prevailing mood in Swiss society emerges from the interplay between stories of everyday life and Lenz’s reflective texts in Swiss dialect, replete with laconic poesy and a tinge of yearning.

Documentary film.

Max and Chrige, a married couple of Swiss linguists, hike the Alps searching for rare words still uttered by the rural population. While on his way to a conference, the husband's plane disappears over the sea. Chrige is advised to give up hope of ever seeing him alive, but her heart tells her otherwise. Max comes ashore on a tropical island with another survivor, the plane's pilot. But where are they in reality?

For Barbara Figueroa

Geeta is one of the few female taxi drivers in India. Her service "for women by women" enables women to move freely in the city at any time. Her hope is that the cityscape and atmosphere of the city will increasingly change, and so will the position of women in society. In her words: "The more women become taxi drivers, the less women are afraid to step out of the house."

In a rest area along the North Italian highways, Aurora sells her body to truckdrivers. Her brother Angiolino keeps watch. He is her companion and her bodyguard, despite his mental disability. In this way they make their living; each doing what they can. The siblings are on a dirty ledge staring into the dark. Two people alone in the world.

Inclinations is the result of several years of collaboration between the artist couple Eva and Guido Haas. Scratched and printed directly onto black film, the film frames were synchronized frame by frame with Dave Brubeck's Take 5. The working print of the film featured the shortest possible cuts, only four to five frames long. Where necessary, three of the four frames were then painted over in black again in order to be able to assemble the frame precisely.

Ligne continue is a gliding of lines, which stand out and gently overlap, the one giving way to the others - in the exchange or eventually when the film yields to a visual habit, the line stands out as speed perspective relayed by the recognition of road signs, or the strip of asphalt. A play of lines, play of references, play of the eye maintained by a continuous sonority that adheres or pulls away from the picture.

A silent city, mysteriously deprived of inhabitants, is crossed by a man who has come from a faraway country.

for Ute Aurand, Berlin