Discoveries from Switzerland World Cinema

A young girl full of thoughts, decides to take a bike ride to understand more about herself and life. The bike as a fundamental friend to confide in

During the Second World War, three Swiss soldiers await relief in an isolated mountain fort. Each will have to deal with himself

Grand gestures, determined expressions and tight legs. Roughly collaged footballers don‘t owe each other anything and a referee loses the overview. Non-football fans love this film.

When wind remembers, it can go on forever to remind us.

A young artist's obsession leads him to a surreal and haunting experience that blurs the lines between reality and imagination and uncovers a surprising revelation about his DNA.

Two weeks of stay in the Himalayan mountains of Ladakh, between 3500 and 4500m altitude, where the mythical Snow Panther and the Boreal Lynx are discovered.

"We founded footages with found footages as a found footage" claims the Eurasian collective Pastinaca Videotapes Plantation, composed by anonymous filmmakers. They are rescuing and re-creating an abandoned Chinese "Neican", an old and rare VCR tape, a format now almost extinct everywhere. Such is the case with this political-tourist documentary about Western Cyprus, blossomed of their fertile, unique and mysterious cultivation, perhaps intending to find refreshing insights into the past for present complexities.

After 4 hours and 48 minutes of play, Nadal defeated Federer 6–4, 6–4, 6–7(5–7), 6–7(8–10), 9–7. This final is regarded by many as one of the greatest tennis matches ever played.

What is this incessant noise that keeps ringing? It sounded like the roar of the wind, the hum of passing cars, or the sea breeze sweeping through the streets. It felt unfamiliar. The lights of the night, the towering and intricate buildings illuminated by smooth LED surfaces, come alive, dancing with faces and bodies. Seoul is a whirlwind—a devouring maw, a cacophony, a rapid stream of images that leaves your senses struggling to find focus. And so, I set out to trace this intriguing sound. One of them comes from the roof of my home. It originates from the wind and evokes the repetitive beat of a drum. On se souvient des pas begins here. Through a geographic and temporal journey as the camera transitions from one scene to another, the film encounters Korea's history and traditions. This is a kind of journal—an attempt to grasp the essence of this land where I lived for ten months.

In early 2020, the lockdown has brought the world to a halt. Homes become space stations, hermetically sealed off from the outside world. Nobody goes out, only the thoughts go wandering. Students of seven international universities exchange personal impressions of and reflections on this forced isolation online and get to know each other through this joint project.

When two lovers meet, they disappear from view and enter a dimension known only to themselves.

In the near future, Susan's fiance Marco decides to have a chip implanted in his brain. Marco, who suffers from severe depression and has professional problems as a result, sees this new technology as his only chance not to lose touch. Susana, who originally drew attention to the chip, soon begins to have doubts, when Marco begins to change daramtically.

Being murdered, a man is transformed into a monster. 200 years later the monster takes revenge on some tourists invading his place of doom.

Their dream was to have a child. Three couples who have wasted their money, time and energy on failed fertility treatments try to rebuild themselves. After so many years of obsession, they will attempt to bury their goals while secretly waiting for a miracle.

Sylvan is about a dying father and his three sons, who all want the inheritance for themselves; which unexpectedly gives the old man new vitality. All five characters are played by Sylvan Gunten.

Animated football.

Leaving for Myanmar in 2020, the filmmaker could not have anticipated the upheaval the country was on the verge of experiencing. Through the darkness of the Covid-19 epidemic and the violent coup d’état orchestrated by the military junta, a light continues to shine: that of 17-year-old Zu Zu and her steadfast dream of a better future for her loved ones. A four-handed diary and chronicle of a friendship.

“Farsi seme is silent. Silent like the plants that surround us. Silent like the seeds that I began to collect in places where I would go for a walk. Collecting blood, collecting seeds. The power of seeds represented the intersection of solidarity and singularity: it wasn’t only a no-longer-being-a-flower. There was a multiplicity of forms, a lushness, the intricate delicacy of their forms… I thought of translating venous and menstrual bloods into two different natural pigments, hematite and rubia tinctorum”. (Anna Marziano)

Several different sequences about an amateur filmmaker who rejects cinema and the films he has made.

At once, reflective of reality and consciousness, and self-made fantasies born from distortion, the worlds we dream are complex, and multi-faceted. In pooling disparate fragments from our waking hours, they become an entity all their own, shaped by our thoughts and experiences, yet realized in something entirely fictionalized.

A rhythmic essay about the nature of the industry. Shot on 35mm in a steel mill and rearranged into an audiovisual experience using original sounds.

Ahmad Joudeh was a stateless refugee, until dancing changed his life.

A short film by Lévana Schütz

This young couple knows vaguely that the love which bonds them can be their way of freeing themselves from the tenacious resentments and suspicions peculiar to this remote region of France, stigmatized as it is by a survival economy. But the social bonds that the adults forge are unexpectedly violent.

In a desert landscape, some children play hide-and-seek. The remains of dry stone walls and a few abandoned objects seem to bear witness to a long evaporated civilization. Five-year-old Francesca's fantasies mingle with the harshness of her environment.

Men in prison face their experiences, their words tracing the paths of their trying lives. Time passes in impressive lengths, testing patience and sharpening the expectation of the end of their confinement. To each his own truths and convictions, capable of telling real, well-imagined stories.

Trisomy21, as told by people affected by this syndrome, is the ambition of this documentary. While the title may seem stigmatizing, the aim is quite different. The idea is for us to discover that a person is defined by himself, not by a label.

In 1947, Marie Tinguely leaves her homeland to go work in a hospital for the Swiss mission in the South African bush. After her death, the films shot over 25 years as a missionary, as well as some of the letters she wrote are found in a family apartment. I decide to explore them.

A tapir mother reveals her tragic story in an embroidery. She suffers a violent attack, the loss of her home, and the disappearance of her son. Will she find him?

When the night is clear, the inquisitive mouse Armstrong can look at the moon from her attic through a telescope: white and round and unreachable. "The moon is made of cheese!" claim the other mice and do not want to know about Armstrong's theory. So he makes a plan to prove that the moon is made of rock, just like the Earth. He will fly there and get a chunk! But how is that supposed to work? A mouse in space ... Fortunately, Armstrong gets help and thus takes on the legacy of the mouse flight pioneers. He constructs a rocket to take him to the moon and back. After weeks of experiments, experiments and failures that cost Armstrong everything - even his beloved attic and the valuable telescope - the time has finally come: the rocket takes off. According to the picture book by Torben Kuhlmann, "Armstrong" describes how a furry, four-legged inventor succeeds in the impossible. A small step for the mouse, but a big step for humanity, which is already on its heels.

Mata Ne is about a woman tracing her roots. She travels, together with her mother, to her second home in Japan. It is about them visiting the almost one hundred years old grandmother on the remote island of Okinawa. This reunion feels like a farewell at the same time, somewhere in between being home and alienation.

The journey of discovery of a fictional, virtual island world. The audience encounters creatures who transcend categories such as male/ female, artificial/natural, animal/human and who are constantly changing the form of their bodies. Together, they explore possibilities of overcoming their physical boundaries and learn how to create new (life) conditions.

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

Daddy's on a business trip, so little Hannes has to help his mother: the house of his late grandfather needs a clear-out. Hannes' displeasure at having to work vanishes after he finds a photo. The attic plays host to a journey of discovery into the world of longing and childlike imagination.

This film appears to be selling something that cannot be sold. It's a pitch for something that's inside all of us already.

Charly is afraid of her dreams. Her grandmother calls her a naïve scaredycat – one who turns round and round until it keels over dead. What is it that Charly is afraid of? These dreams don't show reality, right? Is there even such a thing as reality?

It's summertime. The pool is packed. A strange discovery draws the lifeguard's attention to a group of young teenagers...

At the beginning of 2023, in the city of Lugano, Switzerland, "La tour vagabonde" arrived for three months, bringing alternative culture in a city that just 2 years before illegally demolished the oldest anarchic community center.

An explosive kung fu battle between two pétanque balls.

He is known as the deceased, “O falecido" - even though he is in no way dead. Philipp lived with his father until the age of 16, but has no memory of him. What exactly happened? He comes across a diary and tries to find answers - and by confronting the women in his family he finds his own perspective.

A performance by the experimental theatre group Mummenschanz.

A young man's journey of healing through art.

Weekend trips, city breaks, a detour into nature or once around the world. Barely a few days off, you're already gone. Never before has the desire to travel been so widespread and visited places so overloaded. What do we get out of it, other than the picture proof that we have been there?