Die weisse Arche

The movie recalls children who suffered mental and physical harm both during the last century, particularly in religious orphanages, and during the time of early modernperiod witch-hunts. It shows that the mindsets and behavioural patterns of both time periods are more alike than one might think.

The filmmaker travels to the mysterious land of the “poor souls”. He visits eyewitnesses in rural areas of Central Switzerland. They offer their account of mystifying experiences in connection with the afterlife, of evil deeds by people who passed away long ago in need of atonement. The film investigates the hidden signs of mountain magic and reminds us of our own myths, ghosts and primal images. It also looks for paths to self-awareness that could be revealed to us within and under layers of centuries-old Catholic cultural sediment.

Paul, a ships's mechanic on a cargo boat, goes ashore one day in Lisbon and makes the acquaintance of loneliness, of keeping silence, and of Rosa, a barmaid. A three-sided relationship develops between Paul, Rosa and Elisa, Paul's wife, who lives in a town on the Rhine. All of Pauls' money is stolen, he follows the tracks of the thief and gets stabbed. Nevertheless, an in spite of Rosa's departure and the distance that separates him from Elisa, Paul gradually recovers.

At the far end of Alaska, filmmaker Roman Droux fulfils a dream and travels to the land of grizzly bears together with bear researcher David Bittner. The two adventurers set off for the realm of the bears to a place where there is no trace of human civilization. Surrounded by crystal-clear torrents, they experience the care of a mother bear and impressive battles of giant male bears. Roman Droux brings pictures of breathtaking beauty to the big screen. A lively nature film for the whole family.

Vitus is a boy who almost seems to be from another planet: He has hearing like a bat, he plays piano like a virtuoso and studies encyclopaedias at the age of five. No wonder his parents begin to anticipate a brilliant future for him. They want Vitus to become a pianist. However, the little genius prefers to play in his eccentric grandfather’s workshop. He dreams of flying and of a normal childhood. Ultimately, with one dramatic leap, Vitus takes control of his own life…

“Höhenfeuer” is both a story of childhood and of a love affair: The deaf-born “Bub” and his sister “Belli” live with their parents on a remote farm in the mountains. The father intentionally resists the modern age: “I'd rather beat him to death than put him in a home”. After school Belli is not only a servant in her own home but also her younger brother's teacher. From early childhood, they have been an inseparable pair. They love one another. “Holy Mother of God, what sort of children have I?” wails the resigned mother, when the two children do things that are not “normal”. This is just the beginning of the story… Had the film been made 100 years ago – it would have been a saga.

What's in the air? - A cinematic diary: personally anchored, at the same time political and social, with the courage for imbalance, for irritating simultaneity of inner and outer world, everyday life and state of emergency. The film spins a multi-layered web, captures feelings, thoughts, contradictory tendencies in a poetic and experimental way: an emotional reflection of this ambivalent time between powerlessness and departure.

Like a mosaic, the film “Our Garden of Eden” shows the everyday life in an allotment garden area that reflects the multiethnic and multicultural modern Swiss society today. People of various geographical, religious, social and political backgrounds till the earth of their respective lots here side by side, creating a microcosm full of dreams, loneliness, homesickness, joy, family tragedies, strokes of fate and conflicts. The Swiss concept of tidiness and order meets an exotic talent for improvisation, the will to integrate and respect meet ignorance. Christians and Muslims, people from nations at enmity enjoy a peaceful coexistence in the allotment gardens, sharing what seems most precious in our society today: time, attention and space. They find the path to themselves as well as a place in the eternal cycle that life is.

From the mid-1960s onwards thousands of western hippies and flower children moved to India in search of an alternative lifestyle, spiritual enlightenment and drug experimentation. Most returned after a few months or years, but some stayed forever. Filmmaker Grossenbacher meets some of these lifers, like Cesare, a cave-dwelling Yogi, still striving for spiritual liberation. Swiss Hanspeter runs a small farm in the Himalayas, but judging by the hash pipe permanently wedged between his lips, he is no traditionalist. Then there are the South African twins who get through the day with booze and by sewing hippie clothes for both the old and new generation of Goa freaks.

Photo?, the clown calls the public from the ring of the circus. The delicious number like the even more famous soap bubble number and other Pic classics can be enjoyed in "Le Cirque de Pic". They form the heart of Thomas Ott's affectionate portrait film. Emil Steinberger tells how he was enthusiastic about Pic from the beginning and how he recommended the clown from St.Gallen to the Roncalli Circus director. Ott reviews Pic's career. Pic himself tells how varied and romantic the spartan life in the circus caravan was. Photos show that the subtle art of the clown cannot be separated from the person Richard Hirzel, who knows how to enchant with his empathic poetry. The portrait closes with scenes from the current programme "Comical Bones", in which Pic shines as the narrator. It is Emil once again who praises Pic's subtle and expressive facial expressions.

What happens when fathers do more family work than mothers? An overview of families where traditional roles have been reversed. The director's experiences with children are reflected in the film in the form of short animations.

When two friends collect money for the so-called “suffering in America” in the streets of Accra, is it for fun, political provocation, or a prophecy? Two Swiss filmmakers will answer these questions with the help of seven musicians from Ghana – M3NSA, Wanlov The Kubolor, Adomaa, Worlasi, Akan, Mutombo Da Poet, and Poetra Asantewa – who have written new songs and produced video clips especially for the documentary film Contradict. Tomorrow’s ideas and trends are emerging more decentralized than ever in a globalized world. What do global developments and shifts in values look like from the ground up in Ghana and the African continent? How do we want to confront and contradict those changes? Can new visions for the future become global realities?

Bethlehem is a neighbourhood in the city of Bern where immigrants from over 30 nations have settled. At the centre of this film is the junior team of the Bethlehem Football Club. In this team, the majority are immigrants between 15 and 16 years old. The film also portrays - along with football - their everyday lives at school, vocational training and leisure time. It questions the protagonists about their self-image, their dreams, worries and fears, asks them about what connects them and what divides them, about what it’s like to be a foreigner in their former homeland and how they get along in another foreign environment.

Messies – a balancing act between ingenuity and overload. Are you master of chaos or is chaos master of you? The film offers a multifaceted insight into the everyday lives of four messies. We embark on a trip through their jam-packed treasure chambers, discover their ingenious inventions, their dangerous tinkering and have a look around in their vast archives. We witness the conflicts they have with their relatives, neighbours and institutions that result from their being different. An intimate view of an irritating yet fascinating phenomenon.

An ethnographic documentary film in three movements, along the lines of a symphony. The three movements reflect the three differing stages of development co-existing within the mountainous canton. In Göschenen, at the foot of the Gotthard, which straddles Europe’s North-South axis, industrialization took hold long ago, and the mountain farmers of old now work in offices and factories. In the Schächtental, however, the traditional family-centric mountain economy survives. Meanwhile, the village of Bristen in the Maderanertal is in the throes of upheaval: while the traditional farming communities still exist, nigh on 250 inhabitants leave the area daily to go to work or school.

The experiment is a journey through the remotest time and on the smallest scale that we can imagine: an exploration of matter about one millionth of a second following the Big Bang that generated our universe. As the new experiment at CERN proceeds in its exploration of the mysterious energy that animates the universe, scientists and artists guide us towards the shadow line where science and art, in different ways, pursue truth and beauty. Some of these men and women believe in god, while others believe only in experiment and doubt. But in their search for truth they are all alert to an elusive sixth – or seventh – sense… the sense of beauty.

The Swiss artist Markus Raetz is an established figure in the international art world. For the film by Iwan Schumacher, the artist from Bern is for the first time giving a camera team an insight into his 40 years of work.

The internet has changed everything, also for journalism: business models are falling by the wayside, news is available for free, anywhere and at any time. I accompany journalists in their daily lives, see how they struggle, and I do what they also do: I observe and ask, also question myself, my fascination and my suspicion. I, too, use the net with ease. I am a user – and I am used.

A documentary film about Swiss musician and singer/songwriter Stephan Eicher, his Yéniche roots and the history and persecution of the Yéniche people in Switzerland and their links to Swiss music.

"NOT ME - A Journey with Not Vital" takes us on an intriguing foray into the eventful life and creative artistic expressions of contemporary Swiss artist Not Vital. This film essay sheds light on the work of the internationally renowned Grisons artist who for a long time remained the "well-known unknown" inside his home country. Director Pascal Hofmann traces the driving force of this restless cosmopolitan, and establishes a dialogue between the motifs in Vital's work, his childhood dreams, and the influences of his most important places of stay such as Beijing, Patagonia, Niger, "his" village of Sent in the Grisons, and New York. The film opens up visually stunning insights into Vital's perception of reality and its artistic transformation. From beginning to end, this film tells the author's enraptured exploration of the longings of an artist who came from the mountains.

A woman confronts her past – and invents her future. Seventy-six-year-old Elise knows exactly how she will spend the final years of her life: living with Paul, to whom she has been happily married for 50 years, in their villa on Zürichberg till her last breath, and tenderly cared for by Angela, their faithful housekeeper. But then Angela is discovered by the theatre and hired for a stage play. Paul hits a man with his '68 Maserati and subsequently becomes friends with him; Elise passionately kisses a young veterinarian.

The 36-year-old Swiss artist Urs Fischer, who lives in New York, has been enjoying international fame for some years now. This documentary follows him during the preparation of his exclusive exhibition in an American museum and thus takes us into the daily life and work of an artist.

A three-year journey with actor Bruno Ganz. He plays various roles in various places, but he also plays Bruno Ganz – filming and directing friends. Again and again he works on the role of Dr. Faust, the figure who – speaking for us all – desperately wants to discover “what holds the world together at the core”. A thousand days of searching for one's own destiny, with despair as the only companion, and placing hope in the creative power of poetry.

Alfredo seems to lead the life of so many Ticinese families born in the valleys, who now only go back to their native village for the weekend. But Alfredo doesn’t longer experiences the journey as a form of escapism, but as an obsessive rite which is repeated over and over again. Alfredo has lost his own identity.

Cuno Amiet lived from 1868-1961, yet seen today many of his pictures have a contemporary edge. Amiet was a Swiss pioneer of modern painting along with Ferdinand Hodler and Giovanni Giacometti. The film visits three highly individual Amiet collectors in Dallas, Geneva and Studen, near Biel. Surrounded by Amiet’s works they tell us what part these paintings play in their lives.

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross is arguably the world's most reknowned expert on the process of dying. With Kübler Ross' full collaboration, Haupt's film looks back on her life and career, from her earliest days as a triplet in 1920s Zurich, to her fame as an international lecturer and writer based in the US. Now in her twilight years, Kübler-Ross is bedbound in Arizona, and awaiting death herself. A truly fascinating film that enables us to re-evaluate our own emotions regarding life's greatest certainty, death. With the addition of archive film and interviews with Kübler-Ross' sisters and close colleagues, Haupt builds up a rich picture of a remarkable woman who has done so much to make death less of a taboo.

When her mother decides to stop administering medication to her mentally challenged daughter, 18-year-old Dora awakes, as if from a deep sleep. Dora discovers her body, her sensuality and finally, sex, too. Her parents are shocked by Dora’s sudden unbridled lust for life and, when she gets involved with a man she meets at her market stall vendor job, they are furious. Seeing her relationship as unscrupulous and abusive, they demand their daughter stops seeing her lover. But their efforts are to no avail and, when Dora’s affair leads to a more serious situation, everyone has to reassess the limits of their relationship to each other, and reconsider such topics as self-determination, trust and jealousy. Courageous, necessary and sensitive – Stina Werenfels’ adaptation of Lukas Bärfuss’s stage play is a fearless and moving drama about letting go. The tender, subjective shots that capture the beauty of the world as Dora sees it are as much a part of the film’s success as is the portrait of a desperate mother, having to cope with life’s pitfalls

Is it possible to talk with animals? The filmmaker explores the world of animal communication. She wants to understand her excited dog Bina. On her international journey she meets two horse teachers, an animal communicator, a biologist, an animal therapist and the founder of The Trust Technique. Salome discovers astonishing possibilities of animal communication, whether it's with her dog Bina, other dogs, horses, cats, dolphins, or a goat.

"Grauzone" is the film by Fredi M. Murer that anticipated the 1980s movement in 1978. A mysterious epidemic haunts Switzerland. The symptoms: a sudden urge to go outside, sudden melancholy, general sensitization. An unintentionally published advertisement informs about the wave of illness and triggers uncertainty, which also penetrates the uniform suburban idyll of Zurich. Julia and her husband Alfred live here, who, in addition to his work as a commercial employee, leads a double life as an eavesdropping specialist and is increasingly plunged into a crisis of meaning.

No Apologies describes the state of physical and mental siege of black people living in precarious conditions in Lausanne. Confronted with the need to protect anonymity and the impossibility of filming in the street, No Apologies was conceived in a way that allows its characters to express themselves freely. Masked or barefaced, they bear witness to their personal journey, their struggle for everyday survival and police brutality. Thus questioning their place in a Swiss society that considers them as pariahs. The film is a collective project resulting from an alliance between the people directly affected by these issues and movie professionals. Given the urgency of the situation, the documentary was produced in very little time, in guerrilla mode without the constraints of institutional funding.

After 40 years Alain Tanner again travels to the port of Genoa, where he worked for a shipping company as a 22-year-old. On the back of his own memories he depicts the rough world of the dockworkers, another of those trades that has undergone fundamental changes as a result of recessions, modernisation and liberalisation. “The visual impression of the harbour and the city has changed very little, but what goes on there nowadays is completely different. The city is still as beautiful and alien and somewhat sad as before. But the port is dying, like so many other major ports. In Genoa, as elsewhere in Italy, the economic, social and political climate is highly explosive. But you also feel that things are in flow and the country is on the verge of some far-reaching changes. In this film I wanted to explore my own memories of Genoa, uncover its present and guess at its future. Genoa, this beautiful, this sad, this alien town has become for me a metaphor for society in change.”

In the “Kunstgiesserei” in St. Gallen renowned artists – such as Urs Fischer, Katharina Fritsch, Peter Fischli, Mariana Castillio Deball, Paul McCarthy, Alex Hanimann and Hans Josephsohn – meet up with Felix Lehner, the charismatic founder of the art foundry. He and his crew translate ideas into sculptures with a great deal of passion and enthusiasm. Their success has led to the fact that some of the production phases had to be outsourced to Shanghai. The cultural and artisanal exchange with China is tremendously enriching. And regardless of whether in Shanghai or St. Gallen, the molten metal is spellbinding as it turns dreams into reality.

On his expedition into the heart of Switzerland, Swiss filmmaker Matthias von Gunten met six people whose lives and everyday lives, their small and big fates fascinated him. At first glance, they have nothing to do with each other apart from living in Switzerland: six very different people, their attempts to master everyday life and their individual escapes from reality. In the course of this one year, in which von Gunten visited them again and again, a lot happens in the lives of these people. On these surprising journeys, Von Gunten traces the absurd and dramatic behind seemingly normal everyday life. Thus, little by little, an exciting time picture emerges in which each of these people has their place. The six people, their fears and dreams, their hopes and failures create an atmospheric picture of our lives today. To face or escape the much disdained Helvetic narrowness: there are different possibilities - the six people in Matthias von Gunten's film live some of them.

An artist, a musician, a filmmaker. Three worlds, three ways of thinking, three interpretations. Fused to an energetic work. Beat Zoderer’s work fascinate with quiet humor and the intelligent challenge of distrusting a conventional view of things. Nik Bärtsch’s sound is characterized by his love for the architecturally articulated space and rhythmic overlaps. Filmmaker Jürg Egli has brought the two artists together in a studio session. The result is a cinematic performance of unique intensity. „The idea can sometimes only be thought out in its realization.“ Beat Zoderer Sketchbook IX 1999

The painter from Solothurn (CH) Frank Buchser was sent to the USA in 1866 to paint a large painting of the "Heroes of the Civil War" for the future Council of States Hall in Bern. Initially Buchser was busy portraying politicians and generals in the spirit of his clients. More and more, however, he became interested in the Indians expelled to the reservations and in the living conditions of the slaves who had just been freed. Years earlier, fascinated by Moorish culture, Frank Buchser rides disguised as a Turkish sheikh to the Moroccan town of Fez, which is forbidden to Christians under death penalty. The Swiss filmmaker Bruno Moll (Pizza Bethlehem, Tunisreise) tells the two adventurous journeys of the rebellious and controversial artist. The film narrative begins with film documents of the riots in Charlottesville in August 2017 and the diary entries made by Frank Buchser in 1869, when General Lee was his model for the portrait. In a large flashback the film tells Buchser's story of his stay in Andalusia and Morocco in 1858, returns with him to his homeland and closes with his North American adventure.

Every ten years, one of the largest public festivals in Switzerland puts the small town of Baden in a positive state of emergency. What motivates countless people to help shape the "Badenfahrt" and make an incredible commitment? The 78-minute documentary "BADENFAHRT - FEST VEREINT" shows the emotions of those who put the festival on its feet. The feel-good movie is a plea for volunteering, for diversity and shows what positive things can be achieved together.

The theme of Fredi M. Murer's contribution to the episode film Swissmade is "Switzerland after us". Murer's episode takes place in the year 2069. An "integrated citizen with a latent tendency to become an unintegrated citizen" is commissioned by the "Brain Center" to produce a film report about the unknown mission of a foreign being. The alien being is an extraterrestrial designed by H. R. Giger long before ALIEN with a built-in camera and tape, which travels across the earth in the year 2069 to explore current conditions. The film reporter is Murer himself. Without exception, the performers in real life were authentic 1968 activists, some of whom later made political or artistic careers. In addition to this: Murer's freaky "Chicorée" with Urban Gwerder and one of the most spontious and colourful film ends ever.

Sarah is a solitary 17-year old girl. She struggles to connect with people, a reality her listless bourgeois family fails to understand. Sarah wishes she had a boyfriend, a friend, someone she can connect to. Instead, she struggles with depression, and perpetuating a loop that only serves to isolate her further. Yet Sarah finds an outlet in her high school drama class— when she performs she becomes someone else entirely, another character able to give truth to her most hidden desires. But sublimation through art leads Sarah down a dangerous path to a secret only she can keep.

Two friends – Paul Girard, the “people’s mayor” of Delémont who has his sights set on a national career and Liu, a Chinese watchmaker living in the Jura – decide to organise the semi-finals of the Miss China competition in Switzerland. Paul is hoping this original, media-hyped project will help him acquire the image his party has been refusing him: that of future deputy. Liu, meanwhile, hopes to open the Chinese market to luxury watches. Instead of the heroes’ welcome they were anticipating in bringing the women to the touristic Meccas of Switzerland, the two partners are met with resistance from the political milieu and indifference from their sponsors.

The story of Rafael, a fun-loving youth on the verge of manhood who is trying to make his dream of total freedom become reality. Determined to conquer the world with his Utopia Blues Band at any cost, Rafael's philosophy is that “life is a game”. But the game unexpectedly becomes bitter earnest. How much freedom is permitted?

In 1944, four-year-old Argyris Sfountouris survived a brutal massacre committed by the German occupying forces, in which he lost his parents and thirty more relatives. The Greek orphan was sent to the Pestalozzi Children’s Village in Trogen, Switzerland and obtained a Ph.D in maths and astrophysics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich. Now a 66-year-old man of winning charm and melancholy cheerfulness, Argyris has forever been tackling the horror he had to go through as a little boy. He has not tried to come to terms with it emotionally. Rather, he has tried to learn to live with it and to do his utmost to prevent it from happening again. An intimate, reflective film about the quest for peace and the almost insurmountable difficulties linked to true reconciliation – an open-ended journey.

A large private television channel has just been established in Switzerland. A communications company is given the task of drawing up concepts for programmes and decides to buy the rights for the stories of various criminals from which to produce films. Rosemonde decides to sell her story. Eight years ago, she killed a man who tried to violate her. As there were no witnesses, the case was dismissed for lack of evidence. Kevin, a film producer, charges Paul, a young writer, with the task of writing the scenario relating Rosemonde's life at the time. However, she appears to be incapable of recalling her past and clams up when Paul approaches her with the questions he needs to ask her. Marie, a young actress, is then asked to visit Rosemonde and in exchange is promised the role in the film if she can make her talk. The film relates the strange relationship between the two women who begin to develop a friendship

Nowadays, the wish to have children ranges between legitimate desires, primary instincts, social pressures and lifestyle choices. With a great deal of expert knowledge and impressive pictures, the film takes a candid look at reproductive medicine and its industry, as well as into the test tube. The point is, however, not to praise or stigmatise reproductive medicine. Nevertheless, the social, political and, above all, ethical implications are palpable at all times. A present-day science fiction.

Stations are islands, detached between worlds and times, cosmopolitan meeting points and junctions. "Mahatah - Side Stories from Main Stations" plunges us into this world where, almost without realising it, people scrub the stairs, set up the train compositions, look after security and sell tickets - or kebabs.

In a remote village nestled in the foggy hills of northern Bangladesh, Rupa fights against a predetermined destiny. With only a bike, a camera and her knowledge, she defies traditions and tries to make a place for herself in her community. When a twist of fate hits her family, Rupa’s freedom is threatened. Will she be able to maintain the fragile balance between the expectations of her loved ones and her own dreams?

The Kempf family lives on three different farms at different altitudes in the Schächen Valley in the Canton of URI. ten times a year they move from farm to farm with their livestock: up the mountain in the spring, down to the valley in autumn – and then up again in winter to farm their called “Pfaffen”, at an altitude of 1725 meters above sea level. This is where they feed their livestock the hav they have collected from the steep alpine slopes during the summer. The film is an intimate portrait of a family, with who the farmer's grandparents and his sister also live. Over the course of the year, the film director and the family developed a close relationship, close enough to render visible the problems of modern times in conjunction with this archaic lifestyle, problems which the farmers refuse to let get them down.

Propelled from society by tragic turns, the people of Darwin (population 35) must now find ways to coexist in a place without a government, a church, jobs, or children. The near-ghost town's survival depends on a fragile, gravity-fed waterline that descends from the mountains where top secret weapons are being tested. One "accidental" drop of a bomb, they half-joke, could wipe out their entire town. "Darwin" is a documentary film de Nick Brandestini about an isolated community at the end of a weathered road in Death Valley, California, and tells the story of a uniquely American place and yet a place that is unique even within America.

Paul, in his fifties, is a filmmaker. He writes a screenplay as if it were his job and starts looking for an actress for the lead role. The fact that he can't find her must be due to something: perhaps there are too many stories, too many images, too many actresses and too little peace. Perhaps it is also a necessity. Paul spontaneously throws away his script. Jean has just finished film school and is hired by Paul as his assistant. One day, Paul comes across an old photo of Dara, an Italian actress he once knew and admired, who has long since disappeared from the screen. Paul asks Jean to find her. Both of them do everything they can to bring her back to the screen. To achieve this, they embark on a world of feelings, confrontations and dreams.

Situated halfway between Bern and Biel in the foggy Lyssbach valley, Suberg has gone from a sleepy farming village to a dormitory village over the decades. The filmmaker was born in Suberg and has lived there all his life, successfully ignoring the village and its inhabitants for 32 years. When he was in primary school, his friends were from Suberg. Nowadays they live in Zurich or Berlin and the evenings in the countryside are becoming lonelier. As a result, he now wants to become part of the village community. But how do you get to know the inhabitants of a village that has closed all of its meeting places?

Amidst the preparations for her 35th wedding anniversary, Meredith is surprised by the discovery that she is HIV-positive. Only her husband André could have been the carrier of the virus.

Daniele von Arb was 16 years old in 1970 when he and his friends founded the revolutionary cell in Zurich later listed by the U.S. secret service CIA in its chart on international terrorism under the code name “Annebäbi”. Today he is a fortune-teller and future consultant. A hurtling journey through the armed struggle of the 1970s, entry into the cosmos of spirituality and finally, in 1989, a first class ticket to freedom.

Boobs. Melons. Bazookas: American director Kristen Vermilyea has large breasts, neck pain, back pain and balance issues.
 Her decision to get a reduction triggers questions about identity, aging and bodies. Kristen departs on a series of wacky and humorous adventures before going under the knife.

Vincent Fleury, a taxi driver who has been rejected by his wife, embarks on an adventure from which he hopes to benefit: in exchange for a sum of money which will enable him to pay child support for his son, he agrees to set out for Crete with an unknown person, Thelma, to help her find the ex-lover who had spurned her. During their trip across Switzerland, Italy and Greece, they flirt – but at the last minute Thelma always holds back. Vincent is at a loss to understand until he discovers that she is a trans woman who, in order to keep him with her has been lying from the very beginning. Torn between love and repulsion, Vincent has to make a choice.

An ode to liberated speech and to the power of words, “those one speaks to others, those one speaks in silence”, Alain Tanner’s third film is inspired by a poet and a poetic text which deeply affected him as a young director: Cahier d’un retour au pays natal, written in 1939 by Aimé Césaire. A poem extolled by the Surrealists, this seminal flow of anti-colonial thinking by the West-Indian-born poet is the bubbling spring which inspires the gestures and words of the film’s main character, Vincent (François Marthouret), a 30-year-old from Geneva.Weighed down by the monotony and boredom of his life as a well-off westerner, he sells all his possessions and decides to leave for Algeria with his fiancée. The subject is clearly that of escape from one’s place of belonging, a Rimbaudesque theme dear to Tanner, which is here directly linked to the Third Worldist discourse of the 1960s and 1970s. But the strength of the film lies in the way it turns this thinking on its head: on the eve of their departure, chance circumstances prevent the couple from leaving. Instead, they decide to pursue their dream of escape by living hidden away in their empty apartment. Again, Tanner shows that it is the inner mileage travelled that matters, not the arrival at a destination; the posing of a question rather than the answer. As the director says at the beginning of the film: “Speaking words can be an act in itself, it can also be a substitute for action.” This is an important precept for the understanding of Tanner’s cinema: poetry is a form of action, and having it in mind, reciting it, can help to give a new shape to reality: in the film’s final scene, the couple decide to have a child.

The Swiss National Association for the Storage of Radioactive Waste plans to build a permanent waste disposal site in Wellenberg, Canton of Nidwalden. A regional citizens’ action group is formed to protest against it. Murer not only interviews supporters and opponents, in particular the Alpine farmers living on the Wellenberg. He starts by raising the question of a time-scale that is out of all proportion to the human lifespan as a measure of time. Fredi Murer dedicated the film to the “children and children’s children”, both of the farmers on the Wellenberg and of all of us. For the first time, Murer deals explicitly with the ‘can-do’ generation that lives and works as though they were the last people on this earth.

H.R. Giger became known all over the world as the designer of the aliens in Ridley Scott's feature film ALIEN. In this documentary about H.R. Giger's work, which was made many years before, the artist's creative process and the interplay between conscious and unconscious influences are the focus. Statements by experts and contemporaries address the question of the artist's position and social responsibility.

“If the bee disappears from the surface of the Earth, man would have no more than four years left to live.” Einstein. All over the world bees have been dying for the past three years. Although the causes for this are still a mystery, one thing is already clear: there is more at stake than simply a few dead insects, and a great deal more than just honey. Seeking answers, the film embarks on a journey to meet with people whose lives depend on bees: to a Swiss beekeeper living on an Alp; to the gigantic almond plantations in California; to a bee brain researcher in Berlin; to a pollen trader in China; and to the killer bees in the Arizona desert. All report on how the bees are vanishing. The film tells us about their lives. And about ours.

The 80-year-old psychiatrist and best-selling author Irvin D. Yalom is considered the most influential psychotherapist in the USA. He has sold millions of books worldwide. Critics describe him as inspiring, compelling and life-changing. His work emphasizes the value of relationships and focuses on how therapy works. The film "Yalom's Cure" offers more than a classic biography: Yalom takes the audience on an existential journey through the many layers of the human psyche. In the role of the tour guide, Yalom shares his insights and provides deep insights into his own soul life.

The story of four people trying to fulfil their most basic desires in life. A group of young people meet up regularly in a nightclub situated in a former customs house on the Swiss-French border, as a means of escape from their drab lives. NO MAN'S LAND is an “in- between” film. Between staying and leaving, between Paul and Jean, about friendship, between Paul and Madelaine, Jean and Mali, Jean and Lucie, about love. Between Paul and his route of escape, Jean and his territory, Madelaine and her music, Mali and her exile.

They don’t wear uniforms or carry weapons. They have no bodyguards, but their missions lead them to the most dangerous parts of the world. They are equipped with laptops, cameras and sound recorders. Despite impossible working conditions, they collect the evidence for indictments against those who ordered some of the most serious crimes of our time – committed in Darfur, Uganda, The Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic – they are the investigators of the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

Coming of age in Barrow, Alaska - the northernmost community of the United States - has become a little more complicated for the local youth than it was for their ancestors who originally named this place “Ukpiagvik” (“where we hunt snowy owls”). They are the twenty-first century descendants of a culture that has endured for millennia on this isolated, but rapidly changing tundra. The harvest of the agvik (bowhead whale) remains the heart of their culture. "Children of the Arctic" is a year-in-the-life portrait of Native Alaskan teenagers navigating between both being modern American teenagers and the inheritors of an endangered culture.

The day after the night of the full moon, 12 children all 10 years of age are found to be missing in the four language regions of Switzerland. The police and the media reassuringly claim that there are plenty of leads and clues. No kidnapper comes forward to contradict them. At the end of one week, all the parents receive the exact same letter from the children, written in cryptic language. By the next full moon they must have deciphered the letter and complied with all its requirements, or else… A dramatic-ironic tale that reveals the current state of Switzerland. Switzerland as a metaphor. Or: a plea for less logic and more imagination in our world.

The Future Circular Collider is the machine of the future. Thanks to it, we will finally be able to go back in time to the origin of our universe. But which way do we go to set up the largest scientific instrument of all time? Between metaphysics and underground tunnels, a story of the preparations or how men are ready to move mountains for more knowledge.

Wild Plants are plants that seed themselves on fallow land, take possession of seemingly uninhabitable terrain and create new habitats. But wild plants are also people who create their own utopias and become impulse generators for others. People live in many scattered places around the world and projects are growing in which botanical and biographical uncontrolled growth are combined.

Pensioner Roli comes to Fareed’s assistance when the Syrian refugee is faced with the burial of his Muslim wife. Together they stumble into a bewildering forest of Swiss bureaucracy to which Roli finds a beautifully simple answer.

In 1976 a massive explosion at chemicals factory Icmesa in the Italian Seveso had devastating consequences for neighbouring communities and their environment. Icmesa’s parent company was Givaudan, which in turn belonged to Hoffman La Roche, based in Basel. Following the accident, Icmesa’s technical director Jorg Sambeth was charged with failing to keep adequate security measures. During his investigations into the true cause and background to the catastrophe, Sambeth stumbled upon facts that were damaging to those who were paying his lawyers. Yet he is sentenced to five years in prison. How should he take up his grievances with this conglomerate of companies?

A film about people who have fought for more freedom and justice – and have had to pay dearly for it. The two women and two men from Tibet, Congo, Chile, and Turkey now live in Switzerland. In their native countries they were badly tortured for their human rights efforts. Nevertheless, they have not lost their belief in a better world.

In 2009 the body of Alice B is found washed up on an African beach. Next to the corpse of the white, 30-year old European woman lie those of a dozen black migrants. Eight years after this tragedy, Pierre-Alain Meier travels to Senegal in the hope of understanding the story behind this shipwreck. When he was Alice’s age, he wandered the streets of Dakar planning the production of the film Hyenas. Like her, he was a white person in Africa. Perhaps like her, he would hoped he could blend in a bit more with his African friends and co-workers and not be so unmistakeably foreign. Following in Alice’s footsteps, the filmmaker today puts his own story into perspective, with humility and affection, allowing us access to a very intimate terrain. Farewell to Africa tells the story of a final journey and sets out to explore the complex ties – both rich and asymmetrical – that have never ceased to exist between Europe and French-speaking Africa. (Luciano Barisone)

The Film UR-MUSIG authored by Cyrill Schlaepfer is a musical journey into the remaining worlds of authentic and traditional Swiss folkmusic. It's unconventional form as a symphony of sounds, music, pictures and landscapes (soundscapes) caught the attention of the audience at it's successful premiere at the International Filmfestival Locarno 1993. After beeing showcased at many differnent Music- and Filmfestivals in Switzerland and abroad the award winning film UR-MUSIG got it's famous cult-reputation by continuous screening of more than 2 years in Zurich.

Thirteen-year-old Sandra isn't happy to be the new girl in town, but then she falls in love with Mike, the boy next door. Everything seems perfect, until the day the young couple witness Mike's mother having an affair. Mike is devastated, but what he does not realize is that his mother's ardent lover is actually Sandra's father, an old childhood sweetheart. Divided by her loyalty to her father and her feelings for Mike, Sandra decides to keep her father's identity a secret. However, she can't keep up the charade for much longer, and whatever she decides, it is bound to have serious consequences.

Croatia, January 1992. In the midst of the Yugoslav Wars, Chris, a young Swiss journalist is found dead in mysterious circumstances. He was wearing the uniform of an international mercenary group. Anja Kofmel was his cousin. As a little girl, she used to admire this handsome young man; now a grown-up woman, she decides to investigate his story, trying to understand what really was the involvement of Chris in the conflict

Project initially entrusted to Maurice Pialat, who had already begun to film it under the title of “Meurtrières” (see the special edition of Les Inrockuptibles devoted to Pialat), Messidor is based on a crime story which hit the headlines in France in the 1970s: two adolescent girls run away and go on a criminal spree which ends in their deaths. On the face of it, this subject is remote from the world we associate with Tanner, since a violent story of this kind and its social background would seem to impose the realistic, even naturalistic form always shunned by the Swiss director. Moreover, Tanner is instinctively averse to filming physical violence. “Killing a person”, he says, “is generally a gratuitous special effect.” Consequently, of all Tanner’s films Messidor is the only one in which someone dies of non-natural causes. It is also Tanner’s most sombre work, characterised by a despair unmitigated by his usual verbal and situational humour. This is because Tanner accepted the project only on condition that he could recast the original idea and use this violent story as a vehicle for more personal preoccupations: the limits of freedom (already treated in his previous film) are here related to the girls’ frantic flight in the Swiss countryside. What interests him is the possible sullying of this place of excessive peace and quiet, now transformed into a field of experience and criminal fun-and-games by the two characters.

The theater group Valendas from the Safiental in the canton of Grisons adapts Friedrich Dürrenmatt's grotesque novel "Durcheinandertal". They consider the material suitable to represent their world theatrically. The novel tells the story of a foundation that is supposed to help a remote mountain valley to prosperity. The film accompanies the creative process up to the performance in front of an audience. The Safiental is considered a "space with little potential". It is time to depopulate such valleys and leave them to nature. This is the politically pointed debate. Director Bruno Moll has adapted the book for the stage and follow the creative process from rehearsal to performance in front of an audience.

On the barrier island of Sapelo, two young brothers are growing up in the last remaining enclave of the Saltwater Geechee people. Their greatest joy is exploring the wilderness like their adoptive mother, Cornelia Walker Bailey, did as a child. As Sapelo’s storyteller and elder matriarch, she works to preserve what remains of this island community established by her ancestors. At the dawn of adolescence, the brothers inherit her hope, but their bond is tested as they begin to face the wider world. The documentary by Nick Brandestini was awarded the Sesterce d'or for Best Feature Film at Visions du Réel 2020.

Three players in the free market take on ethical responsibility for their actions and the following generations: they engage in sustainable production. At various stages, the film charts the careers of successful entrepreneurs who operate locally, nationally and internationally and manage to combine both the market and morality. The film examines the question of what a neo-liberal economic model could look like and presents the positions of three pioneers, who, day in and day out, balance out fair working conditions, biological production and the cost pressures of the free economy. The film presents a motivating approach to solving a situation which often appears hopeless. It emphasizes ethics and sustainability as factors for success.

The European equivalent of "The Return of the Secaucus 7," this Swiss film looks at the lives of several men and women in their 30s as they confront the slim gains of the "revolutionary" sixties. Max, a dissatisfied copy editor; Myriam, a redhead into tantric sex; and Marie, a supermarket checker who gives unauthorized discounts to the elderly, search for renewed meaning on a communal farm. The title character, a six-year-old child, is the carrier of their hopes for the future.

Max is an orphan who has been hired out to a farmer’s family. His foster parents treat him like a workhorse while their son seizes every opportunity to humiliate him. Playing the accordion is the one thing that is entirely his. But when the new teacher stands up for Max, it only makes a bad situation much worse. The only thing preserving his will to survive is his friendship with Berteli, who was also taken on to work at the farm. Max dreams of Argentina with her: a fantasy world, where allegedly even hayforks are made of silver.

The film begins with a volcanic eruption that stranded the director, Pauline Julier, in a foreign city, among strangers. In turns, these strangers evoke legends about the formation of the continents, the blooming of the tectonic plates or the explosion of ash that provoked summers without sun.

Aïcha, Johan and the couple Lo Manto have taken a step in their lives that has disturbed many people around them. They have made the Muslim creed. This is the beginning of their transformation and reorientation. Aïcha moves from the rural province to the big city and euphorically follows the strict rules of her new religion. The Lo Mantos try to assert themselves against prejudices in their surroundings. And Johan? He wears a beard and flirts with his role as a devout Muslim. Or is filmmaker David Vogel just imagining it? What role does his own Jewish past play? The longer he accompanies his protagonists, the more he feels that he cannot ignore his own biography. His religious past catches up with those he thought he had left far behind.

More than 500 000 Italians live and work in Switzerland. They are considered a „problem“. An over-employed economy needs their labour – a small nation of distinct peculiarity perceives them as foreign objects. They live beyond the barrier of a different language. Discussed as a problem, they remain unknown as human beings.