L'escale

In the course of living long months with a group of Iranian illegals in Athens, the director examines this radical choice of pursuing a better life through the most perilous of possibilities: clandestinity.

Max Bill: Das absolute Augenmass

The film about Max Bill (1908-1994) moves between the dynamic fields of art, aesthetics and politics. Max Bill was probably the most important swiss artist of the 20th century and the most famous student to come out of the legendary Bauhaus in Dessau. He was an ardent anti-fascist and all his avant-garde work as an artist, sculptor, architect and typographer showed a social responsibility and environmental awareness right through his life. His views have become incredibly topical.

Brother's Body

(Re)immersing himself in body building, David Nicolas Parel endeavours to follow his younger brother as he trains for the Arnold Classic – Arnold, from the famous Austrian/American actor and politician. Convinced he is the one who inspired this passion, he worries about the risks this sport has on his brother’s health and aspires to strengthen their now strained bond. A film on the edge.

Lucie et Maintenant

In May of 1982 Julio Cortázar, the Argentinean writer and his companion in life, Carol Dunlop set out in their VW bus on a journey along the highway from Paris to Marseille that, for each of them, was to be their final one. Twenty-five years later, Océane Madelaine and Jocelyn Bonnerave set out to undertake the journey again.

Er nannte sich Surava

Hans Werner hirsch aka Surava was a journalist. He wrote about the deportation of French jews, and the Swiss government chased him because the Swiss government was Nazi-friendly. The Swiss intelligence service (Bundespolizei) knew him as a "communist jew". In fact, he worked for a left newspaper, but he wasn't a jew. Surava took his courage to write about the "censored" inhumanity in Europe.

Die große Stille

An intimate portrayal of the everyday lives of Carthusian monks of the Grande Chartreuse, high in the French Alps (Chartreuse Mountains). The idea for the film was proposed to the monks in 1984, but the Carthusians said they wanted time to think about it. The Carthusians finally contacted Gröning 16 years later to say they were now willing to permit Gröning to shoot the movie, if he was still interested.

Magic Matterhorn

A documentary about entertainment and home, filmed in Switzerland and California.

Der Imker

A documentary about Ibrahim Gezer, who escaped from war in Kurdistan to Switzerland. All is lost, except his love for beekeeping.

Comme des lions de pierre à l'entrée de la nuit

Between 1947 and 1951, more than 80 000 Greek men, women and children were deported to the isle of Makronissos (Greece) in reeducation camps created to ‘fight the spread of Communism’. Among those exiles were a number of writers and poets, including Yannis Ritsos and Tassos Livaditis. Despite the deprivation and torture, they managed to write poems which describe the struggle for survival in this world of internment. These texts, some of them buried in the camps, were later found. «Like Lions of stone at the gateway of night» blends these poetic writings with the reeducation propaganda speeches constantly piped through the camps’ loudspeakers. Long tracking shots take us on a trance-like journey through the camp ruins, interrupted along the way by segments from photographic archives. A cinematic essay, which revives the memory of forgotten ruins and a battle lost.

Daniel Schmid: Le Chat Qui Pense

When director Daniel Schmid grew up, his parents ran a hotel in the Alps, and this singular setting was to influence his film. Rather by coincidence he came to Berlin in the early 1960s and became part of the new German wave. Schmid worked with, among others, Wenders and Fassbinder, for example as an actor in Wender’s The American Friend. He met Ingrid Caven, who was to play a diva in several of his films. This is a documentation of a part of modern European film history and a good analysis of artistry and how it corresponds to the individual behind the camera. A wealth of archival footage brings us close to many directors and actors in Schmid’s circle. If you’ve never seen a Daniel Schmid film, you are sure to want to after watching this portrait of his life.

Gyrischachen - von Sünden, Sofas und Cervelats

A high-rise apartment built in the 1960s provides housing for 2500 people from 42 nations. Separated from the city by a river and bounded by towering sandstone cliffs, everyone attempts to live and survive in their own way. Foreigners who have a go at being Swiss, and Swiss who observe with scepticism. They meet in the corner shop run by an Iraqi living in exile, send their kids to a children’s club managed by a missionary, and old drinking mates meet regularly over a beer in the neighbourhood’s only bar. Despite all the differences, they are rather proud of the fact that they come from here.

Oil Rocks: City Above the Sea

Picture of Light

A documentary of an expedition to Churchill, Manitoba to film the Northern Lights.

Die Reise zum sichersten Ort der Erde

Over 350,000 tons of highly radioactive waste and spent fuel rods are in temporary storage on site at nuclear power complexes and at intermediate storage sites all over the world. More than 10,000 additional tons join them every year. It is the most dangerous waste man has ever produced. Waste that requires storage in a safe final repository for hundreds of thousands of years. Out of reach of humanity and other living creatures. The question is, where? Together with Swiss-British nuclear physicist Charles McCombie, who has been searching for a safe final storage site for highly radioactive nuclear waste for thirty-five years, director Edgar Hagen investigates the limitations and contradictions involved in this project of global significance. Supporters and opponents of nuclear energy struggle for solutions whilst dogmatic worldviews are assailed by doubt

La clé de la chambre à lessive

The key to the communal laundry room in the block of flats on the Rue de Genève 85 in Lausanne serves a much greater function than merely unlocking the door. This encounter between a symbol of typical Swiss mentality with a penchant for order and the tenants who have been housed here by the city’s social services department is not something to be taken for granted. Although the laundry room is normally located in the cellar, the tenants in this building share a tiny laundry room off the entrance hall because the cellar is reserved for prostitution. To maintain order and cleanliness, the landlord hires Claudina, a new “laundry woman”.

פעם נכנסתי לגן

Fantasizes an 'Old' Middle East, wherein communities were not divided along ethnic and religious lines; a Middle East in which even metaphorical borders had no place

Zen for Nothing

Hidden in the wooded mountains on the west coast of Japan lies the small Zen monastery Antaiji. A young woman sets off to immerse herself through autumn, winter and spring in the adventures of monastic life. The young woman is Sabine Timoteo from Switzerland. The abbot of the monastery is Muho Noelke, born in Berlin. An interplay between the philosophy of the Japanese Zen master Kodo Sawaki and the surprises brought forth by everyday life.

Thorberg

Movie about prisoners in prison "Thorberg"

Il bacio di Tosca

Memoirs of the Italian Opera by the singers and musicians of the Casa Verdi, Milan, the world’s first nursing home for retired opera singers, founded by composer Giuseppe Verdi in 1896. This documentary, which has achieved cult-like status among opera and music lovers, features former singers who reminisce about their careers and their past operatic roles.

Au loin des villages

Since the conflict in Darfur spread to the eastern border regions of Chad in 2005, some 13,000 people fled from this region to the refugee camp near the village of Gouroukoun. For them, the war is never far off. Many of these traumatised refugees have lived here for years, with little food, no work and no prospect of returning home. Zuchuat took his camera to the camp and captured their uncertain existence without providing any comment. He captures the refugees' arduous daily life in long shots, often from a single angle. They all have their own stories of how they ended up here, how they saw their families and fellow-villagers perish and no longer have any work, cattle or land. Another striking story is told by a child that uses a drawing to explain how he was chased away from his native village. Little girls sing a battle song while waiting for what comes next in this prison without bars.