The Truce 1997
After the liberation of Auschwitz, an Italian prisoner of War begins a torturous voyage home to Turin, through a Europe caught between war and peace.
After the liberation of Auschwitz, an Italian prisoner of War begins a torturous voyage home to Turin, through a Europe caught between war and peace.
After biologist Sylvie discovers her brother Paul trying to steal a gun from her lab, he explains that he wishes to avenge the death of their father whom he suspects died at the hands of his business partner.
An account of the life and work of Swiss painter, sculptor, architect and designer H. R. Giger (1940-2014), tormented father of creatures as fearsome as they are fascinating, inhabitants of nightmarish biomechanical worlds.
To salve his guilty conscience an elder brother removes his disturbed younger sibling from a mental institution after a suicide attempt and tries to bring him back to mental competency through one on one contact. Free of the institution he continues to be haunted by dreams of a lost twin and chants the eerie phrase "Do I stand before the king?" It is the elder brother that seems doomed to lose himself in his brother's insanity.
The formerly great Swiss hotel which Valentin’s family owned when he was a boy has been emptied and is about to be torn down. He revisits the magical site’s empty halls and ballrooms.
Central Europe, early 16th century: two childhood friends, Martin & Georg, find themselves on rival sides of a religious war with both of them struggling to do the right thing.
A naive girl's love for Switzerland is put to the test in this satiric comedy. Irina is a woman from Russia who all her life has always been fascinated by Switzerland and longs to live there some day, though her notion of Swiss life has more to do with Heidi and old movies set in the Alps than reality.
This romantic drama follows two policemen whose job is to investigate the lives of foreigners who have applied for Swiss citizenship. Among the applicants they must screen are a French psychiatrist and his wife, and a ballet dancer. The married couple are quickly accepted, but the dancer's life offers some objections. However, since the younger policeman has fallen in love with her, there is a chance that she, too, will win Swiss citizenship.
A documentary film about Tibetan traditional medicine.
A comedy about aging, youth and other eternal truths. Of all days, precisely on her fiftieth birthday, Julia has to experience that age makes you invisible. Frustrated, she goes shopping and makes an acquaintance, spontaneously deciding to spend the evening with this stranger, rather than with the guests of her own birthday party. They wait for her in a restaurant, all dressed up and groomed, lively debating the years that have passed. The truths and wisdom of Julia's closest friends on aging and growing old are drowned increasingly in sufficient quantities of alcohol. In the mean time, on her eightieth birthday, Leonie, sulking over the loss of youth, is rebelling against her daughter, the senior citizen's home, conventions, and old age in general - and joyfully sabotaging the party in her honor.
Finally adult and free? You wish! His father sees him as a future boss of the family-owned printing firm and his mother only wants the best for him. Sebastian can’t take it any more. On his eighteenth birthday he announces his departure to Geneva to work as an au pair in a family, looking after children and doing the household chores. To improve his French, of course! His father flips his lid, his mother is distraught. Only his sister Kathrin thinks her little brother is really cool… Very few men would be up to the challenge!
An illiterate seamstress has a powerful fetish for silk which gets her into trouble. The psychiatrist sent to help her becomes fascinated by her case and when he returns to France from World War One they fall in love, an affair that can only end in tragedy.
Life could be wonderful for Livia and Marco: good-looking, young, and Tim's parents. Tim is nine months old. His screaming every night drives his parents around the bend, although he was supposed to cement their relationship. But instead of slumber and sex, it's the same every night: jump out of bed and into the wobbly old Golf whose engine sound is the only thing that calms Tim down. One night, the unbelievable happens…
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.
A comedy directed by Rolf Lyssy.
Cruel politics and intensive love. Najla (N) has just finished her medical studies in Rome. Sherko (S) conceals sick and injured partisans. Mokhtar (M) belongs to the dictator's police. S and M love N, N loves S. When she gets a letter from S that she must forget him, she returns to Kirkuk. As a doctor she can help S. Mokhtar follows her trail and S and N are arrested. S is tortured. N is beaten up and then offered the job as a police doctor, a reward for leading the police to S. She accepts because then she can collect and pass on the names of people murdered or tortured. She will attend many mass murders of women and children. Once she can save them by fabricating that a child has cholera, with greater risk of contamination if she is dead. – When M understands that he cannot win N's love, he smuggles both N and S out of the country. Fully aware of the consequences he distracts the border guards and is shot by them. Max Scharnberg, Stockholm, Sweden
A bear and a rat explore dark forests, treacherous ravines and snow-swept glaciers. With no real aim in mind, the bear and the rat bungle along in a folk tale of their own devising, wondering what they should do and where they should go, enjoying nature together, foraging for sustenance, getting lost, squabbling, joking and making music along the way.
Documentary account of a man’s life in the face of imminent death – Francisco Varela's story told affectionately and gently, touchingly and astutely. Varela spent his life building bridges: between Western science and Eastern wisdom, neurobiology and philosophy, abstract theory and practical life. This film seeks to deconstructs the prevailing division between science and art.
In the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, in the heart of Jerusalem, six different Christian denominations, Greek Orthodox, Armenian, Syrian, Roman Catholic, Ethiopian and Coptic Christians-have divided the sacred site and simply can not agree on which of the claims on the tomb of Jesus is the most legitimate. So they fight. Sometimes through a difficult time cleaning, sometimes even by force. An intuitive and entertaining approach to the fact that faith is a very human thing.
Five stories, all taking place on New Year's Eve in Zurich, Switzerland.