Face au juge (2009)

The Paris Opera

A behind-the-scenes look at the of how the Paris Opera is run under the direction of Stephane Lissner.

Max Frisch, Citoyen

Max Frisch was the last big Swiss intellectual widely respected as a “voice” in its own right – a character hardly found today. The film retells Frisch’s story as a witness of the unfolding 20th century, wondering if such “voices” are needed at all, or if we could do without them.

Exit: The Right to Die

Switzerland is presently the only country in the world where suicide assistance is legal. Exit: The Right to Die profiles that nation's EXIT organization, which for over twenty years has provided volunteers who counsel and accompany the terminally-ill and severely handicapped towards a death of their choice.

Remue-ménage

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Into Great Silence

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.

Staatenlos - Klaus Rózsa, Fotograf

Klaus Rozsa, a well-known and politically active photographer, lived in Zurich for decades as a stateless individual. All of his applications for naturalisation were refused on political grounds. In 1956 he fled Hungary, growing up in Switzerland with a Jewish father who had survived Auschwitz and Dachau. Due to the extreme proximity of such a fate, the camera led him repeatedly to places where injustice was done. It was this particular quality of his camerawork that proved fateful for him.

Magic Radio

Radios echo across Niger, connecting lives through news, music, and debate. This gripping doc explores how this everyday device becomes a lifeline in a changing nation.

Shake the Devil Off

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Zwischenwelten - Unterschiedliche Wege des Heilens

A documentary about healers from the Swiss canton of Appenzell.

Le souffle du désert

A disturbing exploration of what it means to be a man Desert Wind unveils the innermost thoughts of 13 men about their lives and male identity, making a clean sweep of clichés. Their revelations -- a glimpse of the hidden side that few men spontaneously reveal -- are of equal interest for women.

L'autre versant de Gstaad

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Ce cher musée

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Feltrinelli

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The Art Foundry

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A l'ombre de la montagne

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The Making of a Dream

The Making of a Dream is a cinematic essay on stories of dancers. It shows joys and pains from the first steps in an amateur school to the goal to become a principal dancer in a world known ballet company.

Sounds and Silence - Travels with Manfred Eicher

On the way through a world of sounds and noise – with Manfred Eicher, the oustanding discoverer and mediator of contemporary music and founder of the music label ECM. On this journey we are meeting musicians and composers, but also people and places which are connected with him and with each other. We are encountering stories, landscapes, cities, disputes and hugs, tranquillity, hectic pace, work, self-doubt, joy, passion.

Petropolis: Aerial Perspectives on the Alberta Tar Sands

The huge tar sands in Alberta are a potentially profitable resource, but the environmental impact could be heavy and long-term.

The Fortress

The personal stories of the people from all around the world waiting for a decision in an asylum-seekers centre in one of most restrictive countries in the world, Switzerland.

The Knowledge of Healing

A documentary film about Tibetan traditional medicine.

GLOW

She was a muse, model and performer – a star, dazzling and intense. Lady Shiva managed to rise from street prostitution to the top. She lived in the fast lane and died tragically young. Her dream was to become a singer. With her companions, we trace her life during a vibrant time that kindles a yearning and provokes until today. The story of a woman’s meteoric fate and a great dream. An irrepressible desire for freedom in all its beauty and destructive force - and a stirring friendship and love.

Ho und Überall

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Bear-Like

At the far end of the Alaskan peninsula, for filmmaker Roman Droux a childhood dream comes true. He discovers together with the bear researcher David Bittner the universe of wild grizzlies. The two adventurists face bears at smelling-distance, experience the struggle for survival of a bear family and witness dramatic fighting scenes. Driven by a desire to explore the unknown the film tells a personal story of wilderness, framed in breathtaking pictures of unique creatures.

David Wants to Fly

A documentary. David Sieveking takes the advice of his idol, David Lynch and tries out Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's transcendental meditation technique.

Dimitri - Clown

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Cloudy Times

Arami Ullón must return to Paraguay to make an important decision: what will happen to her sick mother, Mirna? The heartfelt gaze of the camera reveals a relationship filled with love, but also unspoken and unresolved issues. A sensitive film which examines the inner turmoil of the daughter during the final stages of her mother’s degenerative illness.

The Congress of Penguins

The real place where the penguin congress takes place is also the most fictional place on this planet where you can stand on your own two legs. Here, even the animals can talk. This land of dreams and nightmares is called Antarctica. In this desert of ice surrounded by a stormy sea, a few dozen human beings also live. Using sophisticated instruments, they observe the worrying changes affecting our world: the hole in the ozone layer, climate change, and so on.

Chris the Swiss

Croatia, 7th of January 1992: In the middle of the war, a young journalist's body is discovered dressed in the uniform of an international mercenary group. Twenty years later, his cousin Anja Kofmel investigates his story.

Accordion Tribe: Music Travels

Five highly original musicians from different countries form the Accordion Tribe. Together they aim to reinforce the original power of the long disdained instrument. The film follows the energetic soundscapes and their performers on a journey through Europe. An extraordinarily intensive documentary on the communicative, connecting power of music.

Dem Himmel zu nah

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The Sound of Insects: Record of a Mummy

The incredible story of how the mummified corpse of a 40-year-old man was discovered by a hunter in one of the most remote parts of the country. The dead man's detailed notes reveal that he actually committed suicide through self-imposed starvation only the summer before. Liechti's film is a stunning rapprochement of a fictional text, which itself is based upon a true event: a cinematic manifesto for life, challenged by the main character's radical renunciation of life itself.

Signer's Suitcase

SIGNERS KOFFER is a kind of road movie across Europa. From the Swiss Alps to eastern Poland, from Stromboli to Iceland. Always following the scenery's magically charged contours. Immersing yourself, letting yourself be infected, then travelling on. Roman Signer determines the route that we are moving on and the film improvises along the way. Being on the road also means tracking down the right places. Signer brings them alive using his own personel instruments, brilliantly simple operations full of subtle humour. «Simple» poems being transmitted into space with INSTRUMENTS as gunpowder, fuse, rubber boots, balloons, stool, small table ... and a three wheelded Plaggio. SIGNERS KOFFER is also a journey through the state of mind. A tightrope walk between fun and melancholy. Danger also mental mental danger becomes the stimulus of the senses. Sudden crashes, abrupt chagnes of mood determine the rythm and atmosphere of this cinematic journey.

Genesis 2.0

A well-preserved mammoth carcass is found in the remote New Siberian Islands in the Arctic Ocean, opening up the possibility of a world-changing “Jurassic Park” moment in genetics.

Die Demokratie ist los!

An analysis of the current state of democracy in Switzerland

Gambling, Gods and LSD

Filmmaker Peter Mettler embarks on a mission that takes him around the world. He is determined to record the diverse modes of transcendence that people in different cultures adopt in order to live life to the fullest. As he traverses civilization and wilderness and encounters a range of lifestyles and ideas, the filmmaker's mind-expanding trip around the world grows into a poem of images and sounds, reflecting the fragmented but alluring worlds it attempts to capture.

Raving Iran

Anoosh and Arash are at the center of Tehran’s underground techno scene. Tired of hiding from the police and their stagnating career, they organize one last manic techno rave under dangerous circumstances in the desert. Back in Tehran they try their luck selling their illegally printed music album without permission. When Anoosh is arrested, there seems to be no hope left. But then they receive a phone call from the biggest techno festival in the world. Once landed in Switzerland, the haze of the instant euphoria evaporates quickly when the seriousness of the situation starts to dawn on them.

Gangbé!

The Gangbé Brass Band, a musical group from Benin, sets out to conquer Lagos, capital of Nigeria.

Shadow Thieves

The film follows five professional photographers in Los Angeles, Latin America, Paris, Berlin and Switzerland in their daily struggle to come by. It shows how digitalization and the internet affects and transforms their work deeply. It talks about the world as much as about the image of that world. It talks about pictures and their meaning and what they trigger in those who watch them.