Glückspilze (2013)

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.

Offshore: Elmer and the Swiss Bank Secrecy

While managers of Swiss banks in the USA ruefully apologize for their tax evasions practices and customer data is disclosed to the American authorities, Rudolf Elmer, former auditor at bank Julius Bär, is indicted for violating the Swiss banking secrecy law on the Cayman Islands. Rudolf Elmer: from insider to critic.

The Knowledge of Healing

A documentary film about Tibetan traditional medicine.

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.

Endlich Chef

Plot unavailable

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.

Hardcore Chambermusic

This documentary follows swiss improvisation musicians and tells there stories.

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.

The Shelter

It is winter at an emergency shelter for the homeless in Lausanne. Every night at the door of this little-known basement facility the same entry ritual takes place, resulting in confrontations which can sometimes turn violent. Those on duty at the shelter have the difficult task of “triaging the poor”: the women and children first, then the men. Although the total capacity at the shelter is 100, only 50 “chosen ones” will be admitted inside and granted a warm meal and a bed. The others know it will be a long night.

Per l'amor di Dio

Synopsis - For god's sake Isabella and Nando are two militant atheists. They live in Italy, a country where the Church still plays a strong political role. T hey are among the 4000 members of UAAR (Union Atheists Agnostics Rationalists), an association that keenly defends the fundamentals of the secular state, giving trouble even to the Vatican. Among the various actions of the association: the campaign for the de-baptize and the "atheist bus", ads that should have spread the slogan: “The bad news is that God doesn't exist. The good one is that you don't need him”

Cyclique

Plot unavailable

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.

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.

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.

Von heute auf morgen

'From One Day To The Next' follows four elderly people through their everyday lives, observing how they cope with a gradual loss of autonomy.

Life in Progress

Plot unavailable

Que sera?

Documentary film.

The Beast Within

Plot unavailable

Jean Ziegler: The Optimism of Willpower

In 1964, Che Guevara asked the young Jean Ziegler to stay in Switzerland to fight in the "Monster brain" capitalist. Since then, Jean Ziegler nerve stops fighting against injustices as a public writer, a speaker and as a Kofi Annan collaborator. During a trip to Cuba, his ideas are challenged by what he discover on the island.

The Congress of Penguins

Plot unavailable

Architecture of Infinity

How can structures, which take up defined, rigid portions of space, make us feel transcendence? How can chapels turn into places of introspection? How can walls grant boundless freedom? Driven by intense childhood impressions, director Christoph Schaub visits extraordinary churches, both ancient and futuristic, and discovers works of art that take him up to the skies and all the way down to the bottom of the ocean. With the help of architects Peter Zumthor, Peter Märkli, and Álvaro Siza Vieira, artists James Turrell and Cristina Iglesias, and drummer Sergé “Jojo” Mayer, he tries to make sense of the world and decipher our spiritual experiences using the seemingly abstract concepts of light, time, rhythm, sound, and shape. The superb cinematography turns this contemplative search into a multi-sensory experience.

The Paris Opera

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

The Mindful Revolution

The revolution of mindfulness meditation in the business world - a critical look behind the facade of a modern, spiritual phenomenon.

Like Stone Lions in the Gateway into Night

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.

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.

Balifilm

Balifilm was originally commissioned as a stage performance, created from diary images and sounds collected in 1990 and 1992 by Peter Mettler on the island of Bali. The soundtrack is a live recording of eight Gamelan musicians playing the bronze and wooden instruments of Indonesia during the projection of the film. balifilm is a personal, lyrical observation and expression of the creative pulse of an extraordinary culture.

Oil Rocks: City Above the Sea

Plot unavailable

Je ne te voyais pas

A documentary feature about victims and perpetrators involved in restorative justice programs.

De la cuisine au parlement

Switzerland was one of the last countries in the world to grant women the right to vote. This film guides us through a century of Swiss history, tracing the imprint left by the women who fought for the right to leave hearth and home – and by the men who did everything they could to send them back – until they gained legal equality, whose implementation seems to be in question still today.

Urban Amazons

Modern Amazons are fierce heroines. They are ready to fight for what is important to them. Without explaining, without compromising, always persisting. They fight for victory in the ring for acceptance, and too, for fellow sufferers and humanity.

Bad Boy Kummer

Plot unavailable

Echoes of Home

What does a baby's cry have in common with the echo of a mountain yodler, and what connects the head tone of a Tuvin nomad with the stage show of a vocal artist? The answer is: THE VOICE. Against a background of powerful alpine vistas and modern city landscapes, "heimatklänge" enters the wondrous sonic world of three exceptional Swiss vocal artists. Their universe of sound extends far beyond what we would describe as singing. In their engagement with local and foreign traditions, the powerful mountain landscape becomes a stage as do the landscapes and sonic backdrops of modern life.

Iraqi Odyssey

Tracing the emigrations of his family over more than half a century, this riveting documentary epic from acclaimed expatriate Iraqi filmmaker Samir pays moving homage to the frustrated democratic dreams of a people successively plagued by the horrors of dictatorship, war and foreign occupation of Iraq.

The House In The Park

Architects from Europe, America and China are invited to a Chinese provincial town. Within several months, they are to construct a park in Jinhua, intended to form the centre of a new district of that town. Where green fields now flourish and farmers plough the land, investors will soon flock, followed by new inhabitants and political reforms. But the project ends up being drawn out over years. The euphoria of the early stages runs up against a reality in which torn-open earth and the ambitious hopes of politicians, workers and locals are the only manifest features. The film documents the changes leading to the Jinhua Architecture Park - from the laying of the foundation stone to its final opening. In giving all participants in this process an opportunity to comment.

Mulhapar

Mulhapar is a village in the wide expanses of the Punjab in Pakistan. A country associated with violence and intolerance. Beyond this sombre prejudice, the film plunges into the brimming life of a community of poor and rich people, Muslims and Christians, the young and the old, women and men. In Mulhapar, their family and individual destinies, as well as their stories and anecdotes are condensed into a vivid mosaic.