Grüningers Fall (1998)

Ruthless

A high school coach, whose teenage daughter was murdered, takes matters into his own hands by going after the men who kidnap his students for their sex trafficking operation.

Noryang: Deadly Sea

The Imjin War reaches its seventh year in December of 1598. Admiral Yi Sun-shin learns that the Wa invaders in Joseon are preparing for a swift withdrawal following the deathbed orders of their leader Toyotomi Hideyoshi. Determined to destroy the enemy once and for all, Admiral Yi leads an allied fleet of Joseon and Ming ships to mount a blockade and annihilate the Wa army. However, once Ming commander Chen Lin is bribed into lifting the blockade, Wa lord Shimazu Yoshihiro and his Satsuma army sail to the Wa army's rescue at Noryang Strait.

Black Site

A group of officers based in a labyrinthine top-secret prison must fight for their lives against Hatchet, a brilliant and infamous high-value detainee. When he escapes, his mysterious and deadly agenda has far reaching and dire consequences.

Godzilla vs. Gigan

Manga artist Gengo Odaka lands a job with the World Children's Land amusement park only to become suspicious of the organization when a garbled message is discovered on tapes. As Gengo and his team investigate, Godzilla and Anguirus quickly decipher the message and begin their own plan of action.

Gone in the Night

Upon arriving at a remote cabin in the redwoods, Kath and her boyfriend find a mysterious younger couple already there — the rental has apparently been double-booked. They decide to share the cabin with these strangers until the next morning, but her boyfriend disappears with the young woman, which sends Kath in a spiral to find an explanation for their sudden breakup — but the truth is far stranger than she could have imagined.

Autumn and the Black Jaguar

Growing up in the Amazon rainforest gave Autumn the rarest of friendships – a lost jaguar cub she named Hope. When a tragic event forces her to leave Hope for New York City, she dreams of going back to the rainforest and her friend. That opportunity soon comes when Autumn decides to return to the Amazon to save her beloved jaguar from animal traffickers who threaten her childhood village.

Assassin Club

In this world of contract killers, Morgan Gaines is the best of the best. When Morgan is hired to kill six people around the world, he soon discovers all the targets are also assassins unknowingly hired to kill each other.

Simulant

Faye attempts to replace her newly deceased husband, Evan, with an android simulant (SIM). Although SIM Evan appears like human Evan in every way, Faye does not feel the same love for SIM Evan as it does for her. SIM Evan tries to win Faye back while at the same time being on-the-run from a government agent chasing down SIMs who have become “conscious” and could potentially be a threat to humankind.

Jawan

An emotional journey of a prison warden, driven by a personal vendetta while keeping up to a promise made years ago, recruits inmates to commit outrageous crimes that shed light on corruption and injustice, in an attempt to get even with his past, and that leads him to an unexpected reunion.

You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah

Stacy and Lydia are BFFs who've always dreamed about having epic bat mitzvahs. But things start to go comically awry when a popular boy and middle school drama threatens their friendship and their rite of passage.

SS Experiment Love Camp

Near the end of WW2, prisoners of war are used in experiments to perfect the Arian race.

The Boogeyman: The Origin of the Myth

Explores the Spanish origins of the character's story, where he is a tuberculosis patient from Almeria who will do anything to get well, even consuming the blood of the kids he kidnaps in a sack.

Witch Hunt

In a modern America where witches are real and witchcraft is illegal, a sheltered teenager must face her own demons and prejudices as she helps two young witches avoid law enforcement and cross the southern border to asylum in Mexico.

The Rookie

Veteran cop Nick Pulovski is used to playing musical partners; many of the partners he's had in the past have died on the job, and often as a result of Nick's risky tactics. But the rookie who's been assigned to help Nick bust a carjacking ring is almost as hotheaded as he is … and when Nick gets kidnapped, his newbie partner is his only hope.

Race to the Summit

Fearless alpine climbers Ueli Steck and Dani Arnold enter into a death-defying rivalry to set speed records on the Swiss Alps' great north faces.

The President's Wife

When she arrived at the Elysée Palace, Bernadette Chirac expected to finally get the place she deserved, she who had always worked in the shadow of her husband to make him president. Put aside because she was considered too old-fashioned, Bernadette decided to take her revenge by becoming a major media figure.

Love at First Kiss

The story of Javier who, at the age of 16, while kissing a girl for the first time, realized that he had a gift of romantic clairvoyance. Javier can see the future... and he finally knows who the love of his life is.

MaXXXine

In 1980s Hollywood, adult film star and aspiring actress Maxine Minx finally gets her big break. But as a mysterious killer stalks the starlets of Hollywood, a trail of blood threatens to reveal her sinister past.

God of Gamblers III: Back to Shanghai

While battling a psychic gambler, Sing hurtles back in time to 1937 Shanghai. Now he must come to grips with his family history and get back to 1991.

Reality

Augusta, Georgia, United States, June 3, 2017. After running some errands, Reality Winner returns home, where she is approached by two men.

Malum

A rookie police officer willingly takes the last shift at a newly decommissioned police station in an attempt to uncover the mysterious connection between her father's death and a vicious cult.

Don't Sleep

After moving into a cottage together, two young lovers confront horrors of a forgotten childhood.

Testament of Orpheus

An 18th century poet travels through time in search of divine wisdom. In a mysterious wasteland, he has a series of enigmatic encounters with symbolic phantoms with whom he muses about the nature of art and his own career. Ultimately, the poet strives to achieve his rebirth as a celestial being.

Revenge

Jen's romantic getaway with her wealthy married boyfriend is disrupted when his friends arrive for an impromptu hunting trip. Tension mounts at the house until the situation culminates in an unexpected way.

The Royal Hotel

After running out of money while backpacking in a tiny, male-dominated town in the Australian outback, two friends resort to a working holiday at the Royal Hotel. When the locals' behavior starts crossing the line, the girls find themselves trapped in an unnerving situation that grows rapidly out of their control.

Maine Pyar Kiya

After Suman's father leaves her in the care of another family while he travels abroad, she falls in love with Prem. However, in order to for them to marry, Prem has to prove to Suman's father that he is not the same as his own dad.

Lucky

May, a self help author with all the answers, suddenly finds herself stalked by a masked man who mysteriously reappears every night. Even when she kills him. May struggles to get help from the people around her as she fights to stay alive. Is this paranoia, or is she doomed to accept her new reality?

FX's A Christmas Carol

London, 1843. Ebenezer Scrooge, a bitter old man, despises the Christmas holiday. Over the course of Christmas Eve night he is visited by three ghosts to show him his past, present and future.

Pet Sematary: Bloodlines

In 1969, young Jud Crandall has dreams of leaving his hometown behind, but soon discovers sinister secrets buried within and is forced to confront a dark family history that forever binds him to Ludlow.

The Substance

A fading celebrity decides to use a black market drug, a cell-replicating substance that temporarily creates a younger, better version of herself.

Nefarious

On the day of his scheduled execution, a convicted serial killer gets a psychiatric evaluation during which he claims he is a demon, and further claims that before their time is over, the psychiatrist will commit three murders of his own.

Christmas on Ice

Courtney Bennett, a former US figure skating hopeful, runs the city’s public skating rink but when the Mayor announces its closing, Courtney is heartbroken but determined to save it. After Courtney’s attempts to warm the Mayor’s Scrooge-like heart fail, she enlists the help of Noah Tremblay, a former professional hockey player and single dad, who owns the new indoor skating center, to help her, and together they find more than just the spirit of holidays on the ice.

The Teacher Who Promised the Sea

Ariadna discovers that her grandfather has been searching for the remains of his father, who disappeared during the Civil War. Determined to help him, she travels to Burgos, where a mass grave is being excavated, and where he could be buried. During her stay there, she will learn the story of Antoni Benaiges, a young teacher from Tarragona who was her grandfather's teacher before the war. Through an innovative pedagogical method, Antoni inspired his students and made them a promise: to take them to see the sea.

Risen

Disaster unfolds when a meteor strikes a small town, turning the environment uninhabitable and killing everything in the surrounding area. Exobiologist Lauren Stone is called to find answers to the unearthly event. As she begins to uncover the truth, imminent danger awakens and it becomes a race against time to save mankind.

Pacifiction

Island of Tahiti. French government official De Roller is a calculating man with impeccable manners, capable of dealing with both high society and the locals he frequents in shady joints.

One Week Friends

A high school student suffers from a strange amnesia, causing her memories to only last a week. After she befriends a new student, his kindness and persistence make her gradually open up.

Detective vs. Sleuths

When Hong Kong is rocked by multiple gruesome murders, the police forms a task force to investigate. Jun, once a brilliant detective who suffered a mental breakdown, begins his own investigation. Eventually, the police learn that the murder victims are all suspects of cold cases being rubbed out by a figure known as "The Sleuth". Now, Jun and a detective from the task force are on a race against time to beat the brutal killer at its own game.

The Owners

A group of friends think they found the perfect easy score - an empty house with a safe full of cash. But when the elderly couple that lives there comes home early, the tables are suddenly turned. As a deadly game of cat and mouse ensues, the would-be thieves must fight to save themselves from a nightmare they could never have imagined.

Butcher's Crossing

In the 1870s, a young Harvard dropout seeks his destiny out West by tying his fate to a team of buffalo hunters led by a man named Miller. Together, they embark on a harrowing journey risking life and sanity.

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.

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.

Alexandre Tharaud, le temps dérobé

Atypical dive into the world of a particularly talented artist of today: Alexandre Tharaud. Born of parents who were themselves familiar with the stage, Alexandre combines his passion for the piano and his fertile intranquillity under the eye of an intimate camera. A film conducted in the form of an exploration of intimate moments where the artist is much more in front of himself than the public, a confrontation at once gentle and brutal to his passion, to his unattainable star. Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

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.

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.

Picture of Light

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

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.

Endlich Chef

Plot unavailable

The Paris Opera

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

Queen of Condoms

Ceschi and Stamm's documentary tells the incredible story of Monika Krause, a former East German citizen, who became Fidel Castro's Sexual Education Minister. After 20 years in Cuba, Krause set the Cuban sexual revolution in motion: in favor of a woman's right to sexual fulfillment and legal abortion, and against exclusion of homosexuals, she acquired the title "Queen of Condoms". A film about potent female agitators, staunch macho men and Caribbean love lives.

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.

Mirr

Plot unavailable

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.

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.

Hardcore Chambermusic

This documentary follows swiss improvisation musicians and tells there stories.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Arada

The story of three Turkish men. They all grew up in Switzerland and all got deported after various criminal offenses.

Life in Progress

Plot unavailable

Zwischenwelten - Unterschiedliche Wege des Heilens

A documentary about healers from the Swiss canton of Appenzell.

Above and Below

Above and Below is a rough and rhythmic roller coaster ride seating five survivors in their daily hustle through an apocalyptic world. A journey of challenges and beauty in uncomfortable places: Rick & Cindy, Godfather Lalo in the flood channels deep down under the shiny strip of Sin City. Dave in the dry and lonesome Californian desert and April in simulation for a Mars mission in the Utah desert. Through the hustle, the pain and the laughs, we are whisked away to an unfamiliar world, yet quickly discover the souls we encounter are perhaps not that different from our own.

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.

In the Garden of Sounds

«Nel giardino dei suoni» («In The Garden of Sounds») is a touching, poetic exploration of the relationship between mind, body and sound, and a cinematic journey to the borders of communication. Nicola Bellucci tells the extraordinary story of Wolfgang Fasser, a blind musician and soundscape artist who works with severely handicapped children, helping them to find their place in a world not made for them. On his own way into the darkness, Fasser discovered the world of sounds, a parallel universe to our visual world. His far-reaching explorations of sound’s effect on mind and body led him to the field of music therapy.

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.

Babylon 2

The first film about second-generation Swiss immigrants: A Turkish ice hockey player explains why, in Switzerland, he could only fall in love with an Italian. A young Italian woman explains why she prefers to rap in English. A hip-hop artist with Hispanic origins fights for his political rights and the director reminisces on how, despite his Arabic roots, he's been persecuted as a Jew. Babylon 2 reflects the rise of a new urban culture in Switzerland, which is instigated by the second generation of immigrants and the help of electronic media.

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.

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.

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.

Gangbé!

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

Balkan Melody

What Swiss director Stefan Schweitert did for accordion music and for yodeling (Accordion Tribe, Cinequest, 2005; Echoes of Home, Cinequest 2008) he now does for traditional Balkan music. This wonderful film is also a love story – and a door into a world of musical wonders.

Züri brännt

Documentary about the youth riots in Zürich in 1980. Videoladen, Zürich 1980.

Tibetan Warrior

The true story of one man's fight for freedom. For more than 60 years Tibetans have been fighting Chinese oppression. But their non-violent struggle appears to be in vain. Now, as a new form of peaceful protest, Tibetans are setting themselves on fire. Loten Namling - an exiled Tibetan and musician living in Switzerland - is deeply disturbed by such self-destructive action. So he sets off from Europe to India, on a one-man mission to meet top politicians, experts and young radicals. He himself becomes increasingly radical and is on the verge of violent protest. Finally he ends up at The Office of the Dalai Lama in India to seek the advice of the exiled Tibetan leader.

Thomas Hirschhorn – Gramsci Monument

Thomas Hirschhorn, one of the few Swiss artists of world renown, often touches on social wounds with his provocative works. In 2013, Hirschhorn built a monument for Italian philosopher and communist Antonio Gramsci in a public housing project in the Bronx. The contentious artist collaborated with neighborhood residents whose everyday life is impacted by poverty, unemployment and crime. Conflicts and misunderstandings are bound to arise as Hirschhorn’s absolute devotion to art is confronted with the resident’s lack of prospects and fatalistic outlooks. The «Gramsci Monument» becomes a summer-long experiment where diverse worlds collide: blacks and whites, the art elite and street kids, party people and poets, politicians and philosophers. A nuanced film about art, politics and passion.

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.

Father's Garden: The Love of My Parents

The father tends his large garden with the utmost precision. The mother irons shirts and regrets that the father never wears T-shirts. The father likes order, always knows best, and has everything under control. The mother prays and talks of her loneliness. The two are fundamentally different, have opposing views and interests, and have been married for 62 years. Closely knit yet poles apart: this is the ambivalent standpoint from which Peter Liechti turns his lens on his elderly parents and the story of their marriage. Alongside conversations that shift from slapstick to insanity and observations of daily life in his parents’ cramped, lower middle class apartment, a puppet theatre is also established as a second location. This forms the stage for scenes between mother and father to be reenacted by rabbit puppets; as a puppet, the son can also react in explosive fashion.

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.

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.