Urs Fischer

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.

Journey to the Safest Place on Earth

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

Someone Besides You

Along with several courageous psychiatrists and their clients, the author sets out to film a documentary road movie that takes him to Switzerland, Europe, and the U.S. On their travels in mobile homes, they explore the depths of the human psyche in search of answers to the question: What is the human mind and how does it behave in psychotic extreme situations?

Albert Hofmann - Wahrnehmungen

Picture of Light

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

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.

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.

Bach rencontre Buxtehude

Namibia Crossings

“Namibia Crossings” takes a trip through a country of archaic beauty and bizarre contradictions. The film creates polyphonies of soulful landscapes made up of each individual's highs and lows.

Geysir und Goliath

Glückspilze

More than 10,000 street children live in magical, bustling St. Petersburg. But here's Larissa, with her Cirque Upsala: she takes these outcasts and catapults them to unsuspected heights. From the Streets to the Stars takes us on a fascinating journey, from the depths of the Russian slums to the limelight of the circus world, via the adventures of a Swiss tour. It follows 6-year-old Danja, the rising star of the circus; Mischa, who is taking on responsibility for the first time in her life; the enigmatic street child Nastja; and the troubled Igor, whose single mother is completely overwhelmed by her 4 children.

Greina

Les dieux ne meurent jamais

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.

Meta-Mecano

The Jean Tinguely Museum in Basel, Switzerland, designed by Mario Botta, opened in 1996, five years after the Swiss sculptor's death. META MECANO is a poetic depiction of the genesis of this mono-graphic museum, from the builders' first plans and Mario Botta's designs to its construction and the assembly of Tinguely's fragile mobile sculptures. In interviews with Mario Botta, Tinguely's wife Niki de Saint Phalle, museum director Pontus Hultén and Tinguely himself, the film goes on to explore the mission of museums and of art in general today. META MECANO is a unique document on the significance of the artist Jean Tinguely and on the role that museums play in our day and age.

Mondes contraires

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.

Le garçon s'appelait Apache