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.
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.
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.
A documentary about Ibrahim Gezer, who escaped from war in Kurdistan to Switzerland. All is lost, except his love for beekeeping.
(Re)immersing himself in body building, David Nicolas Parel endeavours to follow his younger brother as he trains for the Arnold Classic – Arnold, from the famous Austrian/American actor and politician. Convinced he is the one who inspired this passion, he worries about the risks this sport has on his brother’s health and aspires to strengthen their now strained bond. A film on the edge.
Switzerland still carries out special flights, where passengers, dressed in diapers and helmets, are chained to their seats for 40 hours at worst. They are accompanied by police officers and immigration officials. The passengers are flown to their native countries, where they haven't set foot in in up to twenty years, and where their lives might be in danger. Children, wives and work are left behind in Switzerland. Near Geneva, in Frambois prison, live 25 illegal immigrants waiting for deportation. They are offered an opportunity to say goodbye to their families and return to their native countries on a regular flight, escorted by plain-clothes police officers. If they refuse this offer, the special flight is arranged fast and unexpectedly. The stories behind the locked cells are truly heartbreaking.
The Gangbé Brass Band, a musical group from Benin, sets out to conquer Lagos, capital of Nigeria.
In Bern, Madame Mercedes has been working for 35 years in her car as a prostitute. An intimate and subtle portrait about ageing as a prostitute, a documentary about a vanishing chapter of habits in Switzerland.
In May of 1982 Julio Cortázar, the Argentinean writer and his companion in life, Carol Dunlop set out in their VW bus on a journey along the highway from Paris to Marseille that, for each of them, was to be their final one. Twenty-five years later, Océane Madelaine and Jocelyn Bonnerave set out to undertake the journey again.
In their very own ways, scientists, artists and wandering souls search in the inhospitable and mythical desert landscape for the meaning of life.
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.
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.
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.
Hans Werner hirsch aka Surava was a journalist. He wrote about the deportation of French jews, and the Swiss government chased him because the Swiss government was Nazi-friendly. The Swiss intelligence service (Bundespolizei) knew him as a "communist jew". In fact, he worked for a left newspaper, but he wasn't a jew. Surava took his courage to write about the "censored" inhumanity in Europe.
Since the conflict in Darfur spread to the eastern border regions of Chad in 2005, some 13,000 people fled from this region to the refugee camp near the village of Gouroukoun. For them, the war is never far off. Many of these traumatised refugees have lived here for years, with little food, no work and no prospect of returning home. Zuchuat took his camera to the camp and captured their uncertain existence without providing any comment. He captures the refugees' arduous daily life in long shots, often from a single angle. They all have their own stories of how they ended up here, how they saw their families and fellow-villagers perish and no longer have any work, cattle or land. Another striking story is told by a child that uses a drawing to explain how he was chased away from his native village. Little girls sing a battle song while waiting for what comes next in this prison without bars.
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.