Daniel Frei

“Luxury, luxury, luxury… and not to be so alone.” Vanessa wants to spend her holiday at a comfortable resort. However, due to a booking error at the travel agents, Vanessa ends up on a barren desert island. The next ship doesn’t arrive for another week, so until then she has to cope with oddball lighthouse keeper Stanislav, and the highly unconventional and nonchalant Sebastian, who also has a right to the only shabby guest room. There’s no escape from this island – and the three gradually get to know each other over schnapps and pie. When a further guest arrives in the form of dubious businessman Felix and a body turns up in Stanislav’s cellar, the insular resort becomes the backdrop for a grotesque fight for life. In his debut feature, Matthias J. Michel cleverly repels various genre and character clichés to create an exceptional black comedy.

A woman and a man encounter each other at the place of final decisions.

It Happened on... - The Bührle Art Robbery

Lorenz Meran, a successful gay author suffering acute writers' block, has to leave Berlin and return to eastern Switzerland to provide care for his aged mother, Rosie. But it is not only his mother's battle against being dictated to and losing her dignity that he is struggling with. It's also his own midlife crisis.

A detective leaves the force to take over the family business as an undertaker at the same time as he is being investigated for murder. His close encounters with corpses and his earlier police training lead him to see things some of his ex-colleagues miss and he investigates the crimes he encounters in an unofficial capacity often to the dismay of the official police.