Chronique vigneronne

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.

Remue-ménage

Le garçon s'appelait Apache

Fenster zum Jenseits

A documentary film about Tibetan traditional medicine.

A documentary about healers from the Swiss canton of Appenzell.

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

Un petit coin de paradis

Vibrato

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.

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.

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

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.

A well-preserved mammoth carcass is found in the remote New Siberian Islands in the Arctic Ocean, opening up the possibility of a world-changing “Jurassic Park” moment in genetics.

Philippe Savoy head of the choir at Saint Michael's College in Fribourg is preparing to take his fifty-five students to Palestine for a series of concerts. From Bethlehem to Ramallah, passing by Jerusalem and Hebron, between check points and churches, discovering both refugee camps and historical tourism around the Dead Sea, the young musicians will discover an exploded territory, a country living in provisional peace with, in the background, the permanent humiliation of the Palestinian people.

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

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.

“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.

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.

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.