Mutiara, légende d'une perle

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

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

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.

Two musicians whose biographies could not be more different. And yet, they are not only linked by a passion for music that they share with their spouses. All three have enjoyed successful careers in their home countries, and now need to find new bearings in Switzerland. Parallel to her concerts, pianist Tamriko Kordzaia, originally from Georgia, gives lessons at a music school, composer and singer Samir Essahbi, who is Moroccan, performs regularly with his band, and Turkish singer Ülkü Fazilet Bozkurt is starting to perform again.

Tracing the emigrations of his family over more than half a century, this riveting documentary epic from acclaimed expatriate Iraqi filmmaker Samir pays moving homage to the frustrated democratic dreams of a people successively plagued by the horrors of dictatorship, war and foreign occupation of Iraq.

Soeurs

"Gross national happiness is more important than gross national product", declares the King of Bhutan. Can happiness be decreed? We accompany seven Swiss musicians to this mountainous Himalayan country. Between concerts, we meet Bhutanese people in their daily lives, who tell us, as if in passing, what makes them happy. Are we capable of finding happiness elsewhere? Does the advantage of globalization lie precisely in the erasure of the elsewhere? The whole world is in the here and now, and distant horizons are always close to us, transported by SMS...

The Salecine meeting place, founded near Maloja in 1971 by Zurich communist bookseller Theo Pinkus, quickly became a socio-cultural and political Mecca for the left-wing intelligentsia. The film provides an overview of the chronicle of this Alpine melting pot of ideas, and also shows the changes in the zeitgeist since 1968. It is also a gentle, sentimental (sometimes self-ironic) tribute to the men and women of three generations of Salecina, who, at 1800 above sea level, are creating utopias for a fairer world.

The film portrays people with different time consciousness. A computer scientist works non-stop. Only when she gets home can she relax. A young employee suffers from sleep disorders and stress at work, and sinks into a state of decompensation. Ski trainer Didier Plaschy looks at the effects of slowing down and speeding up. Time historian Karlheinz Geissler takes a piquantly humorous look at our fast-paced society.

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.

Stella ciao

A touching and delicate portrait of four remarkable Ethiopian women, struggling with the poverty and insecurity of urban life in Addis Ababa.

System Error

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.

“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.

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

A l'ombre de la montagne

The Making of a Dream is a cinematic essay on stories of dancers. It shows joys and pains from the first steps in an amateur school to the goal to become a principal dancer in a world known ballet company.

Que viva Mauricio Demierre

Zurich-born Hugo Koblet was the first international cycling star of the post-war period. He was a stylist on the bicycle and in life, and a huge heartthrob. Koblet had a meteoric rise and won the Giro d'Italia in 1950. Once he had reached the zenith of his career, Koblet was put under pressure by overly ambitious officials and ended up ruining his health with drugs. In 1954, he married a well-known model and they became a celebrity dream couple. After his athletic career ended, Koblet began to lose his footing. Threatened by bankruptcy, he crashed his Alfa into a tree.