Social & External
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.
Nearing the end of a long and successful stage career, Miriam Goldschmidt finds her prowess as an actress increasingly on the wane. She struggles to memorize her lines and as her last project with lifelong collaborator, the legendary director Peter Brook, threatens to fall apart, Miriam looks back. Referencing Brook’s ground-breaking book «The Empty Space», she uses an empty rehearsal room in Berlin to invoke her archetypal life journey that took an orphaned black child from post-war Germany to the world’s biggest stages. We «Call Her Miriam» is a bewitching and moving portrait of a great artist living between dream and reality, truth and fction and life and death.
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.
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.
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.
At the far end of the Alaskan peninsula, for filmmaker Roman Droux a childhood dream comes true. He discovers together with the bear researcher David Bittner the universe of wild grizzlies. The two adventurists face bears at smelling-distance, experience the struggle for survival of a bear family and witness dramatic fighting scenes. Driven by a desire to explore the unknown the film tells a personal story of wilderness, framed in breathtaking pictures of unique creatures.
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.
The incredible story of how the mummified corpse of a 40-year-old man was discovered by a hunter in one of the most remote parts of the country. The dead man's detailed notes reveal that he actually committed suicide through self-imposed starvation only the summer before. Liechti's film is a stunning rapprochement of a fictional text, which itself is based upon a true event: a cinematic manifesto for life, challenged by the main character's radical renunciation of life itself.
A documentary. David Sieveking takes the advice of his idol, David Lynch and tries out Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's transcendental meditation technique.
Filmmakers Nicolaus Humbert and Werner Penzel examine the nature of nomadic existence in this documentary, from the literal nomads of North Africa to the more metaphorical kind of wanderer, such as American poet and ex-pat Robert Lax. Humbert and Penzel focus especially on the nomad's paradoxical ability to fully inhabit every moment while remaining coolly detached from specific locales and anxious thoughts about the past or future.
A disturbing exploration of what it means to be a man Desert Wind unveils the innermost thoughts of 13 men about their lives and male identity, making a clean sweep of clichés. Their revelations -- a glimpse of the hidden side that few men spontaneously reveal -- are of equal interest for women.
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.
Odyssey of the fortune-teller Daniele von Arb who, aged sixteen, joined the revolutionary underground and made the headlines as a top Swiss terrorist.
A contemplation on night travelling in various weather conditions through seemingly endless landscapes in Europe, only briefly disrupted by shreds of conversation in a foreign language.
Five highly original musicians from different countries form the Accordion Tribe. Together they aim to reinforce the original power of the long disdained instrument. The film follows the energetic soundscapes and their performers on a journey through Europe. An extraordinarily intensive documentary on the communicative, connecting power of music.
A documentary film about Tibetan traditional medicine.
