SRF

Summertime in a city. The coolness of a morning swim in the river quickly vanishes as the heat exacerbates insignificant daily nuisances. As Eli tires to escape the narrowness and agitation of the city, she keeps on facing aggression. Her rage starts to build up.

Heidi, is an eight-year-old Swiss orphan who is given by her aunt to her mountain-dwelling grandfather. She is then stolen back by her aunt from her grandfather to live in the wealthy Sesemann household in Frankfurt, Germany as a companion to Klara, a sheltered, disabled girl in a wheelchair. Heidi is unhappy but makes the best of the situation, always longing for her grandfather.

In the not-too-distant future: after a global catastrophe has wiped out nearly all of humanity on Earth, an elite astronaut from Space Colony Kepler must make a decision that will seal the fate of the people on both planets.

Born June 8, 1964, Frank Matter films four "twins", born the same day as him, but in other latitudes. Interweaving their life stories with rich archival material, the filmmaker links these Parallel Lives with elements from his own biography, to compose a fascinating fresco where intimate trajectories are part of the advent of the global village.

Documentary film.

Dedicated nurse Floria navigates the relentless pace of her hospital’s understaffed surgical ward with humanity and warmth. As her overnight shift intensifies, she is pushed to the brink in a race against time.

Everything is under control, she thinks. Everything is lost, he thinks. And then they meet. And fall.

Frank, serving a life sentence, takes a prison job caring for aging incarcerated men with Alzheimer’s and dementia. What begins as a self-interested bid for parole becomes a profound, transformative bond with fellow prisoner Louis, offering Frank a glimpse of redemption in an unforgiving place.

Life could be wonderful for Livia and Marco: good-looking, young, and Tim's parents. Tim is nine months old. His screaming every night drives his parents around the bend, although he was supposed to cement their relationship. But instead of slumber and sex, it's the same every night: jump out of bed and into the wobbly old Golf whose engine sound is the only thing that calms Tim down. One night, the unbelievable happens…

The Grüninger case from Switzerland. This is a documentary about a police officer who showed civil courage back in the forties when he led many refugees fleeing German Nazi terror immigrate to Switzerland, although he was advised not to do so. Grüninger later was sued by the state of Switzerland, lost his job and died in the early seventies. The film constructs a just lawsuit with eye-witnesses and thus fully legitimates what Grüninger did.

The film follows five professional photographers in Los Angeles, Latin America, Paris, Berlin and Switzerland in their daily struggle to come by. It shows how digitalization and the internet affects and transforms their work deeply. It talks about the world as much as about the image of that world. It talks about pictures and their meaning and what they trigger in those who watch them.

A Swiss political documentary about the Zurich youth unrest of 1968

11-year-old Pola and her best friend Polly spend all their time at the local outdoor pool, Plitsch Platsch, where Polly's parents run a café. When the pool is closed due to budget cuts and Polly's family moves away, Pola suddenly finds herself alone. Refusing to give up, she teams up with her clever new classmate Rosalie to try to save the pool. Together, they start a petition and rally with the local children. Along the way, Pola discovers new friendships and learns that change is a part of growing up.

Giulia Tonelli, principal dancer at the Zurich Opera House, returns from maternity leave. She has to fight to find her place and a new balance, between the competitive and extremely demanding world of an elite ballet company and her new family life.

In this small village in Extremadura, population has been declining since the 1960s, driven away by unemployment. Alberto Martín Menacho returns to this region he knows intimately, and together with local youths, spins stories in a reality suspended between tradition and modernity, human and animal, between a thousand-year-old oak tree and Tinder. A strikingly graceful debut film.

My parents want us to inherit their life's work. We must talk. About expectations and ideals. About privileges and burdens. But also, about money.

A sunny Saturday afternoon in Zurich. In the middle of a crowded square a businessman is lying on a bench, seemingly asleep. Someplace else, a teenager is longing for appreciation. A commuter is fighting the ticket machine. The film shows ten tableaux of everyday situations in the city. The people in them are confronted with small or big problems. Each one of them is a Sisyphos, endlessly rolling the little stones of daily life up the mountain.

At the Swiss public swimming pool, teenagers enjoy their new-found freedom as much as their fries. Two years later, they are still the same, but their outside and inside have changed. The demolition of the orange slide and the modernisation of the pool make them think back to their childhood. A new, diverse generation is growing up in the Badi.