Switzerland

Der Freund is a film by Micha Lewinsky. It won the Swiss Film Award 2008 Best Fiction Film.

Plot from imdb:
In reality Emil (Philippe Graber) and Larissa (Emilie Welti) would never have been a couple she is an idolized singer, he is a shy outsider. Ironically, Emil is just getting to know Larissa when she dies unexpectedly. He pretends to have been her boyfriend and finally gets the recognition he has always yearned for, with the added bonus of a surrogate family in the form of Larissas. Things would be just great if Emil didnt fall in love – with Larissas sister Nora (Johanna Bantzer). The more he gets to know her, the harder it becomes for him to pretend.Read More »

Quote:
At the end of the Second World War, orphans of various nationalities come together at the Pestalozzi Children’s Village in Trogen. When the order arrives from Poland that the Polish children must return to their country, it comes as a shock to 13-year-old Andrzey: he doesn’t want to leave Anja, for whom he has developed a strong affection. The two children decide to flee and go into hiding…Read More »

Synopsis:

‘Pietro Ponz lives a happy life in the mountains on the Swiss-Italian border with his mother Lamberta. No one but his mother knows that Pietro is a girl, a deception that Lamberta was forced into by a series of tragedies almost twenty years previously. Not long after her husband Joseph Ponz died, Lamberta also lost her fragile infant son, Pietro. Whilst mourning this double loss, she began an affair with Bolzano, a notorious smuggler. After Bolzano was killed by the customs men, Lamberta gave birth to his child, a little girl that she decided to pass off as her son Pietro, in the hope of securing an inheritance from her husband’s wealthy parents. Now that Pietro is fast coming of age, his tutor and grandmother are adamant that he should be sent to a religious school. Pietro escapes from the school and joins a gang of smugglers…’
– James TraversRead More »

imdb:
When Maria, a Mexican émigré, becomes pregnant, she keeps quiet, fearing that her husband Giorgio, who thinks he’s sterile, will suspect her of infidelity. This silence divides the couple.Read More »

A thirty day music marathon by Swiss musicians Koch-Schütz-Studer turns into a cinematic piece of chamber music.Read More »

Quote:
Signer’s “action sculptures” involve setting up, carrying out, and recording “experiments” or events that bear aesthetic results. Following carefully planned and strictly executed and documented procedures, the artist enacts and records such acts as explosions, collisions, and the projection of objects through space. Video works like Stiefel mit Rakete (Boot with Rocket) are integral to Signer’s performances, capturing the original setup of materials that self-destruct in the process of creating an emotionally and visually compelling event. Signer gives a humorous twist to the concept of cause and effect and to the traditional scientific method of experimentation and discovery, taking on the self-evidence of scientific logic as an artistic challenge.Read More »

First her father ends up in one of Stalin’s prison camps, then young Svetlana herself experiences the German invasion. In order to survive she learns German at home in Kiev. She is good and gets work as a translator before ending up in a German camp in 1943. Now, 65 years later, she is a renowned translator who in her twilight years has translated the great works of Dostoevsky. For the first time in all these years, she returns to Kiev together with her granddaughter.
—Göteborg International Film FestivalRead More »

Day Is Done becomes, among other things, a poetic but also wryly humorous study of the
selfish artist trying to play the indifferent God, but ending up revealing himself as all too
human. (…) Day Is Done contains images of ravishing though unconventional urban beauty.
(Screen Daily, 14.02.11)Read More »

“For heaven’s sake, what a question!” exclaims the mother as her son begins the conversation; they had avoided one another for decades.
The film traces a reencounter between the director and his aged parents. It is an attempt at a personal revision of the past. In the process, a new view of his parents emerges, which also provides again and again insight into a bygone era. The story of their marriage, however, borders on a classic drama, leaving us feeling forlorn and miserable even today.Read More »