Balz Bachmann

Jackie Brutsche tries to unravel the dark secrets of her family and answer unanswered questions about her mother.

An epic family saga told by the women around the famous architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.

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.

The small swiss village of Mitholz got destroyed in 1947 after an Ammunition depots of the Swiss Army exploded. After decades of secrecy, the population learned in 2018 that the danger had not been averted yet and that the residents need to leave their homes. A story about the abuse of trust and the mistakes of a government whose citizens pay the price for.

Jonas and Silvia are enjoying a wonderful sailing holiday in the Mediterranean sea. But while sailing through the night, far away from land, they discover an overloaded refugee boat, close to sinking. They are shocked, but too afraid to help. So they call the coast guards but lose the boat out of sight into the darkness of the night. In the early morning they find themselves drifting through an ocean of dead bodies. The refugee boat has sunk. Jonas and Silvia manage to pull a few survivors out of the cold water: Syrians. This rescue marks the beginning of a dramatic conflict between the hopes and dreams of the refugees, and the fears and ideals of the holiday sailors.

Love Island tells the story of a pregnant French woman who lives in Sarajevo with her Bosnian husband and their daughter. They go for a vacation at a Croatian island, where things get complicated when they all become attracted to a beautiful woman.

Up until the middle of the 19Th century, poverty stricken mountain farmers from the Ticino area of Switzerland frequently sold their children to Milan as chimney sweeps or spazzacamini. That is also young Giorgios fate. He is forced to climb through pitch black chimneys, flinging down the soot with his bare hands. But he does not lose heart. Together with his buddies sharing in the same misery, he establishes the association of Black Brothers. They stick together, struggling against their penury and getting involved in fights with the street gangs of Milan. The film tells of the gripping adventures of the chimney sweep boys and their spectacular escape back to their native land.

Kari Tellenbach was born with a cleft palate. His mother takes care of him like a bird that has fallen out of the nest. As a young man Kari decides to become a barber and despite his handicap he wins the heart of Annemarie with his humour, charm and sensitivity. His happiness seems almost complete – but Annemarie’s middle class parents have already made other plans for their daughter.

Anita and Fred have been a couple for 50 years, and happily married for nearly as long. They have two grown children, and their grandchildren are finishing school. Both can look back at a fulfilling past, but their lives are still rich and vibrant. The fact that Fred is terribly ill has been hidden from the family. For the first time in all these years, Fred takes some liberties, which his wife interprets as an affront. Never before has she felt so abandoned. Although she starts to question her relationship, a love like theirs cannot end so easily. Indeed it should never end.

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.

Five stories, all taking place on New Year's Eve in Zurich, Switzerland.

An old man boards a cable car and heads up the mountain. Along the way he takes some snuff, sneezes, and things start to fall apart... literally. Good thing he has some tape.

Roger is a young, dashing banker full of boyish self-confidence. He has a highly successful business, smuggling black money across the border for reinvestment. But then a split second reaction changes his entire life. Flagged down one day by a customs officers, Roger loses his cool and makes a run for it. His only means of escape: diving headlong into Lake Constance, thereby catapulting himself out of his life as a banker and into a totally new universe, populated with shy mermaids decked out in Lara Croft gear, and cunning magpie witches in helicopters. As in a Grimm Brothers fairy tale, Roger has to pass three tests to cast off the witch’s curse and find happiness. His underwater journey through an intoxicatingly beautiful Switzerland is enhanced by the enchanting songs of sirens – a fable full of lust for life and love.

The filmmaker Lenz has left his native Berlin for the Vosges to research the story behind Georg Büchner's novel fragment Lenz. But he soon trades the Alsatian landscape for higher altitudes and more emotional territory: a reunion with his estranged wife Natalie and their son Noah in the Swiss Alps. Like his literary counterpart, the modern-day Lenz follows the Romantic motto: Genius writes its own rules. Against a background of kitsch global tourism - provided by the authentic Zermatt locations - Thomas Imbach's Lenz portrays an unconventional family and a man struggling between euphoria and desperation.

Finally adult and free? You wish! His father sees him as a future boss of the family-owned printing firm and his mother only wants the best for him. Sebastian can’t take it any more. On his eighteenth birthday he announces his departure to Geneva to work as an au pair in a family, looking after children and doing the household chores. To improve his French, of course! His father flips his lid, his mother is distraught. Only his sister Kathrin thinks her little brother is really cool… Very few men would be up to the challenge!

Franz Engi returns to his hometown after being away for 30 years. A lot of things have changed in that time. There are only few families with children left in the village and that is why the school is about to be closed down. Franz decides to save the school and teacher Eva's job in a very unusual way....

Small dog Poldek lives with a poor old lady in a small one-room apartment. The tenement block is part of a tumbledown grey town out in the nowhere, forgotten by prosperity. The dog is hungry, howles and eats flies that are magically attracted by the old woman. She leaves home every day to seek some eatable stuff. An unsavoury little horrorstory with a lot of action.

Odyssey of the fortune-teller Daniele von Arb who, aged sixteen, joined the revolutionary underground and made the headlines as a top Swiss terrorist.

Odyssey of the fortune-teller Daniele von Arb who, aged sixteen, joined the revolutionary underground and made the headlines as a top Swiss terrorist.