Masaki Hatsui

How a shy young man living off odd jobs became the funniest and most popular cartoonist in French-speaking Switzerland.

At dawn, a cannon shot shatters the plain. Horses gallop across the beaten earth. Eva, 21 years old, wants to join the hunters of the Imperial Guard, a Napoleonic regiment of historical re-enactment reserved for men. In her quest for romanticism, she hides her identity so that she can set foot in the stirrup, braving a 200-year-old ban. In this world of gunpowder and smoke, Eva discovers herself as she has always dreamed: a handsome soldier at the side of a beautiful princess.

Frank, a man of action who worked his way up all by himself, dedicates his life to work. No matter the place or the circumstances, be it day or night, he’s on the phone, handling the cargo ships he charters for major companies. But when he has to deal with a crisis situation, Frank makes a brutal decision and gets fired. Profoundly shaken, betrayed by a system to which he gave his all, he has to progressively question himself to save the one connection that still matters to him: the bond he’s managed to maintain with his youngest daughter, Mathilde.

The Alba Angela sails along the middle of the Strait of Sicily. Salvuccio, the captain, orders the crew to switch off the lights and to cut the engine, as a police patrol will soon be nearby, on the lookout for further landings of illegal immigrants. The crew brings up the nets and silently waits in the dark. In the port of Catania, Ahmed imagines ways of leaving the abandoned boat in which he has been living for five years. At nightfall, he watches a cargo ship unloading goods which are free to circulate throughout Europe. At daybreak, the Alba Angela reaches the port of Catania and berths alongside Ahmed. In this Sicilian town, the illegally fishing trawler, its crew, and the illegal migrant both struggle with poverty, living side by side, in complete ignorance of one another.

Thirty female prisoners share the convicts’ ward of Tuilière Prison at Lonay. More than half of them have one or more children being raised elsewhere: with a sister, in a foster family, or – further away still – in their countries of origin. In portraying some of these women, the film sheds light on these mothers and the bond that ties them to their children.

Alex, a professional tourist guide, is asked to welcome Sacha,a young woman of Russian extraction. She has participated in a contest and, consequently, won a one-week stay in Geneva. From the outset, the young woman shakes up Alex's plans and drags him along with her through a risky and hazardous treasure-hunt at the confines of Eastern Switzerland. Wanted by the police and hunted down by the mafia, Alex and Sacha decide to shake off their pursuers by moving about more slowly than the others: they then advance through lakes and other roundabout ways. While Alex and Sacha sink deeply into an ever stranger Switzerland, they will observe, discover, oppose and finally love each other to the vanishing point.