Praesens-Film

The search for a child murderer drags a once-respected detective into an all-consuming obsession.

French Guyana, not so long ago. Eliott, a young and naive anthropology researcher, goes on an expedition to study the Otopis, a mysterious tribe from the Amazon rainforest. It is also an opportunity for him to get away from the grip of his possessive mother, Chantal de Bellabre, an ethnologist hated by the profession for her biased and cold-hearted practices. Arriving in the forest Elliot realizes the Otopis are not the “good savages” he had imagined. Alcoholic, violent, crooked: they will turn his expedition into real hell in the jungle. Fortunately, Chantal, consumed by remorse and worried about her son, decides to abandon her own expedition and goes looking for him in the jungle, with the help of the not so helpful Lieutenant-Commander Raspailles and his men.

In postwar Germany, a displaced Czech boy, separated from his family during wartime, is befriended by an American GI while the boy's mother desperately searches for him.

A policeman is not convinced that the prime suspect in a murder case is realty guilty and so decides to reinvestigate the case, despite the lack of co-operation from locals.

While on a longer business trip, a wannabe poet urges his beautiful but more simple wife to answer his overly swollen love letters. With no idea how to respond she forwards the letters to a new young school teacher to use his answers instead...

In the 1770s, Swiss farmer Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi established a school for poor orphaned children in the Aargau. Up to total exhaustion he sacrificed himself for his pedagogical theories. Five years later, the project of the idealistic educator failed after bloody attacks of the French. In retrospect, the disappointed Pestalozzi experiences the last few months with "his" children.

Farmer Heiri has sold his calf and celebrates his temporary wealth in the big city. But in doing so he is confronted with many temptations and dangers: pickpockets, second-rate artists and prostitutes who all try to grab the money of this naive man from Hausen. A 1978 recording of the well-known Zurich boulevard theatre piece.

Kuhle Wampe takes place in early-1930s Berlin. The film begins with a montage of newspaper headlines describing steadily-rising unemployment figures. This is followed by scenes of a young man looking for work in the city and the family discussing the unpaid back rent. The young man, brother of the protagonist Anni, removes his wristwatch and throws himself from a window out of despair. Shortly thereafter his family is evicted from their apartment. Now homeless, the family moves into a garden colony of sorts with the name “Kuhle Wampe.”

In the dense and murky woodlands of provincial Hungary, the search for a child murderer drags a once-respected detective into an all-consuming obsession enshrouded by irresolution and despair, even long after he has been taken off the case. What emerges is not a crime story, but a harrowing venture through the darkness of the human soul.

Escaping a Nazi prison train in war-torn Italy, an American and a British soldier set out for the Swiss border and find themselves leading a multi-national party of refugees for the Italian underground.

If any one man is responsible for the rejuvenation of the postwar Swiss film industry, that man was director Leopold Lindtberg. Matto Regiert (Madness Rules) was co-adapted for the screen by Lindtberg from a novel by Friedrich Glauser. Heinrich Gretler stars as Police Constable Studer, the hero of several of Glauser's most popular works. This time, Studer must solve the murder of the director of an insane asylum -- and it's not (surprise, surprise) the most likely suspect, manic-depressive patient Herbert Caplaun. For box-office purposes, Matto Regiert stresses a romantic subplot involving Caplaun and nurse Irma Wasem.

When a young European woman assumes a false identity in 1920s Argentina, she gets more than she bargained for.

Heidi, a young orphan girl living with her aunt in Frankfurt, is forced to move to the Swiss Alps to live with her ornery grandfather. At first, he resents her presence, but, after a short while, Heidi manages to pierce his gruff exterior, and the two become close. She also befriends a young shepherd named Peter. After three years, Heidi's aunt arrives and demands Heidi's return to Frankfurt.

The Village (German: Sie fanden eine Heimat) is a 1953 Swiss drama film directed by Leopold Lindtberg.

A sailor on leave meets a beautiful girl on the ski slopes of Switzerland.

Musical comedy about a marriage registrar.

It's director Oberholzer's sixtieth birthday. His wife and daughter Anna receive the guests who are invited to the feast, with a dish of pike as the main course. But suddenly, the celebration turns sour at the appearance of an unexpected guest - namely Oberholzer's brother Alois, the black sheep of the family, who disappeared years ago. As it turns out, Alois has since changed his name to "Obolski" and become ringmaster of a major circus. Him and his wife Iduna quickly threaten the morals and standards of the bourgeois party, and they proceed to turn the boring proceedings into a turbulent circus show. Fortunately, after much confusion, the story ends happily - altough the pike has burned black in the oven!