Talented swimmer, motivated apprentice, cool buddy: Beyto is in the midst of life. But when the only son of a Turkish migrant family falls in love with his coach Mike, an ideal world falls to pieces. His parents only see one way out: They lure him to their home village and plan his wedding with Seher, his childhood friend. Suddenly, Beyto finds himself in a disruptive love triangle.
Water, air, earth, fire, ether. Four different stories that tell and show a reaching out towards immortality. We dedicate the element water to immortality in science, that of air to the immortality of art, that of earth to the immortality of faith and that of fire to the immortality of feelings. Ether, linked to the cosmos and the stars, is a tribute to the film industry.
After his mother passes away, Rein moves to a small village in the Alps to be immersed in nature, meditate and work as a snowboard teacher. His quiet bubble bursts when his extroverted father Gijs comes to visit. But it isn’t long before Rein has had enough.
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.
Twelve talented young mountaineers, five geologists from the University of Lausanne and four mountain guides take an unprecedented risk in Patagonia. Trained by the great climbers Ralf Weber, Ueli Steck, Denis Burdet and David Fasel, the young people are collecting rock samples from the granite walls of the Paine Towers, which are up to 1000 meters high, on behalf of science. The challenges are enormous: Climbing a big wall at the highest level of difficulty, cloudy weather, relentless wind that tears at material and nerves - and an urgency that also pushes the group to their emotional limits. "Flying High" not only documents an extraordinary undertaking, but also shows up close what happens when something happens that can happen after every meter of altitude climbed: a fall.
In Bern, Madame Mercedes has been working for 35 years in her car as a prostitute. An intimate and subtle portrait about ageing as a prostitute, a documentary about a vanishing chapter of habits in Switzerland.
Kevin lives in a time and place where everything is permitted and accepted. He wants to rebel – but against what? A tragicomedy about youth gasping for air in a cotton-candy world. A generation seeking a reason for its malaise and a way to shed the boredom – only to discover, at most, its own emptiness. That’s no way to start a revolution. Or perhaps?
«Bestiaries, Herbaria, Lapidaries» is an ‘encyclopaedic’ documentary, whose non-human protagonists tell about us humans. The film is divided into three volumes, each dealing with a single subject: animals, plants, stones. In this tripartite vision, each of its segment is a tribute to a specific genre of documentary filmmaking. Through the three volumes, a single dramaturgical body emerges, that stages a process of admission of responsibility, a process of maintenance and protection, and finally a process of rediscovery of a common and fundamental value: care.
The cautious friendship between Stefan Busch, known to everyone as Buschi, and Mr. Hideo Kitamura begins on this special road trip. Buschi, who has refused to speak with his fellow human beings his entire life, blossoms on this journey to unknown places.
How to film war? «War and Peace» tells the story of the century-old relationship between cinema and war, from the time of their first encounter, way back in 1911 with the Italian invasion of Libya, up to the present day. Forging ahead from the images captured by the pioneers of cinema to today’s twitter feeds, following young soldiers as they are trained to film war, the alliance between cinema and war appears to be a powerful one.
The revolution of mindfulness meditation in the business world - a critical look behind the facade of a modern, spiritual phenomenon.
Welcome to “the prime of life”. All his life, Rudy has worked hard for the firm, and for the family. But now, everything is about to change: Rudy retires. No alarm clock, no meetings, no travels to distant countries to set the pace. Shopping, cooking, gardening, and the daily routines of marital bliss will now fill his schedule. Rudy was actually looking forward to it, to the next phase. But as he soon realizes, “the prime of life” is a wild ride on an emotional rollercoaster. Retirement is not for cowards.
«A heroine's quest» portrays the Muslim woman Naima Serroukh as she sets up her pilot project Tasamouh to combat religious extremism. Naima's story is told as she goes about her work as manager of the project and gives us an insight into the world of prevention work. Besides her search for financing and partners, her personal conflicts, she gives advice to distraught mothers, coaches young people and tries to provide them with support in their integration process. «A heroine's quest» paints the portrait of a strong woman, who has come to accept that progress can only be made in tiny baby steps, but at the end of the day, it's all about making life together a bit better. A portrait of an everyday heroine. An impression of the Muslim community in the fight against prejudice.
At the far end of Europe, on the southern border of Spain, lies Almería. It is a huge province completely covered with white plastic, harbouring Europe’s largest vegetable garden. It is the place where our tomatoes come from, even in winter. But under all the plastic, strange things happen… Today, the vegetable garden inevitably moves to Morocco. Spanish farmers dive well under their prices to keep in the race. 120.000 migrants work in slave-like conditions on the plantations.
