Verena Zimmermann

Fredi M. Murer wrote and directed this Swiss drama about a family with a missing child. The only explanation seems to be kidnapping, but no ransom note arrives. Police inspector Anatol Wasser (Hanspeter Muller) soon faces an elaborate mystery: a dozen Swiss children vanish with no indication of any pattern -- other than the fact that they all lived near lakes. Is organized crime responsible, or does the answer lie in mystical realms? Shown at the 1998 Montreal Film Festival.

An unusually hot summer. Fourteen year-old Wanda moves with her family from Berlin to Switzerland. Everything will be better here. The move is meant to heal the open wounds of the family. Anna, the mother, has lost her self-confidence due to an affair her husband Joachim had in Berlin. The big house with the overgrown garden and the pretty small town all seems like one big promise. But the new beginning is difficult for everyone. Joachim, 40, throws himself into family activism while Anna, also 40, tries to strengthen the family with new rituals.

In reality Emil and Larissa 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. The more he gets to know her, the harder it becomes for him to pretend.

The story of Karin and Mike. They work at Perla, a washing machine manufacturer. She is a career woman, he is on the assembly line and plays for the factory soccer team. The company is owned by an American corporation. Until now it has been business as usual, but all of a sudden comes the news that 400 redundancies are needed if Perla is to survive. Suddenly, there is everything to play for.