The Swissmakers

On February 4, 1936, Wilhelm Gustloff, leader of the NSDAP, was shot dead in Davos. His assassin, 27-year-old David Frankfurter, wanted to use the action to highlight the persecution of the Jews. This docudrama describes with great precision the events leading up to the fateful day and the trial that followed. The film was selected as the Swiss entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 48th Academy Awards, but was not nominated.

When her apartment is terminated, student Nelly moves with her slightly demented grandmother to her plot in the community garden. Inspired and supported by her enamoured neighbour, she sets off to fight the pedantic president of the family garden, Franco, and unwittingly shakes the well-kept secret that once divided her family - and which had its beginning in the colourful and multicultural community garden world.

A journalist is assigned to interview an eccentric anthropologist who has exhumed the skeleton of Jörg Jenatsch, a revered freedom fighter who was mysteriously murdered in 1639. Initially disinterested, the journalist begins to uncover unflattering truths about the national hero and experiences visions in which he seems to be witnessing events that transpired over 300 years ago. As he obsessively pursues the investigation, his personal life and his grip on reality disintegrate, drawing him relentlessly toward the fatal carnival at which Jenatsch was killed.

Train driver Leo Mangold has been living alone in his two-room apartment for years. His colleague Adrian Hauser is married and having an affair with Thai go-go dancer Apia. To ensure that she does not lose her residence permit, Adrian asks his friend Leo to marry Apia, and Leo agrees. To deceive the immigration authorities, Apia has to move in with Leo, much to his displeasure. They begin to fall in love with each other. Adrian is not happy about this. Nightclub owner Willi also puts pressure on the couple because he wants to place Apia in a massage parlor.

At the heart of the film is the partner selection institute Duogena, which—very progressive for its time—not only works with computers but also uses video technology: as a visual calling card, a video portrait is recorded of each client in the Duogena studio. The task of 40-year-old bachelor Felix Stamm as a Duogena employee is to grapple with the catalogued heart's desires and to coach clients so that they present their quirks and idiosyncrasies, their concerns and wishes to the camera in as positive a light as possible.

When Ursula B. came into the world deaf and blind in 1951, her mother abandoned her immediately after giving birth. The doctors in Zurich did not expect her to live long. But despite such prognoses, Ursula is now a 60 year old woman, cared for with a great deal of affection for five decades by Anita U., her foster mother. Where does Ursula get her strength to live? And where does Anita get the energy for her relationship with Ursula? in stirring images, the director brings a story to the screen in which human love is ultimately the only link to Ursula's elsewhere, to her enigmatic universe without sight or sound.

Gertrud (89) has only one thing in mind when she smiles at the man online, even though she has no memory of doing so: to determine the final stages of her life herself before winding up in the dementia ward. But neither her end-of-life therapist or her family nor her suitor can be coaxed into honouring her request.