The Scent of Fear

Thomas Haemmerli is about to celebrate his fortieth birthday when he learns of his mother's death. A further shock follows when he and his brother Erik discover her apartment, which is filthy and full to bursting with junk. It takes the brothers an entire month to clean out the place. Among the chaos, they find films going back to the 1930s, photos and other memorabilia.

Tracing the past of her deceased grandfather who worked as a young doctor in the Red Cross hospital of HirSwiss-Japanese filmmaker Aya Domenig, the granddaughter of a doctor on duty during the 1945 atomic bombing of Hiroshima, approaches the experience of her deceased grandfather by tracing the lives of a doctor and of former nurses who once shared the same experience. While gathering the memories and present views of these last survivors, the nuclear disaster in Fukushima strikes and history seems to repeat itself.oshima after the atomic bomb was dropped over the city, the filmmaker encounters doctors and nurses who went through similar experiences to his at the time. Right up until his death in 1991, her grandfather was never able to speak about his experiences, but the formidable stories and openness of her protagonists bring her closer to his past.

Evangelical Christians are calling out for a second sexual revolution: chastity. As a counter-movement of the attitudes and practices of today's culture, one in six girls in the US has vowed to remain 'unsoiled' until marriage. But the seven children of the Wilson family, founders of the Purity Ball, take this concept of purity of body and mind one step further; even their first kiss will be at the altar. For two years, the filmmakers follow the Wilson offspring as they prepare for their fairytale vision of romance and marriage and seek out their own prince and princess spouses. In the process, a broader theme emerges: how the religious right is grooming a young generation of virgins to embody an Evangelically-grounded Utopia in America.

I meet Herbert in the same week I get diagnosed with cancer. We fall madly in love and plan to stay together for the rest of our lives. Three months later, he is dead. Herbert was a BASE Jumper. Leaping off a cliff with nothing but a parachute, he loses his balance, slams into the rock face and falls to his death. His loss in the midst of my chemotherapy completely throws me. Why does he gamble his life away, while I fight for mine? Desperate for answers, I return to Lauterbrunnen, the scene of the accident where Andreas, his best friend and coach, introduces me to the world of BASE. The jumpers teach me not only about the sport, but about facing fears, harnessing and controlling them. To make the most of the life we get. In the Swiss Death Valley I slowly find my way back to life.

Is the city of Zurich suffering from ‘density stress’? What is it like to live in mega cities such as São Paulo, Mexico City and Tiflis? Filmmaker Thomas Haemmerli broaches the topics of city development, architecture, density, housing market, xenophobia and gentrification from an autobiographical perspective. The path of his life has led him from a childhood in the villa district of Zürichberg, through his teenage years as squatter to flat shares, yuppie apartments and finally second homes in various cities. Only recently having become a dad, he plans to further enhance Zurich’s price appreciation by purchasing a huge, extended city apartment… This multifaceted essay not only humorously questions the filmmaker’s decisions, but also those of the right-wing conservatives, who are afraid of losing their space to immigrants, and the political left, who fail to embrace modern-age architecture.

Over the past 20 years, the Schwörer family has sailed around the world while sharing their expedition examples of nature’s true beauty and inspiring people to live in balance with nature. Along the way, their family has grown, with six children being raised on their sailboat.