Alpine Hotel at Christmas
★ 6 · 2024 · 46m · Documentary
Lap up the luxury and opulence of the festive season at Switzerland's Gstaad Palace hotel, as we discover one of the most exclusive hotels in the world, where staff and management work hard to ensure their guests enjoy the ultimate 5-star festive experience. Run by third generation hotelier Andrea Scherz, whose family have owned the hotel since 1938, the hotel is one of the last in Switzerland to close between the summer season and winter. When it reopens in mid-December, with rooms costing up to £18,000 per night, the pressure is on to provide a truly first class Christmas.
More Like This
Mysteriepakken
2026
A stranger-than-fiction-story, the core is a mysterious package that the Sandnes family from Valdal in Norway has been receiving every Christmas for the past two decades, with gifts for everyone.
More info →
Bajo la arena. Memorias de Punta del Este
2021
Punta del Este was built upon a small, treasurable port town still alive in the memories of former residents and visitors. However, talk of progress has arised in present times. A kind of progress involving physical, historical, spiritual destruction. Bajo la Arena poses a crossroads between the passage of time and its ever-present traces in the landscape and in people's affections.
More info →
Special Flight
2011 · ★ 6.4
Switzerland still carries out special flights, where passengers, dressed in diapers and helmets, are chained to their seats for 40 hours at worst. They are accompanied by police officers and immigration officials. The passengers are flown to their native countries, where they haven't set foot in in up to twenty years, and where their lives might be in danger. Children, wives and work are left behind in Switzerland. Near Geneva, in Frambois prison, live 25 illegal immigrants waiting for deportation. They are offered an opportunity to say goodbye to their families and return to their native countries on a regular flight, escorted by plain-clothes police officers. If they refuse this offer, the special flight is arranged fast and unexpectedly. The stories behind the locked cells are truly heartbreaking.
More info →
Bye Bye Barcelona
2014 · ★ 5.5
Bye Bye Barcelona is a documentary about a city and its relation to tourism , on the difficult coexistence between Barcelona the city and Barcelona the tourist destination
More info →
Inside Lidl at Christmas
2020
Does the supermarket offer the cheapest Christmas cheer? The Wynne family put the store through its paces, to find out whether it offers the cheapest turkey and trimmings.
More info →
Danger Zone
2023 · ★ 7.5
In the competitive world of tourism, there are very few experiences that are out of bounds. “Danger Zone” explores the world of war tourism, catering to a growing market for ever more rare and extreme experiences.
More info →
Life Is One of the Simplest
2019
A collage of five people from different cultures living in Switzerland. They reflect on life by looking at their origins. The liveliness and diversity of life can be divined.
More info →
Rue de Blamage
2017
The Baselstrasse is a street in Lucerne. People call it "Rue de Blamage" – it's a noisy street tucked into a narrow space between a hill and a train track. The people who live here don't usually mingle with the rich and famous, but even the roughest haunt can be a home to those who live and work there – and Baselstrasse's two kilometers of asphalt are no different.
More info →
Personale
2024
Folding towels, straightening out sheets, taking bathrobes out of the dryer, stripping beds, cleaning up vomit. Fluffing pillows—making a dent for elegantly turned-up corners—and endless scrubbing, cleaning and clearing up messes. Behind the scenes of a hotel in the Italian Dolomites, the staff do everything they can to serve the guests and prevent complaints. The hotel has four stars, and a fifth is in sight.
More info →
Jolly Roger
2003 · ★ 7
"Jolly Roger" could mean Roger Schawinski. But by definition, a "Jolly Roger" is the classic black pirate flag with skull and crossbones. This documentary tells the unvarnished story of the Swiss radio pirates who emerged in the 1970s. The focus is on Radio 24 in its wild years, when Schawinski's team broadcast from Italy, with the strongest FM station in the world at the time, straight down from Pizzo Groppera, 130 kilometers all the way to the Zurich area. Supported by numerous original documents from private filmmakers and from the SRG archives, the viewer relives the absurd radio war between David and Goliath that lasted almost four years, 24 years after this war between the radio pirates and the state power began on November 13, 1979. The many known and unknown fighters, who rallied behind their Radio Winkelried Schawinski in 1979 to help usher Switzerland into a new media age, remember the good and bad times, the demonstrations and the numerous threatened and actual closures.
More info →