Baobab Play

Children and teenagers throw sticks, berries, and leaves at each other from perches in a large baobab tree.

1974-01-01 | en

Gyrischachen - von Sünden, Sofas und Cervelats

A high-rise apartment built in the 1960s provides housing for 2500 people from 42 nations. Separated from the city by a river and bounded by towering sandstone cliffs, everyone attempts to live and survive in their own way. Foreigners who have a go at being Swiss, and Swiss who observe with scepticism. They meet in the corner shop run by an Iraqi living in exile, send their kids to a children’s club managed by a missionary, and old drinking mates meet regularly over a beer in the neighbourhood’s only bar. Despite all the differences, they are rather proud of the fact that they come from here.

2016-05-05 | en

La natura che affascina i giovani

| fr

Your Parents Will Come Back

In 1983 a group of 154 children aged 3 and 17 years old traveled alone from Europe to Montevideo. They were children of political exiles from Uruguay, who were unable to come back to their own country; they sent their kids to know their relatives and home country. That human sign, charged with a political message, took part in children’s identity development. Nowadays, six of them still remember that day, when a crowd received them singing all together “your parents will come back”.

2015-04-04 | es

Libellula gentile. Fabio Pusterla, il lavoro del poeta

A film about the Swiss Italian poet Fabio Pusterla and his creative poetic process, his struggle to find an honest language, one which adheres to the personal experience and is able to unfold a hidden truth that creates a strong and profound bond with the other, with his public.

2018-10-24 | it

I am Agha

Lahore, Pakistan. During a whole day, we follow Agha, a little boy who, to survive, collects waste in the street without caring about the world which surrounds him. He makes us share his moods and his vision of the life.

2010-04-23 | en

Alpine Saga

Award-winning director Langjahr returns to his beloved Alps to document a group of people continuing the legacy of their forefathers. Every year on Swiss National day, August 1, the Wildheuer climb up the steep mountain of the «Hinteren Heubrig», fitted out with scythes and wearing wooden shoes with spikes, just as their ancestors did before them. They are part of a generation who have lived with the challenges of nature and survived it. In his film, Langjahr's poetic realism gives an insight into these people's experience of the simple life, the very foundation of human existence.

2006-10-19 | de

Huhu

Lao Zha’s film examines rural life in Haiyuan County, in Ningxia Province. Unlike the rapidly globalizing urban centres, here life remains largely unchanged for the Hui people, a Muslim ethnic group, whose diverse cultural roots incorporate Arabic and Persian influences that arose out of the Hui’s proximity to the Silk Road. In a remote Hui village, a little boy named Huhu is growing up under the watchful eye of his grandparents, and, occasionally, his less-than-reliable mother. (Dorothy Woodend, DOXA Documentary Film Festival)

2014-05-07 | en

Walter Mittelholzer - Eine Schweizer Pioniergeschichte

2015-02-27 | de

Special Flight

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.

2011-08-06 | fr

School of Hope

In the vast expanse of desert East of Atlas Mountains in Morocco, seasonal rain and snow once supported livestock, but now the drought seems to never end. Hardly a blade of grass can be seen, and families travel miles on foot to get water from a muddy hole in the ground. Yet the children willingly ride donkeys and bicycles or walk for miles across rocks to a "school of hope" built of clay. Following both the students and the teachers in the Oulad Boukais Tribe's community school for over three years, SCHOOL OF HOPE shows students Mohamed, Miloud, Fatima, and their classmates, responding with childish glee to the school's altruistic young teacher, Mohamed. Each child faces individual obstacles - supporting their aging parents; avoiding restrictions from relatives based on traditional gender roles - while their young teacher makes do in a house with no electricity or water.

2020-12-31 | ar

Spellbound

This documentary follows 8 teens and pre-teens as they work their way toward the finals of the Scripps Howard national spelling bee championship in Washington D.C.

2002-03-14 | en

A, B, C... Z

Children get ready to start the first grade. They start learning the first letters.

1971-02-16 | sq

Gurdeep Singh Bains

Gurdeep is a thirteen-year-old Canadian Sikh whose family runs a dairy farm near Chilliwack, British Columbia. They have retained their language and religion. Attendance at the Sikh temple, playing soccer with his schoolmates, and working on the farm are all part of Gurdeep's well-integrated life, but sometimes he feels a little different from the other children because he wears a turban. This film is part of the Children of Canada series.

1977-06-01 | en

Likhaya

A look at the rampant HIV epidemic rate in Swaziland.

2009-11-21 | en

The Blocher Experience

The Blocher Experience tells the story of Switzerland’s most controversial political leader. It also chronicles the face-to-face encounter between a film-maker and a man of power, through a year of exclusive, up-close interviews and access to his private life.

2014-02-19 | fr

Matt Shepard Is a Friend of Mine

An intimate portrait of Matthew Shepard, the gay young man murdered in one of the most notorious hate crimes in U.S. history. Framed through a personal lens, it's the story of loss, love, and courage in the face of unspeakable tragedy.

2014-10-07 | en

Promises

Documentarians Justine Shapiro and B.Z. Goldberg traveled to Israel to interview Palestinian and Israeli kids ages 11 to 13, assembling their views on living in a society afflicted with violence, separatism and religious and political extremism. This 2002 Oscar nominee for Best Feature Documentary culminates in an astonishing day in which two Israeli children meet Palestinian youngsters at a refugee camp.

2001-01-30 | en

The Secret of the Secret

The traditional healers in the Swiss and French mountains.

2000-02-21 | en

Autism: The Musical

Follows five autistic children as they work together to create and perform a live musical production.

2007-04-18 | en