SWISS FILMS in Cannes 2021

2013. Olga is a 15-year-old passionate Ukrainian gymnast. Exiled in Switzerland, she does her best to fit into the national team. But the Euromaidan revolt erupts in Kiev, suddenly involving everyone she cares about. As the young girl prepares for the European Championship, the revolution enters her life and shakes everything up on its way…

Summertime in a city. The coolness of a morning swim in the river quickly vanishes as the heat covers the city like a magnifying glass under which supposedly trivial everyday nuisances suddenly take on weight. Eli tires to escape the narrowness and agitation of the city, yet keeps on facing aggression. And her rage starts to build up.

Sheltering in a cafe from a downpour, a young woman chances upon a forgotten folder containing maths tests and a troubling love letter.

Barbara Hug is a young radical lawyer fighting Switzerland’s antiquated prison system in the 1980s. Walter Stürm is a charmer and chancer. Taunting the establishment with his outrageous thefts and media savvy he’s in and often escaping out of jail and becomes known as the Jailbreak King. When the two meet an unlikely alliance is formed.

Oscar, not quite a child anymore, scavenges for scrap metal for his father. He spends his life in improvised landfills among what remains of leftovers. Worlds apart, yet close-by, there is Stanley. He tidies the church in exchange for a monetised hospitality, picks fruits, herds sheep: anything that keep his foreign body busy. 

A group of teenage girls have been placed in a residential care home with social workers. This forced “family” experience creates unexpected tensions and intimacies. An incident triggers a chain of over-reactions. The fall-out reveals the weaknesses of the retrograde juvenile system, as well as the demons that haunt “La Mif”. A social drama, mirroring our ill-mannered morals.

The magnificent tiger is one of the world’s most beloved, and threatened creatures. Filmmaker, Karl Ammann uncovers their illegal breeding in secret South East Asian tiger farms. His nine-year investigation exposes how body parts are harvested from both live and butchered tigers, and then traded for sale in China’s underground pharmaceutical and jewelry industries.

In 1992, the Barcelona Olympics and the Seville Expo presented Spain as a modern and dynamic country. However, in Cartagena, Spain, the protests due to the industrial crisis provoked an uprising which resulted in the burning down of the Parliament of the Autonomous Community. In a café, neighbours, young and unemployed people share their dreams, worries and family stories.