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.
Thomas Haemmerli

This is the story of an ordinary man transformed by history. A simple baker from Besançon who became a political symbol of resistance. That of a France that knows how much it needs others to grow. Of working classes rejecting the siren calls of populism. He says: "I was nothing and I became a monster" to express the vertigo of his transformation. And so the baker entered politics, visited the United States in the footsteps of Martin Luther King, brought aid to the Ukrainians, and ran for legislative elections. Fearless. Fighting with all his heart. It is this inspiring, touching, and funny human epic that Pedro da Fonseca's camera followed closely, capturing his doubts, his hesitations, and his emotions.
2025

Surviving against all odds. In 1940, Benjamin Orenstein, just a teenager, was sent to his first concentration camp in Poland. It was the beginning of a journey that would mark him for life. After years of silence, he now bears witness to one of the darkest chapters in history.
2025

Rua de Santa Catarina, a street that was formerly home to dozens of local businesses and hundreds of Porto residents, now sees a crowd of tourists attracted by the cheap, disposable amenities that are popping up everywhere at once. Gentrification has decontextualized Portuguese culture, rendering the landscape uncanny. The Basin Woman, a symbol of the female workers of the historic Bolhão Market, is chased down by seagulls in the midst of this transcendent chaos.
2024

2024

The Californian sun, which lights up the city, lights up again every evening in cinemas all over the world". Guided by these words from Blaise Cendrars, L.A. L.A. END is a stroll through Los Angeles, among the remnants of Hollywood's Golden Age. Following in the footsteps of a Marilyn Monroe lookalike, we meet a gallery of characters who paint a sensitive portrait of a bygone era that gradually becomes a portrait of a woman.
2024

In a time of resurgence of social protests, political radicalization and distrust of power, Arendt's thought has never been more relevant: A critical thinker according to some or a conservative according to others, this great figure of the intellectual world remains, in many ways, an enigma. Who was Hannah Arendt?
2023

2021 was a turning point for Belarus and 6 Belarusian students - as well as for the city of Łódź, Poland, in which they found themselves. Across the rails of change and transformation, documenting a time that has not been before and will not repeat again. Heroes of the film have very different fates and experiences, but they are all connected by the place they found themselves in - the post-industrial and post-apocalyptic city, which becomes a part of their story and a hero of its own. Students, transport, quaters, youth, revolution, local apocalypse, changes and turns - they all mix in a documentary kaleidoscope 'Across the Rails'.
2022

A docu-art film about Kyiv and the contemporary problems of the capital. The film raises the issue of the dilapidated state of Kyiv's old buildings and the search for effective mechanisms to preserve the city's architectural heritage.
2020

The baker, the pie-maker and the diminished long-term community of Hoxton Street face gentrification in this compelling portrait of a rapidly changing London.
2019

Ludivine, 15, is facing the juvenile court system. Her judge offers an alternative to being placed in foster care: embark on a three-month walk across Spain. To reflect. To distance herself from her turbulent past. Ludivine accepts. It's the beginning of a 1700-kilometer journey on foot.
2018

The first in-depth analysis of the unspoken ethnic component behind the most devastating socio-economic movement in America today.
2017
Documentary film that takes a visual and anthropological journey through man's spirit across the thin line dividing excessive faith in religious believes and the passion with which he devotes himself to worldly pleasures in a city that coexists in harmony with its double standards. Religion, faith, politics, violence and death are intimately bound in this social portrait.
2014
When Ines died, she left a very particular legacy, 10 books that read 'For my children'; it was the story of her life. Marked by a youth idyllic love, Ines was forced to marry a violent and womanizer man with whom she had 20 children. In the 50s, she managed to get divorce and 20 years after her death, Luisa, great-granddaughter of INES, reads, rescues and makes visible her history.
2014

A surprisingly intimate portrait of how the dream of running one’s own business can take on monstrous contours. Managed by the father of one of the singers, over the course of five years the girl band 5Angels had reached the gates of pop fame. But it is a path paved not only with the songs of Michal David, but also with the dogged determination of a man who loses any notion of where his role as manager ends and his role as parent begins. An emotionally moved Karel Gott, five angelic girls, and one overly involved father, thanks to whom the behind-the-scenes pre-Christmas atmosphere melts away just as rapidly as the fat should disappear from the belly. “A singer can’t be a lard bucket!”
2013

When the lights dim and the stage is revealed, Meschke channels life through the strings of his puppets, triggering the spiritual connection between the creator and his alter-egos: the charismatic Don Quixote, the loving Penelope, the inquisitive Baptiste, or the mysterious Antigone. THE MAN WHO MADE ANGELS FLY is a poetic story about a master of his craft that has inspired audiences to reflect upon common issues of suffering and the mortal coil. Visionary and un-biographic, imaginary tribute to the puppeteer.
2013
2013

1997

A village in Brittany. During the ten days leading up to All Souls Day, we can see it in its entirety "inhabiting" the cemetery, going from gravestone to gravestone for the rituals of cleaning, flowering and praying. Telling its story through its faces, its voices and its ambulations.
1994

The Fall of the I-Hotel brings to life the battle for housing in San Francisco. The brutal eviction of the International Hotel's tenants culminated a decade of spirited resistance to the razing of Manilatown. The Fall of the I-Hotel works on several levels. It not only documents the struggle to save the I-Hotel, but also gives an overview of Filipino American history.
1983

A day in the city of Berlin, which experienced an industrial boom in the 1920s, and still provides an insight into the living and working conditions at that time. Germany had just recovered a little from the worst consequences of the First World War, the great economic crisis was still a few years away and Hitler was not yet an issue at the time.
1927