Silvia Jost

Throughout the late 19th century and in the early part of the 20th, Russians of a wide variety of political persuasions contemplated various forms of revolution. Throughout the same period, they often had to seek asylum in other countries. This movie concerns Sergei (Roger Jendly), a revolutionary who kills a student in Russia and flees to Switzerland. Though he has the gifts and abilities to unify various revolutionary groups within Russia, once he has been forced to flee, they have no interest in him. When his presence in Switzerland threatens a trade agreement with the Tsar, he is tracked down and expelled.

This romantic drama follows two policemen whose job is to investigate the lives of foreigners who have applied for Swiss citizenship. Among the applicants they must screen are a French psychiatrist and his wife, and a ballet dancer. The married couple are quickly accepted, but the dancer's life offers some objections. However, since the younger policeman has fallen in love with her, there is a chance that she, too, will win Swiss citizenship.

A crazy referendum throws Switzerland into a state of emergency. By the acceptance of the initiative “No Bilangue” there should be from now on only one national language: French. Many German-speaking Swiss are therefore having a crisis.

Constable Studer of the Bern cantonal police is stubborn and gnarled. Because of his nature, he has few friends. He has this in common with the murder victim: James Farny was known by everyone as "The Chinese". The man had traveled the world and now he has been found shot dead in the village cemetery: was it murder or did he kill himself? He had the gun in his hand. Studer doesn't believe it was suicide...

Karl, son of a poor tailor, conquers the daughter of the village tyrant.

In the 1770s, Swiss farmer Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi established a school for poor orphaned children in the Aargau. Up to total exhaustion he sacrificed himself for his pedagogical theories. Five years later, the project of the idealistic educator failed after bloody attacks of the French. In retrospect, the disappointed Pestalozzi experiences the last few months with "his" children.

Swiss allotment gardener Livius is murdered in his garden on French soil. The case must therefore be investigated by both the Swiss and French police. This leads to friction between the two forces. To make matters worse, Hunkeler has to cut short his vacation.

The idyllic tranquility of a mountain village is disrupted one day by a deliberately triggered avalanche. No one can leave the village. The perpetrator, Reto Lauenstein, is himself a villager. He threatens to bury the entire village under a series of avalanches if the residents do not execute Adalbert Jentsch, the real murderer of his son who was killed a year ago, within 24 hours. The old man's innocence has been proven, but suddenly it is called into question again. The explosives in the slopes of the Alps are ticking, and Reto will not be dissuaded from his plan. But the village policeman Daniel, Adalbert's son, does not give up the race against time.

A girl returns from a trip out of the country and is given a strip-search for drugs when she re-enters Switzerland. Lacking a place to stay, she looks up an old friend of hers and stays with him, working to pay for food for both of them. In the casual manner of such arrangements, several more people enter the scene to stay: a rich kid who has been disinherited and a girl who is an escaped convict. The working girl has been hiding some of her wages in her clothes, and the two young men steal the money, buy a car, and hare off looking for excitement.

The trial of the case, which has become known under the catchphrase "Murder in Kehrsatz", triggered a great deal of public sympathy and, after the verdict, considerable protest. This came out primarily from a jury member of the process. She, a housewife and SVP member, began to have more and more doubts about a judiciary that apparently no longer works according to the principle "in the case of doubt for the accused". The film tells the story of these jurors during the long trial.