Mathias Gnädinger

In April of 1945, Germany stands at the brink of defeat with the Russian Army closing in from the east and the Allied Expeditionary Force attacking from the west. In Berlin, capital of the Third Reich, Adolf Hitler proclaims that Germany will still achieve victory and orders his generals and advisers to fight to the last man. When the end finally does come, and Hitler lies dead by his own hand, what is left of his military must find a way to end the killing that is the Battle of Berlin, and lay down their arms in surrender.

After the death of his mother, a lonely farmer in rural Switzerland considers finally starting a family of his own. Eventually he pays for a bride from Thailand. The couple don't share a language, but being to know each other. However the village neighbors are suspicious of foreigners.

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...

It's 1922. A weather observer and his wife live in a remote cabin high in the Swiss Alps. As this drama begins, they are being joined by a third person, an Austrian who coveted the job the Swiss man had won in this bleak location. Not only that, but he also has his eyes on the Swiss man's lovely wife. The Austrian has charm, so he wins some hospitality from the couple. The three live together for a little while, but the rivalry between the two men soon erupts with tragic consequences.

Swiss provincial politics can be a minefield...

When Hans looks back, he must say: That was a good life! He saw the world, loved his wife Martha and yes, two, three things went wrong. But that doesn't need to be talked about. And now? Two years ago Martha died, Hans can barely manage his daily routine anymore, and after a visit to the vet his beloved dog Miller doesn't return home. Hans is tired. Basically he can't be bothered anymore. He wants to die. But one doesn't talk about this. At best maybe with Willi, his friend. He trusts in him, he considers him as his ally, who should help him implement his plan...

Rainer von Hessen and Niki de Saint Phalle met after he saw a photo of HON, the 1966 installation for Moderna Museet Stockholm, in a German magazine. Their collaboration began when Saint Phalle first designed the costumes and sets to Aristhophanes’s LYSISTRATA, directed by Hessen (then known under the stage name Diez). Thereafter, Hessen co-authored and directed her play ICH, which was performed at the Staatstheater Kassel in 1968.

A group of actors making their way to Rome ends up losing its way due to the fog, the darkness, the ice and their own feelings of guilt, suddenly getting completely lost in the hills.

The story of some young people who grew up in a working-class area in Zurich in the late 1950s. The plain living style of their educators is not on their wavelength. They find the occurrences in the newly opened Jazz club much more tempting. Down there is what must not be up there: spontaneous lust for life. Jazz electrifies them all. And then there are the girls ...

In letters to her idol, Brad Pitt, twelve-year-old Tina Vonlanthen pours out her heart about what life in a small Swiss border town on the Rhine is like: trouble with her older sister, twenty-year-old Babs, "who still hasn't found a man," and worries about her single father Urs, who has been so distracted lately. But it is neither spinsterhood nor Alzheimer's that the Vonlanthens suffer from. Rather, it is the small and large love affairs that they try to keep secret from each other: Babs' lover is her married German boss—and Urs' girlfriend is Caroline, a black woman from Cameroon. At the local big event, the "fish dinner," everything comes out in the open—and Tina also has some heart-pounding experiences that she prefers to keep quiet about in her letters to Brad...

During World War II, Switzerland severely limited refugees: "Our boat is full." A train from Germany halts briefly in an isolated corner of Switzerland. Six people jump off seeking asylum: four Jews, a French child, and a German soldier. They seek temporary refuge with a couple who run a village inn. They pose as a family: the deserter as husband, Judith as his wife, an old man from Vienna as her father, his granddaughter and the French lad, whom they beg to keep silent, as their children. Judith's teenage brother poses as a soldier. The fabrication unravels through chance and the local constable's exact investigation. Whom will the Swiss allow to stay? Who gets deported?

It is carnival time in Munich and participants are overindulging in alcohol and sensual pleasures. "Follow us into madness" beckons Lys who is drunk on life, but the sensitive Henry does not follow him. Lys has betrayed his fiancé, as Henry once betrayed his lost love Anna. In memory of Anna and his cruel Dickensian childhood, Henry challenges Lys to a duel to try to appease his guilt.

Even in retirement, Hunkeler cannot give up investigating. In Basel, a theater director is murdered, and his body is found with its eyes missing.

The story of two pensioners, Max Wanner and Fritz Pollatschek. Wanner needs a new liver, Pollatschek a new heart. But how are two men in their seventies supposed to get hold of a donor organ? A hair-raising and eventful search begins...

A daft road movie about two aging thesps in search of Klopfenstein himself.

Two dead with their earlobes slashed. Inspector Hunkeler believes that the brothel owner Garzoni is the culprit. However, his colleagues Madörin and Lüdi are researching the drug milieu. Then prosecutor Suter withdraws Commissioner Hunkeler from the case because of bias. Has Hunkeler grown old? The third film adaptation of a case with the Basel inspector Hunkeler based on the novel by Hansjörg Schneider.

In a village in eastern Turkey, tales of the economic success of Turks in Switzerland inspire Haydar to convince his wife Meryem that they must go. He sells their livestock and small plot of land in exchange for passage for two. He wants to leave their seven children in the care of the eldest and his parents; his father advises him to take one son to be educated in Europe. Will anyone reach the land of promise?

A battle-scarred, has-been Hungarian cop, tormented by his memories of nearly killing an innocent woman in his custody, enters into a Faustian pact in which he trades his soul for a handful of "magic" bullets that always hit the mark. A mysterious and mythical story.

A summer of the century in Basel – but no vacation for Inspector Hunkeler. Instead of spending time with his partner Hedwig in Alsace, he has to take on a murky case: his family doctor, a liberal politician well known in the city, has been found murdered in her practice. A few drug addicts who had been supplied with methadone by her come under suspicion. But Hunkeler's instinct for the depths of the human psyche leads him unerringly down a different path.

In this interesting World War I drama, Bruno Ganz gives a compelling performance as Jakob, an obsessive inventor who lives in a Swiss village. He receives unconditional support from his friend Otti (Walo Luond), but that is about all; the other villagers do not tolerate Jakob's eccentricities very well, and regard him as a crackpot. He perserveres in spite of this obstacle and finally invents a viable carriage that does not run on wheels but on a tread. Unfortunately for Jakob, the military have already come up with the same invention: the tank. The discovery finally breaks him, and he is quickly shuttled off to an asylum.

Tatort is a long-running German/Austrian/Swiss crime television series set in various parts of these countries. The show is broadcast on the channels of ARD in Germany, ORF in Austria and SF1 in Switzerland.

Peter Strohm is a private detective with radical methods. His work begins where police work ends; he takes on sensitive cases that require a certain scale, or explosive situations that can lead to international crises.

A detective leaves the force to take over the family business as an undertaker at the same time as he is being investigated for murder. His close encounters with corpses and his earlier police training lead him to see things some of his ex-colleagues miss and he investigates the crimes he encounters in an unofficial capacity often to the dismay of the official police.

Hals über Kopf is a German television series.