Say God Bye
2023 | 119 min | Documentary
A forty-year obsession with Jean-Luc Godard propels Thomas Imbach on a pilgrimage to meet the “God of cinema”.
Jean-Luc Godard
ActorJean-Luc Godard is a French-Swiss film director and screenwriter known for his innovative cinematic techniques. He was a prominent figure in the French New Wave movement of the 1960s. Some of his notable films include "Breathless," "Contempt," and "Pierrot le Fou." Godard has received numerous awards for his work, including the Honorary Academy Award and the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival.
Films
La Chinoise
1967 | 96 min | Timeless
1968: During the vacations, university students occupy a vacant apartment and discuss the Marxist ideas of Mao Zedong and their revolutionary ideas.
Recommended for you
Day Is Done
2011 | 111 min | Documentary
Over a period of more than 15 years, Swiss director Thomas Imbach filmed with a 35mm camera from the window of his Zurich studio. Accompanied by authentic answering machine messages from 1988 to 2003, a cinematic portrait of the invisible man behind the camera emerges. The combination of image and sound forms a fictional autobiography that addresses personal experiences such as birth, death, separation, and new beginnings, while at the same time painting a universal landscape of the soul. The film ...
Compelling Satan
2017 | 105 min | Drama
In this collaborative film made by students from the University of Fine Arts Hamburg, former public prosecutor and actor Dietrich Kuhlbrodt, sues a public broadcasting station. In documentary and fictional scenes, it follows his trial against a system demanding compulsory conformity and unimaginativeness. Sociopolitical, aesthetical and personal perspectives are clearly defined, developed narratively and confronted with one another. Numerous film professionals have their say. They radically oppose ...
Happy Too
2002 | 61 min | Documentary
HAPPY TOO (2002) is an experimental documentary film by Swiss director Thomas Imbach, which functions both as a standalone work and as a meta-commentary on his previous feature film HAPPINESS IS A WARM GUN (2001). While the previous film fictionalizes the tragic relationship between Green Party politician Petra Kelly and ex-general Gert Bastian, HAPPY TOO takes a look behind the scenes and highlights the dynamic between actors Linda Olsansky and Herbert Fritsch during filming. In HAPPY TOO, Imbach ...
Ain't Nothin' Without You
1985 | 88 min | Comedy
Martha lives in Hamburg with her young son. She makes films. " She moves in with a Portuguese family "to be closer to the pulse of society". Teresa helps immigrants deal with administrative formalities. Meanwhile, Martha tries to find romance with Alfred, who doesn't really have a handle on things. In his late thirties, he is still studying architecture, and he won't let go of Martha either. The everyday lives of the three of them reflect the realities of West Germany, captured spontaneously and ...
The Circle in Which She Travels
2010 | 25 min | Drama
19-year-old Luisa travels to Mexico to search for her Mexican roots, which her mother kept secret from her. She wants to find her grandfather, whom she has never met. All she knows is that he lived in a small mountain town in Mexico and that the name is “Villa”. What she doesn't know is that the famous Mexican revolutionary from 1910 has the same name and that every Mexican knows the name of the national hero. During her search, she meets a young man named Memo, who offers to help her. Torn between ...
Well Done
1994 | 73 min | Timeless
In a high-tech company, over 1,200 people are busy checking the billions of Swiss francs that flow through the country every day in the form of endless data streams. From the mass of employees—absorbed by the labyrinthine building, overwhelmed by avalanches of language—individual figures emerge: the gold card clerk, the product manager, the department head, the PC support technician, the key account manager, the director. The camera follows their inconspicuous gestures, ways of speaking, and glances. ...
Lenz
2006 | 93 min | Drama
Filmmaker Lenz leaves his hometown of Berlin to explore the background of Georg Büchner's fragment “Lenz” in the Vosges mountains. But soon he exchanges the Alsatian landscape for higher altitudes and more emotional terrain: driven by the desire to see his son Noah, he sets off for the winter sports resort of Zermatt in the Swiss Alps. There, with Noah's help, he arranges a meeting with his ex-wife Natalie, whom he still loves. A small idyll blossoms in the rediscovered closeness to his son and in ...
Ghetto
1997 | 116 min | Timeless
A documentary about the everyday lives of Zurich's forgotten youth. The school janitor calls the classroom where Xhumi and Müke are spending the last few months of their school days “the biggest damn ghetto.” Ana's hands get sweaty when asked about her future career. Oli is already standing outside—on the street. The film was shot over a year at a secondary school in Zurich. In six chapters – “Ghetto,” “Car,” “Techno,” “Sex,” “Drugs,” and “Marroni” – a multi-layered portrait of growing up in an ...
Indian Summer
2015 | 87 min | Documentary
Apart from the obligatory visits to the Louvre and the Leaning Tower of Pisa, a livestock transporter and the statues of ancient deities also become an occasion for cultural exchange. France, England, Holland and Italy are on the itinerary. In between are Belgium, Ireland, Austria and of course Switzerland, the absolute highlight of the trip. Ever since a slew of Bollywood films were shot in Switzerland, the land of the Alps has become the very epitome of Europe for many Indian people. Anna, the ...
Stories from the Sea
2021 | 86 min | Documentary
The film shows these women as they navigate the sea, calculate routes and perform tasks such as hoisting the sails and steering the ship. The documentary features women of different ages and backgrounds, including an apprentice on a cargo ship, a retiree traveling alone on a cruise ship, and a group of young people on a sailing trip for intercultural understanding. The sea serves as a unifying element between the stories, and Serafin Spitzer's film footage captures the vastness and beauty of the ...