Happiness Is a Warm Gun
2001 | 90 min | Timeless
Green Party icon Petra Kelly is shot in her sleep by her partner Gert Bastian, an ex-Federal Armed Forces general, before he kills himself.
Linda Olsansky
ActorLinda Olsansky is an actress of Czech origin who grew up in Switzerland and works primarily in European auteur cinema and theatre. Born in 1974, she trained at the Ernst Busch Academy of Dramatic Arts in Berlin.
A defining part of her career is her stage work: she was a member of the ensemble at the Schaubühne Berlin and later performed at institutions such as Theater Basel, Schauspielhaus Zürich, Gessnerallee and the Wiener Festwochen, collaborating with directors including Thomas Ostermeier, Barbara Frey and Falk Richter.
She has also established a strong presence in film. She gained particular recognition for her leading role in Happiness Is a Warm Gun (2001), for which she was nominated for the Swiss Film Award for Best Actress. Her film work also includes Zu zweit (2010) and Under the Skin (Unter der Haut, 2015).
Olsansky’s performances are marked by strong physical presence, emotional precision and a deep engagement with character. Her work often moves between theatre and film, shaped by an intense exploration of body, language and human relationships.
Films
What You Don't Know About Me
2019 | 116 min | Drama
How well can you know your partner? Patricia and Ikendu have a happy relationship until Ikendu's surprise arrest shatters it.
Happy Too
2002 | 61 min | Documentary
A raw, honest look at the relationship between filmmakers, actors, and the characters they jointly create.
Recommended for you
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 ...
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 ...
Hugo Koblet - The Charming Cyclist
2014 | 97 min | Documentary
The well-drafted docudrama HUGO KOBLET - THE CHARMING CYCLIST, which premiered at the Festival del film Locarno, is an homage to "the James Dean of cycling" who was both an exceptional athlete and a broken man. Swiss cycling legend Hugo Koblet (1925-1964) was a Tour de France winner and the first non-Italian to win the Giro d'Italia. A baker's son from Zurich, Koblet quickly rose to fame as the worlds first international cycling star. His elegant appearance and the ease of his success charmed and ...
Eleven Uncles
2010 | 101 min | Independent
It was shot without a budget in just seven days at a Brandenburg country estate using props and costumes provided by various theaters. Among the outstanding ensemble actors participating are Alexander Khuon, Alexander Scheer, Jule Böwe and Adolfo Assor. "A "Hamlet" adaptation that looks as if Herbert Achternbusch and Luis Buñuel had shot it together on LSD and then transformed it with all the finesses of digital image editing into a psychedelic trip that alternately causes giddiness, laughter, ...
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 ...
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 ...
I Was a Swiss Banker
2007 | 75 min | Romance
A man known only as a banker moves along the river Limmat in Zurich, drifting through the city and encountering a series of women. Each meeting takes on a different tone — sometimes seductive, sometimes enigmatic — gradually dissolving any clear distinction between reality, memory and imagination. As the journey unfolds, the encounters begin to feel less like chance meetings and more like fragments of a larger, elusive narrative. The river becomes a space of transition, where identities shift and ...
Loverfilm
1997 | 22 min | Icons & Media Art
"The plots of this film are based on true events. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is not only intentional, but unavoidable. - The viewer also bears responsibility for the images that become public." (Michael Brynntrup) "Noted German experimental filmmaker Michael Brynntrup tantalizes us with his diaristic account of his many lovers. What seems at first to be an extended exercise in ego, gradually becomes a powerful social record of gay life in the years spanning gay liberation and the ...
Fassbinder: Love Without Demands
2015 | 107 min | Biography
In 1978, the Danish Christian Baard Thomsen interviewed the German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder. The interview, filmed in Cannes and previously unpublished, resulted in an incredibly personal film. The Danish film director and historian Christian Baard Thomsen met Fassbinder in 1969, after his first memorable appearance at the Berlinale. The two subsequently became close friends. Thomsen skillfully interweaves the conversation, which took place 10 years later, with the main motifs from Fassbinder's ...
L' "il y a" du rapport sexuel
2023 | 95 min | Documentary
Embarking on an audacious exploration of intimacy and identity, Jos Diegel’s documentary delves into the enigmatic realm of sexual relationships through an innovative blend of performance art and philosophical inquiry. Over six transformative days in San Francisco, two strangers, under the gaze of two cameras, engage in an intimate scenario seeking to unravel the essence of sexual rapport, inspired by Jean-Luc Nancy's provocative text "L'Il Y A Du Rapport Sexuel". This daring experiment challenges ...