Best Swiss drama movies

The Search (1948)

In postwar Germany, a displaced Czech boy, separated from his family during wartime, is befriended by an American GI while the boy's mother desperately searches for him.

The Last Chance (1945)

Escaping a Nazi prison train in war-torn Italy, an American and a British soldier set out for the Swiss border and find themselves leading a multi-national party of refugees for the Italian underground.

Marie-Louise (1944)

The titular Marie-Louise is a young French lass who is evacuated to Switzerland when her country is overrun by the Nazis. Suffering a nervous breakdown, she is given comfort and shelter by a wealthy family. Unfortunately, living in the lap of luxury makes Marie-Louise hesitant to return home to her mother and war torn home. Eventually the girl comes to her senses, but it isn't easy.

Accomplices (2009)

Two police detectives investigate the murder of a high-end male prostitute, and his relationship with his girlfriend.

Vasectomia (2021)

A violent road trip, with desperate characters, struggling with misanthropy, religion and private intimate dramas.

The Stone Eater (2018)

In a small mountain valley in Italy, the former criminal Cesare discovers the corpse of his nephew Fausto.

Ondes de choc: La vallée (2018)

Riyad and his friend Zaïd leave their estate near Lyon and go to Switzerland to steal two luxurious cars for the account of Chérif, the thug ruling their area. Yet the journey goes wrong. Hunted, Riyad sinks into the mountains to escape the police. The hunt continues in the heart of a lost, hostile valley, in which Riyadh desperately seeks a way to return to France.

Waking Up in Vegas (2023)

Yael is at the beginning of puberty and is searching for his own identity between his virile big brother and his queer best friend Aaron. In the process, he not only questions himself, but also endangers his friendship with Aaron.

Foretaste of Spring (2007)

A young boy about 10 or 11 is playing in the woods by himself. Then he meets a woman who then gives him a head band and a feather and paints some stripes on his face with her lipstick. So now he looks like a little indian.

Z for Zachariah (2015)

In the wake of a nuclear war, a young woman survives on her own, fearing she may actually be the proverbial last woman on earth, until she discovers the most astonishing sight of her life: another human being. A distraught scientist, he’s nearly been driven mad by radiation exposure and his desperate search for others. A fragile, imperative strand of trust connects them. But when a stranger enters the valley, their precarious bond begins to unravel.

Kingdom (2019)

A vast, rocky desert. A lone woman struggles to preserve the last remaining bit of the last remaining glacier with a crazy patchwork of cloth and rags that she retrieves from the abandoned valleys. Sisyphus' work. Only at night, when the blazing sun has disappeared, other creatures appear. Wolves and mountain goats drink in unison from the last source of water. And the woman is no longer alone.

Mario (2018)

Two young gay soccer players get caught up between the politics of the game and the politics of love.

Beyto (2021)

Talented swimmer, motivated apprentice, cool buddy: Beyto is in the midst of life. But when the only son of a Turkish migrant family falls in love with his coach Mike, an ideal world falls to pieces. His parents only see one way out: They lure him to their home village and plan his wedding with Seher, his childhood friend. Suddenly, Beyto finds himself in a disruptive love triangle.

Prora (2012)

In this deserted former Nazi holiday camp and communist military complex, teenagers Jan and Matthieu embark on an adventure that could change everything. Whilst exploring their surroundings they confront their identities and ultimately put their friendship at risk.

Salt of This Sea (2008)

Born in Brooklyn to Palestinian refugee parents, Soraya decides to journey to the country of her ancestry when she discovers that her grandfather's savings have been frozen in a Jaffa bank account since his 1948 exile. However, she soon finds that her simple plan is a complicated undertaking — one that takes her further from her comfort zone than she'd imagined.

Blue Beach (1982)

Abigaïl (2018)

At nightfall, two lost souls find each other again in the woods, with enough time for one last dance.

Sicilian Ghost Story (2017)

In a little Sicilian village at the edge of a forest, Giuseppe, a boy of 13, vanishes. Luna, his classmate who loves him, refuses to accept his mysterious disappearance. She rebels against the silence and complicity that surround her, and to find him she descends into the dark world which has swallowed him up and which has a lake as its mysterious entrance.

Breakout (2007)

A film about kids with little else to offer apart from a well honed body, an overabundance of hormones and a high from their last line. Teenagers Nia and Pulpo hang out at the disco where Nia has sex with a girl he meets there, Foxy. On the way home, Nia and Pulpo are attacked by Spirit, Foxy’s ex. Pulpo is badly beaten up but the police intervene, and Nia ends up in a youth detention centre. He makes plans to escape in order to wreck revenge on Spirit, an eye for an eye, and part of his plan includes meeting Nicole, an attractive young lawyer.

Unrest (2022)

In 1877, in a watch factory in a valley in north-western Switzerland, Josephine produces balance spindles, tiny parts that ensure the agitation movement ("unrueh") of the mechanical watches. She soon grows uneasy with the organisation of work and possession in the village and its factory and joins the anarchist worker movement of the local watchmakers. There she meets Piotr Kropotkin, a moony Russian traveller. The two of them meet at a time when new technologies such as time measurement, photography and the telegraph are transforming the social order and anarchist discourse is addressing emerging nationalism. During a walk in the woods, Josephine and Piotr ask themselves whether time, money and the government are not all but fictions.

Malmkrog (2020)

Among the guests who come to the mansion of aristocratic landowner Nikolai over Christmas are a politician, a young countess, and a general with his wife. They dine and discuss topics such as progress and morality. As the debate becomes more heated, cultural differences become increasingly apparent.

Antony and Cleopatra (1972)

Adaptation of Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, a historical drama that attempts to bring an epic visual style to the Bard's original stage play. The story concerns Marc Antony's attempts to rule Rome while maintaining a relationship with the queen of Egypt (Hildegarde Neil), which began while Antony was still married. Now he is being forced to marry the sister of his Roman co-leader, and soon the conflict leads to war.

A Forgotten Man (2023)

Spring 1945, Heinrich Zwygart, Swiss ambassador to Germany flees bombed-out Berlin after eight years of service in the capital of the Reich. This is the end of a terrible mandate, during which he had to make fatal compromises to preserve the neutrality and security of his country. He went through the war, but will he survive the peace?

Zwinglis Erbe (2018)

A.D. 1519: When Huldrych Zwingli begins preaching as a priest in Zurich, the plague affects him. Looking death in the face, God's Word carries him through and he survives. Encouraged and strengthened, he turns Zurich upside down with the Bible in his hand. However, resistance - even from the closest circle of friends - increases more and more.

Thunder (2022)

Summer 1900, Switzerland. Elisabeth, 17, is about to take her vows when the sudden death of her older sister forces her to leave the convent and return to the family farm. Stifled by the suffocating and strict rules of the village, walking in her sister’s step to uncover the mystery of her death, Elisabeth is slowly driven to rebel against the local order and for her right to live her life.

Happy as Lazzaro (2018)

Purehearted teen Lazzaro is content living as a sharecropper in rural Italy, but an unlikely friendship with the marquise’s son will change his world.

Blue My Mind (2017)

15-year-old Mia faces an overwhelming transformation which puts her entire existence into question. Her body is changing radically, and despite desperate attempts to halt the process, Mia is soon forced to accept that nature is far more powerful than she is.

Aloys (2016)

A lonely private investigator is contacted by a mysterious woman who pulls him into a mind game known as “telephone walking”. Fascinated by her voice, Aloys discovers an imaginary universe that allows him to break out of his isolation.

Parasit (2015)

A woman is chained to a factory rooftop. A man offers to rescue her. Things are not always what they seem.

The Cannibals (1988)

This odd film is a major representative of an even odder film genre: direct-to-celluloid opera. It was commissioned by the Portuguese master of style, director Manoel de Oliveira from composer João Paes. Musically, it ranges from 19th-century romanticism to popular, modernist and even "post-modernist" styles. In the initially tame story, a host-narrator tells the story of a wedding between the two lovebirds: Viscount d'Aveleda and the beautiful Marguerite. However, what happens in the bridal chamber is incredibly bizarre. The events after that are even stranger, and the wedding guests and family indulge in cannibalism, among other perversions.