Movies: Alain Tanner

On the 100th anniversary of the founding of a watchmaking company in Geneva, Charles Dé the founder's 50-year-old grandson has had it: he speaks eccentrically to a reporter, recognizing his grandfather as a craftsman and his son as a businessman, but...

Fed up with the sea, Paul, a Swiss mechanic working in the noisy bowels of a merchant ship, lands in Lisbon....

Two men, arty though somewhat staid, are drawn to the spirited and quixotic Rosemonde.......

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Julie is a young woman from Rose Hill who arrives in rural Switzerland to marry her older pen-friend Marcel. She feels unhappy until she meets Jean, a younger man. However, his father disagrees....

Two young women from very different backgrounds journey into the countryside seeking respite from unsatisfactory lives and relationships, but ultimately find that there is no way back to the world they once knew....

She's a beautiful gifted performer, but her work is not the sort that invites popular acclaim. Despite the fact that she is unlikely to become famous, she enjoys her life as a performer who lives just outside the mainstream. Awaiting her backstage on...

A look at the lives of several men and women in their 30s as they confront the slim gains of the "revolutionary" sixties. Max, a dissatisfied copy editor; Myriam, a redhead into tantric sex; and Marie, a supermarket checker who gives unauthorized dis...

The efforts of an aspiring filmmaker to include an unwilling female in his production....

The work of legendary actor François Simon, son of Michel Simon....

Paul has left his wife and children. Now his wife and ex-mistress is on the hunt for him....

A young drifter meets up with a strange old man who claims that he has been taught to fly by birds...

Paul is married, a successful engineer, and a conservative candidate in an upcoming local election. He falls in love with Adriana, a café waitress from Italy. Paul's party is very critical of foreign labour and wants to keep Switzerland to the Swiss....

The film relates the painful ending of a love story binding an over-30-year-old woman and a North African, and the beginning and end of a relationship she also has with an “established” journalist. The stories illustrate the absolute claim of a woman...

An ode to liberated speech and to the power of words, "those one speaks to others, those one speaks in silence", Alain Tanner's third film is inspired by a poet and a poetic text which deeply affected him as a young director....

It’s December 1999, and 25-year-old Jonah has just graduated from film school. As the new millennium begins, Jonah marries his longtime sweetheart Lila. Over the course of six months, the couple meet a number of interesting people, including Irina, a...

Madeleine, who runs a disco on the French-Swiss border, dreams of going to Paris to pursue a singing career. Her lover, Paul, who makes his living smuggling money, gold and goods across the border, plans to emigrate to Canada. Mali, a pretty young Al...

In custody after she murders her middle aged photographer lover, a fourteen year old Pam reflects back on the bohemian life she spent with her mother Lily, a free spirited cabaret performer. Lily tried to elevate her stripper performances from the le...

May 68 in Paris filmed by Alain Tanner, then director for Swiss Television. Images of Nanterre (92), the Sorbonne (Paris 5e), and the theater of the Odeon (Paris 6th), meetings, speeches and events, are accompanied by a commentary that recounts the e...

Writer Paul attempts to interview Rosemonde, a young woman who killed an alleged rapist in self-defense six years prior, for a true crime television program. When Rosemonde refuses to divulge details of the events, Paul encourages his actress girlfri...