Film recommendations for June

With the Opera House riots of the early 1980s, Zurich’s youth demanded more freedom, thereby setting in motion cultural upheavals that gave rise to venues such as the Rote Fabrik and the Xenix cinema. The documentary “Züri brännt” (1981), which has long since become a Swiss cult film, recounts the events from the perspective of the movement’s activists and distils the spirit of optimism of the time into a striking historical document. Using visual techniques such as double exposures, solarisation and comic-style speech bubbles, the film captures the movement’s aesthetic and wit. At the same time, it explores issues of cultural funding, public space and social participation. Following the free screening at the University of Zurich’s Museum of Ethnology, director Samir will speak about the often-forgotten role of migrant resistance within Zurich’s “Bewegig”.

4 June | University of Zurich Museum of Ethnology

Iran has long since established itself as a major force on the international film scene, thanks to master directors such as Abbas Kiarostami and filmmakers critical of the regime such as Jafar Panahi. But even beyond the well-known names, Iranian cinema has a great deal to offer, as demonstrated by the programme series ‘Shifting Grounds – Framing Iran’ demonstrates. Among other things, it brings together short films from the independent Cinema-ye Azad movement of the 1970s. Created on the eve of the 1979 Revolution, the works capture a society in transition through intimate, poetic stories.

Cinema-ye Azad: Songs of Becoming
Wednesday, 4 November 2026, 5.30 pm
Sunday, 8 November 2026, 1.00 pm

To this day, the musical is often regarded as mere, light-hearted entertainment, yet the genre is one of the most formally playful and politically complex forms of cinema. The first Swiss musical film festival Showtime takes precisely this fact as its starting point and brings together works that push the genre beyond its clichés. Whether it is the self-referential view of Hollywood in the musical classic ‘Singin’ in the Rain’ (1952), the postcolonial perspective in the subversive epic “West Indies” (1979), or the portrait of youth subcultures in Iran in the fictionalised documentary “No One Knows About Persian Cats” (2009). The selected films combine music with social analysis, a spirit of experimentation and self-reflection.

from 11 June | Riffraff Cinema

Some 30 years after Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg’s manifesto, Dogma 95 is enjoying an unexpected renaissance. Spurred on by several German filmmakers who, through self-imposed rules, are formulating an alternative to contemporary mainstream cinema, the original movement is also coming back into focus. In 1995, von Trier and Vinterberg advocated in their manifesto for realism rather than alienation from reality – as a challenge to technical perfection and artificial effects. Vinterberg’s *Festen* (1998), a prime example of the movement, is now returning to the screen in a restored version at the Xenix cinema. The film, which depicts the shattering of a middle-class family façade, has lost none of its merciless directness to this day.

14 June | Xenix Cinema

Hardly any other director has had such a lasting impact on modern cinema as Alfred Hitchcock. His innovative visual language and his ingenious narrative techniques continue to resonate today – often visibly, sometimes subliminally. The retrospective at the Filmpodium is therefore dedicated not only to Hitchcock’s own films, but also to works that engage in direct dialogue with his oeuvre, including Bette Gordon’s ‘Variety’ (1983) and Lou Ye’s ‘Suzhou River’ (2000). However, the focus is primarily on his work after 1950: from ‘Strangers on a Train’ (1951) and ‘Vertigo’ (1958) to selected television works. A highlight of the programme is the 3D screening of “Dial M for Murder” (1954), which transforms the classic thriller into an immersive experience.

19 June | Filmpodium