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Daniel Berger, a civil servant in land registry office in the canton of Vaud has an enviable life with his own villa and expensive car... It is well known around Lake Geneva that keeping relations on an even keel makes for good relations. But, the senior member of the Council of State decides to apply methods of New Public Management and assigns Werner Schäfer from Zurich to carry out the job. When Werner Schäfer also comes to live next door to Daniel Berger, life takes on a more complicated nature...

7 short films by 7 directors that revolve around the most beautiful thing in the world, the butterflies in your stomach, the clammy hands on the first date, all the unexpected things that can happen when you go on a blind date. Einfach so Christoph Schaub (Switzerland, 1997, 14 Min.) Angela has planned her blind date perfectly: She will arrive early at the restaurant, so she can get a good look of the stranger before he sees her. For reassurance she takes along her trusty companion, her dog Zacki. The stranger is late to arrive and a series of misunderstandings begin to create havoc... Fortunately she has Zacki by her side, who saves the day and finds her the man of her dreams. Le chevalier à la rose Blaise Biguet (Switzerland, 1997, 17 Min.) Sepp, a young farmer, doesn’t want to have anything to do with the Montandons daughter nor with arranged marriages. Against his parents’ advice, he signs up to a dating agency and decides to travel to Lausanne to meet Rosa, his first blind date. On the train his fellow passengers begin to take a strange interest in him... Little Sister Anka Schmid (Switzerland, 1997, 16 Min.) Lisa, a young, shy post office employee, lives life as a recluse. Matters of the heart have never been her strong point. Mona, her sister, places an ad in the newspaper for her. Lisa at first doesn’t approve of this intrusion into her private life, but then as 19 men respond to the ad, she is temped. Angélique Samir (Switzerland, 1997, 11 Min.) Allesandro can’t believe his eyes, when he sees his sexy, beautiful blind date walk into the café they had arranged to meet at. He feels too intimidated to talk to her and tries to slip off unnoticed. But Angelique is a woman who knows what she wants and doesn’t take no for an answer. She follows him through the streets of the city, right up to the roof of his house where Alessandro tries to hide away... Joyeux Noël Bianca Conti Rossini (Switzerland, 1997, 11 Min.) On Christmas Eve Annie, a young girl with a lively imagination, wonders who the stranger is her mother Lise has invited to join them for dinner. What if he’s the murderer who has been roaming the streets of the city, preying on single women ? Her mother becomes wary as well and panic sets in when the doorbell rings. Who’s this stranger trying to force his way into the house ? L'hacienda du bonheur Heikki Arekallio (Switzerland, 1997, 12 Min.) In her grey, sad council flat Silvia dreams of a life, like those of the glamorous characters in her favourite telenovela "L’Hacienda du Bonheur", which she watches every night with her two children Johnny and Pamela. In a bid to find a soul mate, that lives up to her fictional expectations, she decides to place an add in the local newspaper... Les voies du Seigneur Antoine Plantevin (Switzerland, 1997, 16 Min.) Sister Angelique is praying with all her might for Rinalde to arrive – a prisoner on leave who was meant to meet her, but hasn’t turned up yet. The Mother Superior, who walks in on her praying in the chapel, strongly advises her to be cautious of men; perverts who could take advantage of her innocence. Sister Angelique listens to her words of wisdom, but when she hears Rinalde’s motorbike pull up outside, she rushes out to greet him. May the Lord be with her !

“Höhenfeuer” is both a story of childhood and of a love affair: The deaf-born “Bub” and his sister “Belli” live with their parents on a remote farm in the mountains. The father intentionally resists the modern age: “I'd rather beat him to death than put him in a home”. After school Belli is not only a servant in her own home but also her younger brother's teacher. From early childhood, they have been an inseparable pair. They love one another. “Holy Mother of God, what sort of children have I?” wails the resigned mother, when the two children do things that are not “normal”. This is just the beginning of the story… Had the film been made 100 years ago – it would have been a saga.

Danger of escape shows the story of 23-year-old Bruno Kuhn, who is sent to prison for a stupid offence into which he slips. He begins there as one of the lowest in the social pecking order of the prisoners. He is a small fish that is not taken seriously at first. But slowly he begins to accept his role. He learns to assert himself and to strike back

Self-discovery journey of two girls in their mid twenties while they travel along the Ecuadorian mountains and coasts. Esperanza (Hope) and Tristeza (Sadness) will not find postcard views or perfect love, but their journey will teach them there’s a world beyond that.

The filmmaker travels to the mysterious land of the “poor souls”. He visits eyewitnesses in rural areas of Central Switzerland. They offer their account of mystifying experiences in connection with the afterlife, of evil deeds by people who passed away long ago in need of atonement. The film investigates the hidden signs of mountain magic and reminds us of our own myths, ghosts and primal images. It also looks for paths to self-awareness that could be revealed to us within and under layers of centuries-old Catholic cultural sediment.

Sixteen-year-old Pougbila is an exuberant dancer, which causes her peers to remark cattily on her seductive moves. At the same time a village child dies of unexplained causes, Pougbila tells her mother Napoko that she's been raped. However, she refuses to reveal the perpetrator. As child deaths mount, the villagers speculate that a witch is behind the tragedies. Under the pretext of protecting his daughter, Pougbila's father hastens to marry her to a nearby villager, ignoring Napoko's objections. After Pougbila leaves, village elders call soothsayer to find the witch who is causing the child deaths. The village soon becomes convinced that Napoko is the evil one and she's chased out of town. Forced to wander the countryside, Napoko seeks refuge in one of the shelters for women accused of witchcraft. Pougbila hears of her mother's fate and sets out to find her and confront the village elders with the truth.

Spring, 1912. Georgette, a mismatched newly-wed travelling by steamer on her honeymoon, meets Esther, who has been promised in marriage to a missionary. When Esther refuses to leave the ship in India to wed this unknown man of the cloth, Georgette dons her clothes and departs. Despite the lure of adventure however, Georgette soon realises that she is in over her head. But it is too late. She has gone too far to turn back now. Confronted with the missionary as her future husband, she finds herself powerless, as tender feelings begin to invade her bosom. At this point her legal husband Braun appears, with Esther in tow, intent on getting his wife back. The drama takes its course.

A man returns home to Tunisia to bury his mother. After the burial, his father gives him an “amana” to be handed to a certain Sheikh named Muhyiddin. Taken by his father’s request, the man immediately sets out on an epic journey to find the long lost Sheikh and deliver the “amana.”

Yasmina, or the Old Curse is a visual novel of an old woman and the ghost town she inhabited in southern Tunisia. Many years ago, the filmmaker promised Yasmina, a centenarian who lived in the village of Korba until her death in 2006, that he would help find her long lost nephew in exchange for filming her. Her nephew was born from a secret love affair between Yasmina’s older brother and the daughter of a French station master in 1926, and was shipped off to France before the untimely death of her brother, a symbol of "futuwa," of knighthood. Shot over the course of 20 years, Yasmina’s story will shed light on the feminine imagination throughout the twentieth century.

In Colobane, people expect the return of Linguère Ramatou, a former local girl now rumored to be richer than the World Bank. But her generosity has its conditions: she offers a check of ten billion for the death of Dramaan Drameh who refused to admit that he was the father of her child 30 years ago. "Life made made me a whore, now I'm turning the world into a brothel" she tells the citizens of Colobane.

Ken Bugul is a Senegalese writer who lives in Africa, where her soul is anchored. She has had an exceptional life. Silvia Voser’s film shows her as an iconic figure of the female condition and of relationships between Africa and the West. Ken Bugul is considered one of the most brilliant writers in Senegalese and French of these past decades. Over the years, thanks to her great command of the French language and the uncompromising care she takes with the wording of the meaning of Wolof vocabulary, her mother tongue, her novels have become absolute references in the realm of linguistic studies. "What you read in French in my novels is how we think and speak in Wolof in my village". Ken Bugul’s personal story is overshadowed by Africa’s turbulent history. She was born in 1947 in an isolated village in Senegal, at that time a French colony. Her father was 85 years old and her mother left them before Ken turned five. This was a fundamental event in Ken Bugul’s life. In spite of lacking a mother’s love, she was full of energy and a yearning for freedom, and she received an exceptional education for a village girl of that time. In 1971, she left for Europe to go to university and there she met people from the upper middle class and discovered new ideologies and liberties, modern art, drugs, alcohol, loneliness, incomprehension and disdain, and prostitution to relieve her need for affection. As she says in "The Abandoned Baobab": "For twenty years all I had learned was their thoughts and their emotions. I thought I’d have fun with them, but I ended up even more frustrated. I identified with them, but they didn’t identify with me." She came back to Senegal, a broken, lonely and penniless young woman. People thought she was crazy and she was rejected by her family and society. For two years, she slept in the streets of Dakar, hanging out with outcasts, beggars, prostitutes and artists. Dirty, hungry, almost naked, she started writing her first novel, "The Abandoned Baobab". Worn out, she decided to go back to her family. And there, in her mother’s village, she found refuge with the Serigne (marabout), a wise and much respected man. He took her as his 28th wife, enabling her to re-enter society, and he supported her in her desire to write and to be free. He died in 1981, a year before the publication of her first novel, "The Abandoned Baobab", which was an immediate success. Ken Bugul was invited to present her book all over the world. She met a doctor from Benin, married him and moved to that country, where she gave birth to their daughter Yasmina. Her husband passed away four years later. For the past thirty years, novel after novel, Ken Bugul has painted a picture of her life as a woman, of her loves, of the relationship between her continent and the West. "To write", she says, "is to dazzle the senses, and the senses are colourless." Silvia Voser leads us gently into the secret, tormented world of an artist whose writings show an understanding of the world that is rarely achieved.