Fredi M. Murer Movies
A young boy whose remarkable, almost supernatural capacity for learning prompts his parents to anticipate a brilliant future as a pianist rebels to take his fate into his own hands in director Fredi M. Murer's contemplative family drama. By kindergarten Vitus is reading encyclopedias, and by age five he is a piano prodigy. Despite the fact that his parents do their best to nurture the young boy's natural talent for music, Vitus seems strangely disinterested in refining his exceptional talents on the ivory. In fact, the only place where Vitus seems to be in his element is in his eccentric grandfather's cluttered workshop. Now, as the young boy begins to display a keen interest in aviation, one fateful leap will set his entire future into motion, and offer a compelling preview of things to come. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Teo Gheorghiu, Bruno Ganz, (more)
- 1998
Fredi M. Murer wrote and directed this Swiss drama about a family with a missing child. The only explanation seems to be kidnapping, but no ransom note arrives. Police inspector Anatol Wasser (Hanspeter Muller) soon faces an elaborate mystery: a dozen Swiss children vanish with no indication of any pattern -- other than the fact that they all lived near lakes. Is organized crime responsible, or does the answer lie in mystical realms? Shown at the 1998 Montreal Film Festival. ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Hanspeter Muller, Lilo Bauer, (more)
- 1991
It is unfortunate that this documentary is conducted almost entirely in Swiss German, a dialect that other German speakers need subtitles to understand. It concerns the efforts of a small rural community to prevent a nuclear-waste dump from being located in their region. Despite the fact that these are people whose livelihood is decidedly low-tech, they actively resent the fact that the managers of the big corporation Nagra and local officials attempt to conduct their negotiations about the dump in secret, as if the region's residents could not possibly be savvy enough to be concerned about this threat to their futures. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- 1987
Cristophe (Michel Voita) is a reporter who is assigned to interview the prominent archaeologist Tober (Jean Bouise) in this combination fantasy drama. Tober has uncovered the coffin of the legendary 16t-century killer Jenatsch (Vittorio Mezzogiorno). After the interview, Cristophe begins to experience hallucinations that move from the present to the past with disturbing consequences. Soon his relationship with his sweetheart Nina (Christine Boisson) begins to suffer as Cristophe has visions of Jenatsch's murder. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Michel Voita, Christine Boisson, (more)
- 1985
Swiss documentary filmmaker Fredi M. Murer turned to fiction-and near-surrealism--with Alpine Fire. Thomas Nock plays The Boy, a mute teenager who falls in love with his own sister Belli (Johanna Lier). The Boy is isolated on his family farm by his parents, who aren't cognizant of his feelings towards Belli when they order her to educate him at home rather than send him to school. Unable to reconcile himself to his yearnings, The Boy runs off to a secluded alpine cabin. The deaths of the parents--one by natural causes, the other by murder-leaves The Boy and Belli alone at last. Filmed in 1985, Alpine Fire was released to the American film-festival circuit two years later. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Johanna Lier, Dorothea Moritz, (more)
- 1983
When director Margrit Keller started this documentary in 1980, it was about a woman named Gertrude Dueby-Blom from Berne, Switzerland who went to live in the southernmost state of Chiapas in Mexico -- but not exactly in a direct manner. The woman Dueby-Blom, an ardent anti-fascist, first left Switzerland during World War II so she could work with refugees in Mexico. Once in the country, she fell in love with a businessman and part-time archaeologist and the couple moved to Chiapas to work with and study the Lacandona tribe, descendants of the Mayans. The documentary was interrupted for one year and director Keller had to leave the project, making way for Peter von Gunten to continue the film. Von Gunten decided to switch the focus from Dueby-Blom (known as Xunan, "The Lady" in the Lacandona language) to the clear-cutting of the mahogany forest in the region, leaving nothing where 500-year-old trees once stood. Once the destruction of the mahogany forest was complete, the plans were to build a road to the oil fields along the Guatemalan border. One of the Lacandona elders, Chan K'in, reminisces about the long-distant past, before the missionaries or the forest cutters arrived on the scene. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- 1983
In this brief, 50-minute film, a hit man gives an interview to a journalist -- and this story unfolds -- about how he took a plane to Zurich and waited for the right moment to kill his victim. The mundane, boring activities of the killer are emphasized, making his amoral objective all the more evil. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Bruno Ganz, Renata Schroeter, (more)
- 1979
At first the protagonist of this story is pleased with his promotion. He now is in charge of his company's entire electronic surveillance program, which monitors every employee's activities minutely. However, when he hears a program on an underground radio station detailing the inexpressible dreariness of most workers' lives, he undergoes a change of heart and decides to reveal his company's policy of spying on its workers. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Giovanni Fruh
