«Journey to the End of the Night» tells stories from an imaginary night. In almost all cultures, the night stands for the primal, the uncanny, the uncontrollable, for evil, the irrational and the passionate. The very word «enlightenment» makes it clear that only those who chase away the darkness can come to knowledge and reason.

«Journey to the End of the Night» is set in a nameless city and follows the traces of a wide variety of people. We meet some of them several times in the course of the night, others appear only briefly and then disappear again like shooting stars in the darkness of the night sky. Fleeting moments alternate with longer scenes. In between, the camera loses its narrative focus and lets itself drift through empty streets, dancing clubbers, haunted houses or phantasmagorias. As the darkness blurs the clear logic of the day, even time loses its sharp contours: the night becomes an entire year and, metaphorically, an entire lifespan.

The film makes use of documentary as well as essayistic and fictional means. The rhythms, the play of light, movement and energy are just as important to the narrative as words and thoughts. The film is an ode to the night and at the same time a meditation on modern life between reason and irrationality, control and escape, longing and disappointment, a sometimes ecstatic, sometimes melancholy homage to the human condition on the threshold of the age of artificial intelligence.

Production: RecycledTV AG, Bern and soap factory GmbH, Basel
Writer, director: Frank Matter

Reverend Beat-Man, underground musician, cult figure and citizen terror, is a living legend. For almost 40 years, the Reverend has been on the road at festivals, in rock clubs and dimly lit cellars, even far beyond Switzerland's borders. Since the early 1990s, he has also run the record label Voodoo Rhythm Records – a unique piece of Swiss music and social history. «Records to ruin every party» is the quirky motto.

In 2014, a young boy attends a Beat Man concert with his father. The loud, punky music and the eccentric stage performance frighten the boy - but the concert is also a formative experience for him. Fast forward to the present: Milan, the boy from back then, has become a young man who wants to become a musician himself. He plucks up his courage, goes to Beat-Man's record store and asks the reverend if he can play with him. After some initial hesitation, Beat-Man agrees to play with Milan - and soon they are on tour together, the old fighter and the young man who is still searching for himself. Beat-Man also agrees to Milan joining Voodoo Rhythm in order to contribute his ideas. What makes a young person turn to the edgy scene around Voodoo Rhythm in a time of slick and short-winded Spotify and Insta click culture trimmed for success and self-optimization? But Milan is curious and wants to try out even more. While starting out with Voodoo Rhythm, he works on subtle pop songs with the young Finja Keogh and goes on tour with the much more commercially oriented Birdman Jäggi.

«From Punk into the Future» uses touching, cross-generational encounters to tell the story of major changes in the cultural scene and the struggle to find one's own artistic position in a confusing time. By juxtaposing Beat-Man's story and the legacy of the Bernese youth movement of the 1980s with the doubts and conflicts of very young musicians, the film gets to the bottom of the question of what fades from cultural and political movements and what lives on in the work of later generations.

Production: soap factory GmbH, Basel
Writer, director: Steff Bossert

Between 1883 and 1903, the Swiss scientists Paul and Fritz Sarasin traveled across the British and Dutch colonies of Asia, studying indigenous cultures in Sri Lanka and Indonesia. They were cousins, best friends and possibly also lovers. Not only did the two ship the first elephant to the fledgling Basel Zoological Garden, they also brought back countless artifacts, photographs and human remains from their research trips, including skulls of the Adivasi, an indigenous group living in Sri Lanka. To do their research and build up their collection, they did not shy away from enlisting the help of the British and Dutch colonial armies and employing violence.

In 2019, Sri Lankan artist Deneth Piumakshi Wedaarachchige visited the Natural History Museum in Basel where many of the items of the Sarasin collections are stored. Holding one of the Adivasi skulls in her hands had a profound impact on her and her work. After returning to Sri Lanka, Deneth retraced the research trips of Paul and Fritz Sarasin step by step and managed to locate direct descendants of the Adivasi group explored by the Swiss researchers.

Ever since Deneth Piumakshi Wedaarachchige has been trying to work with various cultural institutions in Basel and members of the Adivasi community to bring back the skulls and artifacts from the Sarasin collections to Sri Lanka and face up to their dark colonial past. But often she is faced with closed doors or unanswered e-mails. «Becoming vulnerable» explores Basel's involvement in colonialism and questions of restitution. The film researches the past and the present from multiple perspectives.

Production: soap factory GmbH, Basel
Writers: Gregor Brändli and Deneth Piumakshi Wedaarachchige
Director: Gregor Brändli