Nicolas Steiner

Ich bin's Helmut

Nicolas Steiner

Matthias Zelic, Suly Röthlisberger

Helmut celebrates his 60th birthday on the day he is actually turning 57 (his wife miscalculated). As a façade of petit-bourgeois domesticity peels away, old friends drop by to offer some well-meaning advice through bizarre declarations of love and transience.

Battle of the Queens

Nicolas Steiner

Battle of the Queen is a film from and about rural Europe, capturing a timeless cultural event: a series of head-to-head fights of cows set in the valley in sunny Southern Switzerland, nestled amongst the Alps. The fights are sudden snorting seesaws, explosions of mass and muscle, archaic and wild spectacles. We follow three concurrent story lines: an anxious farmer with his beloved contender, a neurotic unemployed reporter from Zurich coming to find a story, and a gang of adolescent boys on mopeds trying to catch a pretty girl's eye. The festival is a balancing act between fascinating tradition and modernity. This black and white film serves as both an exciting visual treat and a long overdue documentation of a fascinating Swiss tradition.

Above and Below

Nicolas Steiner

Above and Below is a rough and rhythmic roller coaster ride seating five survivors in their daily hustle through an apocalyptic world. A journey of challenges and beauty in uncomfortable places: Rick & Cindy, Godfather Lalo in the flood channels deep down under the shiny strip of Sin City. Dave in the dry and lonesome Californian desert and April in simulation for a Mars mission in the Utah desert. Through the hustle, the pain and the laughs, we are whisked away to an unfamiliar world, yet quickly discover the souls we encounter are perhaps not that different from our own.