Swiss Cinema
Switzerland’s cinema was never built around one language to tell it in — French, German, and Italian influences run through it, sometimes within the same film. What holds it together is scale, not style: a small, often overlooked industry that occasionally produces something the rest of Europe can’t ignore. The four selections below come from very different gatekeepers — an industry vote, a national archive, one cinephile’s private taste, and the box office itself.
Swiss movie lists
SonntagsZeitung: The 100 Best Swiss Films
100 filmsRedrawn by industry vote every five years, with Alpine Fire still sitting at the top nearly four decades on — the closest thing Switzerland has to a fixed, official canon.
view list →Swiss Cinema
118 filmsPulled straight from an actual screening calendar rather than a ranking — old classics and brand-new festival titles side by side, a running record of what the Cinémathèque suisse keeps choosing to project again.
view list →Switzerland: A Selection
31 filmsThe most contemporary and personal pick here — one MUBI cinephile’s 31 films, favoring recent arthouse work like Azor and The Girl and the Spider over the historical canon covered elsewhere.
view list →The 100+ most successful Swiss films (1976 - 2024)
152 filmsTicket sales decide this one, not critics — a Federal Statistical Office record led by The Swissmakers, the country’s biggest homegrown hit, and full of comedies that barely traveled past the border.
view list →