A Road Not Taken

What becomes history, what feeds memory, what shapes an era? Images found in the dustbins of history. Taken out of context, fragments, testimonies and unpublished documents intermingle, interweave and collide. They take on a new meaning, a dimension of authentic proximity. The peregrination touches on the advent of the atomic bomb, the military trials at the end of the war, the lie detector, the discovery of the Majdanek camp; Einstein, Lenin's embalmer, the KGB agent, the American spy rebuilding his life in Russia, the Yugoslav war sniper all have their say.

They came to Switzerland in the hope of a better life when they returned home. Thirty or forty years later, they're still here. Now in their retirement years, three couples who once came from Turkey and the Balkans are at a crossroads: to return or to stay? The question has been with these migrants all their lives in Switzerland. It's now urgent to find an answer, and the families of their children must also make a decision. Will the older generation return home? Who will look after old parents here or there?

The film is the story of a musical encounter between drummers Pierre Favre, Fritz Hauser, Daniel Humair and Fredy Studer. The filmmaker brought them together in Zurich on January 6, 1997, and followed them over four days of rehearsals. The confrontation between these very different artists culminates in a concert.