The Swissmakers

Two policemen assess applications for citizenship: the older Bodmer and the younger Fischer assigned to him. Their job is to get inside the applicants' lives. They visit the flats, question the neighbours, go through the rubbish and decide whether these people are suitably Swiss. One file is a psychiatrist and his wife, who pass easily. Another is a ballet dancer whose life raises objections. But the younger officer has fallen for her, and writing the report gets harder. Rolf Lyssy directs the Swiss comedy; a hundred and seven minutes, with Emil Steinberger as Fischer. In 1978 it passed nine hundred and forty thousand admissions in Switzerland, became the most watched Swiss film there, and gets cited again every time the citizenship argument reopens.