DOK Leipzig, International Competition, October 2025
IDFA, Best of Fests, November 2025
During her research in Swiss museums, Sri Lankan artist Deneth Piumakshi Veda Arachchige comes across a collection of ancestral remains and cultural objects from the Wanniyala-Aetto, an indigenous Sri Lankan Adivasi community. The objects were brought to Basel at the beginning of the 20th century by Swiss naturalists Paul and Fritz Sarasin - using methods that combine colonial violence and scientific aspirations in a disturbing way. Sri Lanka demanded the return of some of these items already in the 1970s - but Switzerland refused. Now, decades later, Deneth Piumakshi Veda Arachchige and Uru Warige Wannila Aththo, the chief of the Wanniyala-Aetto, are committed to ensuring that the human remains and artifacts are finally returned. A lengthy process begins …
«Elephants & Squirrels» sheds light on Switzerland’s involvement in the colonial system. The film tells the past and the present from various perspectives and confronts Switzerland with crucial questions about power, historical responsibility and cultural heritage.
CREDITS
A soap factory GmbH production
in co-production with SRF Schweizer Radio und Fernsehen
Written & directed by: Gregor Brändli
A collaboration by Deneth Piumakshi Veda Arachchige & Gregor Brändli
Producer: Frank Matter
DOP: Jonas Jäggy SCS
Sound: Jonas Jäggy. Kathleen Moser, Wendelin Schmidt-Ott, Silvio Anania,
Victor Moser
Editing: Gregor Brändli
Music & musical design: Yanik Soland
Sound design & mix: Thomas Rechberger @Klangfilm Studios
Sound editing: Daniel Hobi
Color grading & video postproduction: Hannes Rüttimann, Postino Post-Production
With: Deneth Piumakshi Veda Arachchige, Uru Warige Wannila Aththo, Dambane Wimalaratne, H.M. Rumesh Wijerathna, Prof. Dr. Bernhard C. Schär, Basil Bucher
and many more
LANGUAGE
Original version in English, Sinhalese, German, Vedda with German/English/French subtitles
RUNNING TIME
114 min.
TEAM
Produced by soap factory GmbH, Basel
World sales: Filmotor, Prague
Distributor Switzerland: Royal Film GmbH, Basel
WEBSITE
elephants-squirrels.com
About
Gregor Brändli
BIO
Born in 1986, Gregor is a filmmaker and photographer based in Basel, Switzerland. Since 2011, he has worked as an independent director and cinematographer on various documentary and narrative films, as well as interdisciplinary theater projects. He is a co-founder, writer, and performer with Theater Kollektiv Glück and a co-founder of the design studio Tristesse. His work focuses on cross-media film and theater projects that explore the fluid space between fiction and documentary. He is the winner of the 2013 Basel Kulturförderpreis.
Film and Theater (Selection)
Voyage to the End of the Night by Frank Matter (in postproduction) / DOP
Elephants & Squirrels / 2025 / 114 min. / Director & Editor
The Picasso Story / 2018 / 10 min. / Director & DOP (Cannes Corporate, Silver)
Sunday Lovers / 2017 / 12 min. DOP
Glück Presents: Drive-In Cinema / 2016 / 80 min / Director & DOP
History Sugar Dream / 2013 / Co-Director & DOP
Glück Presents: Honegger / 2012 / 70 min / Writer
Please feel free to contact me regarding any matters related to film and photography projects, as well as story development. I look forward to hearing from you via MAIL.
ongoing…
01
Voyage to the End of the Night / DOP
JOURNEY TO THE END OF THE NIGHT
A documentary film project by Frank Matter, CH 2026 (in postproduction)
«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
02
Humanities on Tour (HoT)
HUMANITIES ON TOUR (HOT)
With the support of the Gebert Rüf Stiftung, ZAS Film is launching production of its new pilot Humanities on Tour (HoT). This five-part docu-cringe-comedy series — directed by Gregor Brändli and planned for a release on Play Suisse— delivers entertaining scientainment: host Nora Binkert teams up with humanities scholar Sabine Sommerer to present her research project in quirky road-trip situations, making academic knowledge accessible in a humorous, curious, and lighthearted way. The editorial team includes Franziska Schürch and Isabel Koellreuter, with Giacun Caduff producing.
Selected Works
