Silvesterchlausen Trailer

WORLD PREMIERE - IFFR 2025

Silvesterchlausen is a mysterious tradition that takes place every New Year’s Eve in Switzerland’s Appenzell, the most conservative part of the country. Groups of six men dress in ornate costumes and engage in wordless, polyphonic yodeling and rhythmic bell clanging. The ritual has been performed for at least 500 years, but nobody knows how or why it began.

My first encounter with them was at a Swiss wrestling festival in Interlaken. From the moment they rushed into the ring to their sudden departure, I had no idea what I was looking at. The costumes, in all their ornate complexity, had disorienting and illusory effects that seemed to exceed the sum of their material parts.

This primary experience of Silvesterchläusen, lacking context, attests to the power of estrangement in cinema. With my film I used telephoto lenses, macro probe lenses, and thermal cameras to make viewers keenly aware of the tradition’s sensory dimensions, which—due to its lack of a definitive meaning—could be the point.

Director
Andrew Norman Wilson

Executive Producers
Andrew Norman Wilson
Seth Stolbun
Ariel Stolbun
David Glanzmann

Producer
Andrew Norman Wilson

Line Producer
Thomas Rickenmann

Camera
Owen Smith-Clark
Florian Bentele
Andrew Norman Wilson

Edit
Andrew Norman Wilson

Colorist
Luca Balser

Sound Recordist Thomas Rickenmann

Re-recording Mixer Marcus Dembinski