Silvesterchlausen
2025 · 12m · Switzerland, USA
Directed by Andrew Norman Wilson
Genres: documentary, experimental
Tones: contemplative, dark, surreal
An observational documentary about the Silvesterchlausen tradition in Switzerland's Appenzell — where groups don psychedelic handmade costumes and perform wordless polyphonic yodeling on New Year's Eve, a ritual practiced for 500 years that no one can explain.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Six men in psychedelic handmade costumes yodeling in the snow for reasons no one remembers — this is a film about the terrifying persistence of ritual.
Wilson captures a 500-year ritual whose original meaning has been lost — an accidental meditation on the persistence of form without content, in the Sweetgrass / Leviathan observational mode. Quietly remarkable.
500-year-old Appenzell ritual whose original meaning is completely lost, six men in psychedelic costumes doing wordless polyphonic yodeling for 18-hour days — Wilson observing the persistence of form without content is a more conceptually rigorous frame than most ethnographic shorts manage. Leviathan-pedigree work.
Festivals
- IFFR Rotterdam 2025
- Edinburgh International Film Festival 2025