Film Director. Internationally renowned author, he was one of the leading figures at the origin of the new Swiss cinema of the seventies. Among the most significant filmmakers of his country, Tanner has elaborated the experiences of the Cinéma vérité, of the English Free Cinema, of estrangement and social analysis, of sexual dynamics, of intertwining cultural relations, as well as the themes of femininity, identity , of the wandering. In 1981 he won the Special Grand Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival with "Les Années lumière" written by John Berger and in 2010 he received the Leopard of Honor for Lifetime Achievement from the Locarno International Film Festival. In 1976 he directed "Jonas qui aura 25 ans en l'an 2000", also from a screenplay by Berger, and in 1998 "Requiem" from the novel by Antonio Tabucchi. Son of a painter and an actress, Alain Tanner in 1951 founded in Geneva, together with Claude Goretta, the Ciné-club Universitaire and during the years spent in London, for a course at the British Film Institute, he met some of the most important authors of Free Cinema (Lindsay Anderson, Tony Richardson, Karel Reisz) and, with his friend Goretta, directs his first film, the short film "Nice time" (1957), about the nightlife in Piccadilly Circus, awarded at the Venice Film Festival Venice in the section dedicated to experimental films. In the first part of his career Tanner devoted himself above all to documentaries, in London for the BBC and then in Switzerland, where in 1964 he carried out the investigation "Les apprentis", on apprentice workers in factories, for which he followed the lesson of the Cinéma vérité . Back in Switzerland, he founded Groupe 5 with Goretta and three other directors, thus signing the birth certificate of what has been called the new Swiss cinema. Thanks to the pressure made by the group on Swiss television, in 1969 Tanner made his first feature film with a subject, "Charles mort ou vif", centered on the existential crisis of a Swiss industrialist at the height of his career, who won the Locarno film festival, making get to know the director and Swiss cinema abroad. The subsequent "La salamandre" (1971), an investigative film that investigates the life of a woman accused of murder, is appreciated by critics. The crisis of social values, the instability of couple relationships, the bewilderment of the generation that grew up in the Sixties, the tragic journey of two girls are faced with clarity in "Le retour d'Afrique" (1973), "Le Milieu du mo Jonas qui aura 25 ans en l'an 2000"(1976), "Messidor "(1979). The director's cinema reconfirms its formal and philosophical tension away from Switzerland, leading to the fable and dream of "Les Années lumière", shot in Ireland, in the filmed diary discovering Lisbon in "Dans la ville blanche" (1983), for then unfolding in "Une flamme dans mon coeur" (1987), a journey into passion, between Paris and Cairo, experienced by a theater actress. The latter film was born from the collaboration between the director and actress Myriam Mézières, who also produced "Le journal de Lady M." (1993) and "Fleurs de sang" (2002, co-directed by her). An artistic relationship develops between the two in the name of the investigation into eros and the female condition, a theme already addressed in "La femme de Rose Hill" (1989) together with that of identity, which returns in "L'Homme qui a perdu son ombre"(1991) and in "Requiem"(1998), from the novel by Tabucchi, and with a reflection on the meaning of fiction in "Paul s'en va"(2004), his latest film.