By all reports, Switzerland is a beautiful, well-kept, tidy sort of place, even in its major cities like Zurich. It is also reportedly an extremely dull place for teenagers and young adults. This documentary explores the deaths of four young men in Zurich as a result of what the filmmaker clearly believes was an excessively violent response by the police to minor provocations. All the youths were also involved in trying to get a youth center up and running in Zurich in the early 1980s, something which met with universal official opposition. Since in at least one case the person killed was doing nothing to provoke a response, and two of the other cases involved a violent police response during high-speed chases, it is possible to share the indignation of the filmmakers at the fact that none of the police involved were even reprimanded for their actions. These cases demonstrate that Swiss pressures to conform are occasionally forceful in the extreme.
by Clarke Fountain
synopsis
