Claws (2025) · 18:23 · no dialogue · single-channel · DCP 5.1 surround · edition: 5 + 1 AP
Claws concludes a trilogy on human-made landscapes. A moving-image essay of gliding trajectories through rapidly expanding cities, drifting from peripheral terrains into dense cores before opening back to the horizon. In largely unpopulated frames, architecture, materials and sound turn urban expansion into a field of perception—where geometry persists, intentions become fragile, and the land remembers.
CREDITS
Concept and Camera: Aurèle Ferrier
Sound Design: Peter Bräker
Editing: Sandra Bühler, Aurèle Ferrier
Outside Eye Editing: Eman Hussein, Felix Hergert
Colorgrading: Dominik Zietlow
VFX: Gregg Langlois
Consulting: Wade Shepard, Andreas Müller, Yunlong Song
Production: Aurèle Ferrier
SUPPORT
Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia
Canton of St.Gallen, Arts Council / Swisslos
Swiss Embassy of Switzerland in Beijing
Consulates of Switzerland in Guangzhou and Shanghai
City of Zurich, Cultural Affairs, Covid Work Grant
Erna and Curt Burgauer Foundation
Foundation Anne-Marie Schindler
Stanley Thomas Johnson Foundation
Gwärtler Foundation
Else v. Sick Foundation
Transitions (2017) · 12:48 · no dialogue · single-channel · DCP 5.1 surround · edition: 5 + 1 AP
Transitions moves from the desert’s civilizational emptiness into urban over-density: Las Vegas as a surreal compression of capital, desire, and image. In largely unpopulated frames, the built environment becomes the protagonist—architecture, billboards, and surfaces as traces of desire, projection, and control.
«The work Transitions (2017) by Aurèle Ferrier examines the traces left by human civilisation – the conquest of the unwelcoming hostility of the desert ends in the surreal and hedonistic consumerism of Las Vegas. The camera leads us, with a menacing langour, through a backdrop of deserted city-outskirts. The buildings, cars and billboards speak of people’s dreams as they strive for a version happiness. The prevailingly eerie, apocalyptic mood draws you along on this filmic journey. These traces of humanity seem increasingly laughable and helpless, they vibrate with a peculiar melancholy. Where have the people disappeared to? One has the impression a catastrophe has occurred, an epidemic, or maybe it is simply an empty film set after a shoot?
The film with its calm and assured grasp on image and sound is able to produce a refined suspense. The film takes the viewer on an odyssey, one that could also be a metaphor for the boundaries of human endeavor. The human culture and civilisation that emerged from the desert, will in the end be desert again.»
Laudation by Esther Eppstein & Elodie Pong, Winner Videoex 2017
CREDITS
Concept, camera, editing: Aurèle Ferrier
Sound design and foley artist: Peter Bräker
Editing consultants: Sandra Bühler, Andreas Müller
Third eyes: Anna Hilti, Thomas Galler
Post production: Gregg Langlois, Noé Marti
Poster design: Krispin Hée
Production: Aurèle Ferrier
SUPPORT
Arts Council of the Canton of St. Gallen
Volkart Foundation
Ernst and Olga Gubler-Hablützel Foundation
Infrastructures (2014) · 23:00 · no dialogue · single-channel · DCP · 5.1 surround · edition: 5 + 1 AP
Infrastructures is a journey through infrastructural landscapes—spaces we pass through every day, yet rarely see. In broad daylight, the sites remain devoid of people. Arrangements, objects, and systems of control come into focus, taking center stage in a world usually noticed in passing. The film unfolds in seven shots.
«A pensive and serene vision that challenges the audience to consider and reevaluate not just the structure of film, but also the world in which we live.»
Jury Statement 2016 Slamdance Film Festival — Grand Jury Award
CREDITS
Concept, camera and editing: Aurèle Ferrier
Sound design and foley artist: Peter Bräker
Steadicam shots: Bergsteinn Björgulfsson
Image post-production: Noë Marti
On-site assitance: Anna Hilti, Esther Mathis, Stephanie Hess, Andreas Mueller, Katherine Patino Miranda, Ari Björn Ólafsson, Sigurður Þórarinsson, Ida Emilie Sabro Jensen, Sandra Lang, Bettina Diel, Christoph Oeschger Sarah Kaur, Dalia Huerto Cano, Lixin Bao, James Meyhew, Verena Faisst
Mentoring: Alex Arteaga, Laura Arici, Jörg Huber, Ulrich Görlich
Third eyes: Anna Hilti, Andreas Mueller, Robert Steinberger, Esther Mathis
Production: Aurèle Ferrier
SUPPORT
Arts Council of the Canton of St. Gallen
Erna and Curt Burgauer Foundation
Georg and Josi Guggenheim Foundation
Georges and Jenny Bloch Foundation
Zurich University of the Arts ·
Steo Foundation