Synopsis: After 20 years of marriage, things between Mona (Rebecca Indermaur) and Gieri (Bruno Cathomas) have lost their sparkle. Deciding she wants to rekindle the flame, Mona seeks help from Nanda Sharma (Murali Perumal), the village’s new pastor, who has Indian roots. But instead of giving her the sort of pastoral advice befitting a man of the cloth, the pastor encourages her to employ entirely worldly means and practise the arts of love.

But that’s easier said than done: Gieri is wrapped up in preparations for the upcoming ibex hunt, and he takes no notice of his wife’s efforts. At least that’s what he lets her believe. What she doesn’t know is that Gieri is having an affair with her best friend Giulia (Tonia Maria Zindel).

When this well-kept secret comes out, Mona’s world is turned upside down. In a rage, she storms out – leaving Gieri and the two children to fend for themselves. Encouraged by the pastor, Mona rents what was once the village café, renovates it and breathes new life into it. In this process she is supported by Michael (Martin Rapold), an attractive architect. Mona blossoms. Following her example, more and more women seek the advice of pastor Sharma – which creates uproar throughout the village community. And in the midst of it all, Gieri realizes that he still loves his wife and wants to win her back.

A romantic comedy from Graubünden directed by Christoph Schaub (“Nachtlärm” (Night-time noise), “Giulias Verschwinden” (Giulia’s disappearance). The screenplay was written by Sabine Pochhammer (“Die Herbstzeitlosen”).

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As a Zurich director I was delighted to be entrusted with making “Amur senza fin”. I’ve made several documentary films in Romansh for Radiotelevisiun Svizra Rumantscha, and I found it an enriching experience: it forced me to get to grips with the Romansh language and its dialects. So I regarded my work on directing “Amur senza fin” as a welcome opportunity to make that experience even more profound.

When I make a new film I want to experience the new and explore the unfamiliar. This is not without its dangers, but if there’s no risk, there’s no fun.
The “Amur senza fin” project fitted the bill exactly. Not necessarily because of the genre or format of the film, but definitely because of the task of making a comedy in Romansh.

There are not many actors who speak Romansh, but they are outstandingly good. Normally you select the right actor for a particular role from a very large number of possibles, but because of the language factor we decided to do it the other way round. Screenplay writer Sabine Pochhammer and I “shaped” the characters as the screenplay developed to make it fit the possible Romansh-speaking cast. That helped the actors not only to find their characters, but also to imbue them with the required depth and credibility. This resulted in an interesting, unusual and high-quality cast. It seems to me that the Romansh language, because it is a Romance language related to Latin, enabled the actors to show different acting personalities: to put on “new” faces, in other words.

There are five Romansh dialects, and all native speakers of Romansh are bilingual. This makes dealing with the language both challenging and enthralling, and it brought us to a new understanding of language. The Romansh language, precisely because it is spoken by so few people, is animated and dynamic, not static. A spoken language lives and changes, partly in its interactions with other languages. Previously this was primarily seen as a urban phenomenon, because urban environments are multilingual environments. But in the Romansh-speaking areas this linguistic interaction has always been part of the natural order of things. It is a phenomenon within Switzerland. This interaction between two languages and various dialects has comedic potential. It was very stimulating in my work.

Christoph Schaub was born in Zurich. During the 1980 Zurich youth movement he joined Videoladen Zürich, where he learned the craft of film making. In the second half of the 1980s he made his first feature films “Wendel” (1987) and “Dreissig Jahre” (1989), both of which won prizes, and his next film “Am Ende der Nacht” (1992) brought him an invitation to the Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes. After that Christoph Schaub concentrated more on documentaries, making various films for cinema and television – some of them on architectonic subjects. Beginning in 2000 Schaub refocused on fictional work, making the surprise hit “Sternenberg” in 2004. In 2009 Schaub made “Giulias Verschwinden”, with a screenplay by Martin Suter and starring Corinna Harfouch and Bruno Ganz in the lead roles – which won several prizes, one of them the audience prize at the Locarno Film Festival.

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