Events
Exhibitions Opening
29th edition of the Biel/Bienne Festival of Photography
Filmpodium Biel/Bienne: Vulnerabilities 23.4.-26.5.2026
This film series, running from 23 April to 26 May 2026, has been developed in collaboration with the Biel/Bienne Festival of Photography and echoes the theme of the festival’s 2026 edition (9–31 May): Vulnerability as a common good. Being seen is one of the most fundamental human needs, and can be a deeply moving experience: it affects not only the person being looked at, but also the one doing the looking. What happens when we find the courage to let down our masks and show ourselves as we truly are? When we acknowledge our uncertainties and fragilities, and through them new forms of mutual attention and care are woven? In this space of shared recognition, the need for protection and responsibility become a shared task; vulnerability is revealed as a collective experience, our common good.
“We’re all just walking each other home” as the spiritual teacher and psychologist Ram Dass reminds us. Major works such as Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound, John Cassavetes’ Love Streams, Jacques Audiard’s De rouille et d’os, and Clara Law’s The Goddess of 1967 each tell, in their own way, how lonely and disoriented individuals come to recognise their vulnerabilities as a shared struggle, transform them into sources of resilience, and thus experience a profound sense of closeness. These are all films that make us aware of our shared humanity.
Hong Sang-soo’s new feature film, What Does That Nature Say to You, explores how the family can function as a network of solidarity and, with care and kindness, model different ways of approaching life. Conversely, Los Domingos by Alauda Ruiz de Azúa powerfully links family tensions to the perspective of a teenage girl in a society gripped by a crisis of faith: just like the family, a monastery can be a refuge, or a place of heightened vulnerability. Finally, Yalla Parkour by Areeb Zuaiter shows how a film itself can become a space of memory and resistance: in the mid-2010s, young parkour athletes transform the ruins of Gaza into stages for sporting feats — laden with painful losses but also with dazzling energy.
The public is invited to draw connections between the films in this series and those at the festival, in order to explore new ways of seeing. On presentation of a valid festival ticket, a discount of 5 CHF is available on all films in this series, as well as for the Campus Festival on 24 May.
Programme Vulnerabilities et information hier: www.filmpodiumbielbienne.ch
Speeches
Speakers:
Sarah Zürcher, Director of the Biel/Bienne Festival of Photography
Glenda Gonzalez Bassi, Mayor of the City of Biel/Bienne
Caroline Nicod, Head of the Institutional Support Unit
Virginie Heyer, President of the CJB (Bernese Jura Council) and of the Culture Committee
Fête de la danse / das Tanzfest
Combine your visit with the “Fête de la danse / Tanzfest”.
More information here: www.evidanse.ch
REBL x Leica: Opening of Dominic Nahr’s exhibition
Opening of Dominic Nahr’s exhibition, an event organised by REBL x Leica.
Further information is available on the Leica Summit website.
Round Table Discussion and Book Launch by Dominique Bartels (2e Enquête photographique Jura bernois)
Opening of the exhibition Le tissage du vivant and the launch of the book produced as part of the 2. Enquête photographique Jura bernois 2024-2027. Followed by a discussion on the themes explored in the exhibition, in the presence of the winning artist, Dominique Bartels. With Le tissage du vivant, the artist explores the acts of shearing and milking to reveal a landscape shaped by a long history of relationships between humans, animals and the land. She examines the forms and contexts in which these practices continue, caught between the memory of traditional knowledge and ongoing changes.
In the presence of contributors to the 2. Enquête photographique Jura bernois:
Sylviane Messerli, Mémoires d’Ici (Bernese Jura Research and Documentation Centre)
Jean-Marie Hotz, Editions Intervalles (Cultural magazine of the Bernese Jura and Biel)
Mélanie Cornu, Bernese Jura Council
Sarah Girard, co-curator (festival director from 2018 to 2025)
Moderator:
Sarah Zürcher, festival director
Walking Guided Tour in the Presence of the Photographers
Guided tour of the exhibitions in the presence of the artists of the 29th edition.
Walking Guided Tour
A guided tour of the exhibitions of Sabine Hess and Nicolas Polli at Atelier Robert, followed by a visit to the Gurzelen in the company of its curator, Jean-Guy Python.
Readings, Discussions, Sandwiches
Readings and critical perspectives on photography, alongside filmed interviews with photographers, at the Agora Library.
Walking guided tour
Guided tour for all visitors upon booking: info@jouph.ch
Cyanotype Workshop: Blue, the Colour that Brings Images to Life
In this workshop organised by Photoforum Pasquart, children will rediscover one of the oldest photographic techniques: cyanotype.
For children (aged 6–12) whose parents are attending the 2.15 pm tour.
Free of charge, upon registration: info@jouph.ch
Opening: Schule für Gestaltung Bern und Biel
Opening of the exhibition by the second-year graphic design professional class and second- and third-year CPMD students.
Walking Guided Tour
Guided tour for Friends of Photo Elysée and the festival.
Award Ceremony for the 2026 SNSF Scientific Image Competition
The awards ceremony will take place in the presence of a member of the jury. This will be followed by a reception.
Round Table Discussion: Photojournalism
A round-table discussion on photojournalism, as part of the exhibition De l’Une à l’autre, marking the 200th anniversary of the Journal de Genève, of which Le Temps is the successor.
Registration required: info@jouph.ch
Collaboration with Presstival
Presentation of the exhibition in collaboration with Presstival at the Gurzelen.
Campus Festival : Vulnerabilities
A selection of short films made by students from Swiss art schools: ZHdK, FHNW, CISA, HSLU, HEAD, ECAL. This programme explores the moving image as an extension of contemporary photographic practices.
Workshop from 1.15 pm to 2.00 pm at Filmpodium Biel/Bienne: “Vulnerabilities on set”. With Stéphane Kuthy, President, Swiss Cinematographers Society (SCS), and Andreas Struck, Filmpodium Biel/Bienne. Moderator: Virginie Borel, Director of the Forum on Bilingualism.
Download the Campus Festival flyer here: Campus Festival Vulnerabilities
Vulnerabilities programme and further information here: www.filmpodiumbielbienne.ch
On presentation of a valid festival ticket, a discount of 5 CHF is available for the Campus Festival.
Workshop at Filmpodium Biel/Bienne: “Vulnerabilities on set”
Workshop at Filmpodium Biel/Bienne: “Vulnerabilities on set”. With Stéphane Kuthy, President, Swiss Cinematographers Society (SCS), and Andreas Struck, Filmpodium Biel/Bienne. Moderator: Virginie Borel, Director of the Forum on Bilingualism.
A Collective Photography Project: An Immersion in the Practice of LUNAX
Event organised by Photoforum Pasquart as part of the LUNAX exhibition.
LUNAX, a Swiss photography agency specialising in collective initiatives and exhibition projects, offers an insight into its working methods. Through a participatory workshop, participants will learn about the challenges of curation and experience the dynamics of creating an exhibition as a group.
The workshop lasts 3 hours, including breaks.
Free upon registration: info@jouph.ch
A Poetic Reflection: Nature and its Image
A poetic exploration of photography and painting in the Ried region by Bernadette Fülscher.
Workshop Republik with Lunch
Workshop with Annette Keller (Republik) and the editorial team – an overview of journalistic practices and editorial processes.
The workshop will take place at Espace Agora and includes a sandwiches lunch.
Artist Talk with Dominic Nahr
During this event, Dominic Nahr will talk about his experience as a war correspondent in conflict zones. His insights will help put the images shown at the festival into context.
Tickets available online here: www.leica-summit.ch
The discussion will be followed by an after-party at La Poste, organised by REBL.
Finishing: Last Slice
Talk with Sabine Hess and Nicolas Polli, followed by a drink and some pizza.
Download the programme as a PDF
Activity report 2025 (French version)
Activity report 2025 (German version)
Press review 2025
2026 – Vulnerabilities
_ Vulnerability as a Commons
_ La vulnérabilité comme bien commun
_ Verletzlichkeit als Gemeingut
An artistic and political reflection on care, bodies, and community.
How can an image touch, resist, heal?
The 2026 edition of the festival places vulnerability at its core — not as an individual weakness, but as a shared social and political condition: a common good. In a world shaped by multiple crises, the Biel/Bienne Festival of Photography brings together photographic practices that do more than document reality. These works create connections, revealoften unseen or marginalised experiences, and open spaces of attention, care, and sensitivity.
The programme unfolds across four main thematic axes:
– feminisms and body politics,
– affective ecologies and relationships with the living world,
– narratives of migration and hospitality,
– reparative artistic gestures, in which images become spaces of care, memory, resistance, and visual justice.
Through collaborative practices, critically engaged images, reappropriated archives, and forms of gentle resistance, audiences are invited to compose their own paths and narratives, without a prescribed route.
Each exhibition venue becomes a critical space for reflection, focusing on one of these questions and fostering dialogue between artworks, contexts, and publics. The festival brings together renowned Swiss and international artists, emerging voices, collectives, researchers, and activists whose work explores the social functions of images, their sensorypower, and their critical potential.
Images, we know, are not limited to documenting pain or injustice. They can also connect, comfort, and repair. In this sense, photography becomes a space of care, resistance, and the reconfiguration of the sensorial — a place where shared thinking, feeling, and action can emerge.
