Alain Tanner was born on 6 December 1929. While studying economics at the University of Geneva, he created the university’s film club with Claude Goretta before he joined the merchant navy as an accountant. A leading figure in the revival of cinema in French-speaking Switzerland, he was more inspired by the intellectual effervescence of 1960s London (Free Cinema) than by the French New Wave. Employed at the British Film Institute and at the BBC in London (1955–1958), he directed Nice Time with Goretta (1957). After returning to Geneva in 1959, he made Les Apprentis [The Apprentices (1964)] and Une ville à Chandigarh [A City at Chandigarh (1966)], among others. From 1964 to 1970, he produced 40 TV reports and made four films for the Swiss TV network Télévision Suisse Romande.
Alongside Claude Goretta, Jean-Jacques Lagrange, Jean-Louis Roy and Michel Soutter, he was a founding member of Groupe 5 (1968). As part of this group, he directed his first three feature films: Charles mort ou vif [Charles, Dead or Alive (1969)], La Salamandre [The Salamander (1971)] and Le Retour d’Afrique [Return from Africa (1973)]. A passionate defender of the values of “new Swiss cinema”, he founded the Association suisse des réalisateurs de films (Swiss Association of Film Directors), which he represented at the Federal Film Commission (1962–1967). His collaborations with writer John Berger and director of photography Renato Berta were significant, while his work with Myriam Mézières proved to be pivotal in the second half of the 1980s. He received an honorary doctorate from the University of Lausanne in 2008 and was awarded the Leopard of Honour at the Locarno Film Festival in 2010. He died on 11 September 2022 in Geneva.
The Alain Tanner collection was deposited at the Cinémathèque suisse on 10 October 2014. Prior to that, the documents were stored at the filmmaker’s residence in Geneva. According to the donation agreement of 20 September 2017, part of the collection managed by the Paper Archives and the Library became a donation. Copies of his films and sound, image and audiovisual media are subject to separate contracts. A final deposit was made by Nathalie Tanner, the director’s daughter, on 28 June 2023.