ican films makes an effort to use a film’s emotional power to throw light on the unusual – or supposedly familiar – by illuminating it from a different angle. Interested in a broad thematic spectrum, ican films seeks collaboration with directors who would like to film unexpected stories.

Thus in the most recent ican film Seven Dumpsters and a Corpse (2007) director Thomas Haemmerli tells about the inheritance from his mother: a trash-filled apartment. During the laborious process of cleaning up, what is revealed is not only the personality of an unusual woman, but, with much black humor, a whole social class is unmasked.

“Seven Dumpsters and a Corpse is a shockingly hilarious family film” is how the SonntagsZeitung commented on the balancing act between humor and trepidation. The Neue Zürcher Zeitung reasons that “the film gets under your skin exactly because Haemmerli does not swear upon sensibility, but rather resorts to irony and black humor on levels of image, editing, and sound.”

With this peculiar mix between anxiety and black humor the film triggered not only personal consternation, but also exciting and illuminating discussions. The supposedly personal family history directs one’s view towards a general social phenomenon and serves as a platform for the broad examination of one of the major topics of time: death and our transience.