Urs Odermatt
Swiss author, film and stage director
Urs Odermatt (born 28 February 1955 in Stans, canton of Nidwalden) is a Swiss film director and author.
After working for several years as a freelance journalist, film critic and photographer, Odermatt trained to be a film director and screenwriter under the two Polish pastmasters Krzysztof Kieślowski and Edward Żebrowski. He works in Germany and Switzerland as a director in film, television and theatre. In 1990 he founded the production company Nordwest Film AG with the cameraman Rainer Klausmann.
Odermatt is the son of the Nidwalden photographer Arnold Odermatt and has published his father’s work since 1993 (Springer & Winckler Galerie, Berlin; Steidl Verlag, Göttingen). In 1992 during research for his feature film Constable Zumbühl, he discovered his father’s photo archive and grouped the works together into the collections entitled Meine Welt, Karambolage, Im Dienst and In zivil.
Odermatt lives and works in Windisch in Switzerland.
Films
2011 – Der böse Onkel (The Wicked Uncle). Feature film, from the play of the same name by Urs Odermatt. With Miriam Japp, Jörg-Heinrich Benthien, Paula Schramm, Julia Heydcamp, Stephan Dierichs, Kasia Borek, Verena Berger, Pascal Ulli, Eva Math, Johanna Leinen.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Urs Odermatt” is swiss author, film and stage director. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Odermatt, Swiss and author, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “swiss author, film and stage director” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Nov 17, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q116534. VIAF identifies the subject as 69171252. The Library of Congress control number is n94093847. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1955, 1990, 1993 and 1992.
Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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Three-step research path
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- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Urs Odermatt” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.