Biography

Ueli Meier was born in Zurich, Switzerland in 1958. After an apprenticeship as a photographer (1977–80), he has worked as an independent photojournalist and director, cinematographer and screenwriter of documentary films since 1980.

His photo essays and portraits have been published in magazines such as Das Magazin, Schweizer Familie, NZZ Folio, amongst others. In 1997, he received the Swiss Design Award from the Federal Office of Culture. In 2024, the publishing house Scheidegger & Spiess released the photography book "Ueli Meier – In einer anderen Schweiz. Fotoreportagen 1980–2000".

While still training as a photographer, he directed his first internationally renowned documentary short film THE WEEKEND DRIVE (1980), a portrait of a young commercial clerk who operates a fictional music radio station in his apartment in the high-rise building of Switzerland's first shopping centre in Spreitenbach.

His first feature-length documentary for the big screen is TIBI AND HIS MOTHERS (2012), the story of a Tibetan refugee child who, in 1963 at the age of seven, was brought from a children's home in Dharamsala to a foster mother in Switzerland by a private relief organization, without the knowledge of his mother.

His most recent cinema documentary to date is ICH HABE IN MOLL GETRÄUMT (2021), a stirring search for traces of the lost Swiss poet Walter Rufer.