In his touching and authentic documentary Fernand Melgar leads the audience into the Frambois detention center where ordinary people never go and where hopes and fears of different men culminate. Guards as well as detainees act human under inhuman conditions, so the spectator is enabled to see them all as individuals with a family, religion and their own dignity, lacking only justice.
64th Festival del Film Locarno
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Awards of the Ecumenical Jury
Done with considerable craftsmanship this film shows us that the subtle Xenophobia of western people, often covered only by a thin layer of cultural conventions, distracts from the fact, that violence and lack of communication are generic issues of the clean and "well organized" suburbs.
Three different orphan sisters left alone in a beautiful house full of past memories have to cope with becoming an adult. Evoking a dense atmosphere, Mumenthaler shows that there are various, sometimes painful, ways becoming an individual and that although memory guides us to accept the present, one still has doors and windows to open.