Special Flight

Awaiting their deportation from Swiss territory, immigrants are jailed at the Frambois administrative detention centre. As their request for asylum has failed, they are ordered to leave, some of them after having spent several years in Switzerland, working, paying taxes, and starting a family. Although incarceration may be as long as 18 months, deportation is announced without warning and its implementation is immediate. Behind the closed prison doors, tension builds day by day. On one side there are guards with humanist values, on the other there are men at the end of their journey, defeated by fear and stress. Relations of friendship and hate, respect and repulsion are formed until the announcement of deportation, which cuts like a knife. This relationship ends mostly in distress and humiliation. Those who refuse to leave are handcuffed, tied up and forcibly put on a plane. In this extreme situation, despair has a name: special flight.

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Cinematography: Denis Jutzeler

Editing: Karine Sudan

Sound: Christophe Giovannoni, Gabriel Hafner, Francois Musy

Music: Wandifa Njie

Production: Climage

Producers: Fernand Melgar

Co-production: RTS SSR SRG (Switzerland), ARTE GEIE (France)

Format: DigiBeta Color

Production Country: Switzerland

Production Year: 2011

Duration: 103

Contact: Association Climage, Switzerland Stephane Goel, Elise Shubs T. +41 21 648 3561 F. +41 21 646 2787 climage@climage.ch www.climage.ch

Fernand Melgar

Filmography

Selected
1993 Album de famille/Family Album
1998 Classe d’acceuil/Induction Class
2002 Remue-menage/Storm in a C-Cup
2005 Exit – Le droit de mourir/Exit – The Right to Die
2008 La Forteresse/The Fortress
2011 Vol special/Special Flight