theartsdesk in Locarno: Swiss rules, Swiss rain

Thrills, and lots and lots of spills, at the annual Alpine film festival

by James WoodallSunday, 07 August 2011

Lighting up a dark sky: `Cowboys and Aliens' hits Locarno's Piazza Grande

Think what you will about Switzerland and the Swiss – calm, ordered country, treasured environment, cautious, democratically precise people – but look behind the scenes and things can seem quite scary. Vol spécial (Special Flight), by Swiss-French-speaking Fernand Melgar, is one of the most intense documentaries I have ever seen. Depicting asylum seekers in a detention centre, it is a vibrant portrait of human (entirely male) endeavour warping into despair under an unkind but, as the Swiss see it, necessary law of repatriation: in 1994, they voted for what is known as the federal law on coercive measures. Few citizens today know about it.

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