Special Flight

While awaiting deportation from Switzerland, men are jailed at the administrative detention centre Frambois. Some of them have spent several years in Switzerland, worked, paid taxes and started a family, but their requests for asylum have failed. Although incarceration may last up to 24 months, deportation is announced without warning and its enforcement is imminent. Behind the closed prison doors, tension builds day by day. On one side there are deeply human wardens, and on the other immigrants at the end of their journeys, defeated by fear and stress. Relations of friendship and hate, respect and revolt are formed until the deportation is announced, which is experienced like a stab. 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. –Locarno Film Festival