Synopsis
After The Fortress, which portrayed the reception conditions for asylum seekers in Switzerland, Fernand Melgar takes a look at the end of the migrants' journey. Awaiting definite deportation from the Swiss territory, men are jailed at the administrative detention centre Frambois. As their request for asylum has failed, they are ordered to leave, some of them after having spent several years in Switzerland, worked, paid taxes, and started a family. Although incarceration may be as long as 18 months, the deportation is announced without warning and its implementation is imminent. Behind the closed prison doors, tension builds day by day. On one side there are wardens full of 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 revolt are formed until the announcement of deportation, 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.
After The Fortress, which portrayed the reception conditions for asylum seekers in Switzerland, Fernand Melgar takes a look at the end of the migrants' journey. Awaiting definite deportation from the Swiss territory, men are jailed at the administrative detention centre Frambois. As their request for asylum has failed, they are ordered to leave, some of them after having spent several years in Switzerland, worked, paid taxes, and started a family. Although incarceration may be as long as 18 months, the deportation is announced without warning and its implementation is imminent. Behind the closed prison doors, tension builds day by day. On one side there are wardens full of 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 revolt are formed until the announcement of deportation, 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.