The Prix Farel rewards a film on the “expelled” from the United States – Swiss Catholic Portal

The film On the Line, the expelled from America, by Alex Gohari and Léo Mattei (France) received the award for best feature film at the Prix Farel Festival in Neuchâtel. The documentary gives voice to Mexicans expelled from the United States.

The Prix Farel, international film festival on spirituality, ethics and religion, based in Neuchâtel, took place on November 5, 6 and 7, 2021 at the Bio cinema. The Jury awarded prizes for intense films presenting with accuracy and depth individual and community human destinies grappling with the major questions of our world, reports the festival in a press release.

On the Line, the expelled from America, by Alex Gohari and Léo Mattei (France), a story of torn borders and families, received the Best Feature Award. This film gives voice to Mexicans expelled from the United States. Upset families must continue to live without a father, a mother or a companion. The Jury underlines the elaborate aesthetic of this film which denounces, with sensitivity, an injustice which ignores morality and tears families apart in the name of a protectionist principle.

Uyghurs and Nagorno-Karabakh

A mention is awarded to the feature film The collector, by Pierre Maillard (France). We follow a man – haunted by the Holocaust and the deportation of his family – who has been accumulating anti-Semitic objects for thirty years.

In the medium-length category, the Jury rewards Nagorno-Karabakh – a torn land by Aram Shahbazyan and Jürgen Hansen (France). He underlines the journalistic vigor of this project which reveals the complexity of an ancestral conflict which tears the Christian Armenians and the Shiites of Azerbaijan apart, the last episode of which, very recent, is embodied through this film.

The Jury also awards a mention to the medium-length film Uyghurs – a people in danger, by Antoine Védeilhé and Angélique Forget (France). More than a million Uyghurs are believed to be held in internment camps with harsh conditions.

Mention for Germinal Roaux

For short films, the Prize is awarded to Crack by Eli Jean Tahchi (Canada). Against the background of religious decline, this film testifies to what goes through the human being when a world collapses.

The Jury also awards a mention to the short film First snow of Germinal Roaux (Switzerland). The latter recounts, in this project, his spiritual experience lived, in times of pandemic, at the Hospice du Simplon with the community of the Canon brothers.

Open to the world and to human ethical, spiritual and religious concerns, Farel Prize brought together, again this year, producers and directors from the international French-speaking world as well as a particularly large audience, reports the press release.

The Festival takes place every two years in Neuchâtel. The next edition will therefore take place in 2023. (cath.ch/com/rz)