PRIZE OF THE INTERRELIGIOUS JURY

Since 2005, SIGNIS and INTERFILM have been present at the Visions du Réel Festival in Nyon (Switzerland) with an interreligious jury. Since 2008, the jury includes a representative of the Roman Catholic and the Protestant Church, and a member of Jewish and Muslim faith. The jury awards a film of the international competition and possibly a commendation. This prize of CHF 5’000 is donated by both the Swiss Catholic and the Swiss Protestant Churches (Conference of the Churches in the French speaking part of Switzerland/CER and the "Reformierte Medien" in Zurich).

The members of the interreligious jury 2012, nominated by the Swiss representatives of SIGNIS and INTERFILM, were:

Roza Berger-Fiedler, Berlin (Germany)
Alain le Goanvic, Aix-en-Provence (France)
Marie-Thérèse Mäder, Zürich (Switzerland) – president
Medhi Sahebi, Zürich (Switzerland)

The Jury, from left: Alain le Goanvic, Roza Berger-Fiedler,
Marie-Thérèse Mäder, Mehdi Sahebi
© Miguel Bueno

The interreligious jury awards its prize of CHF 5000 to the film

900 DAGEN/900 DAYS
directd by Jessica Gorter, The Netherlands/Russia, 2011

The film focuses in a multi-layered manner on the siege of Leningrad during the Second World War. Thanks to a precise and moving construction of images and sounds, the filmmaker succeeds in showing the contradiction between the witness' individual memory and the instrumentalization of history by political power. Individual destinies put into question the retrospection of the past and reveal the manipulation of human beings and their recollection.

The jury gives a Commendation to the film

DE REGELS VAN MATTHIJS (Matthew's Law)
directed by Marc Schmidt, The Netherlands, 2012

The filmmaker shows his autistic friend in a sensitive way. The pictures tactfully and sincerely display his and the society's incapacity of changing Matthijs' fate.