Film about mute Kurdish boy wins Geneva Grand Prize

This year’s Geneva Grand Prize of the International Film Festival and Forum for Human Rights (FIFDH) goes to the British production “Name Me Lawand”. The film is about a mute Iraqi-Kurdish boy who flees to Great Britain with his parents and discovers new ways to express himself.

In the British Derby, Lawand is admitted to the Royal Scholl for the Deaf with the help of volunteers and develops into a charismatic, curious boy. Director Edward Lovelace accompanied Lawand for four years and learned British Sign Language himself.

From the perspective of disability policy, this film is “progressive and moving,” the jury wrote in its statement published on Saturday. She sees the work as “a tribute to all children who are confronted with the unimaginable.” The Geneva Grand Prix is ​​worth 10,000 francs.

The Gilda Viera de Mello Prize worth 5,000 francs was awarded to the Palestinian film ‘Life is Beautiful’ by Mohamed Jabaly. This shows “the violence of borders, but also the solidarity and determination of an individual to live a life of dignity.”

The World Organization Against Torture Prize, also worth 5,000 francs, goes to director Jialing Zhang for his film ‘Total Trust’. It details the persecution of Chinese human rights defenders and shows how the lives of millions of people are tightly controlled using state-of-the-art technological surveillance tools.

The 22nd edition of the FIFDH comes to an end on Sunday evening. More than 30,000 festival visitors and more than 250 guests participated over ten days. (sda)