(EFE) .- The movie To half voice, in which Cuban directors Heidi Hassan and Patricia Pérez Fernández relate their experience from exile in Europe, today received the Focus Sud audience award at the Filmar Festival of Latin American cinema in Geneva, which also recognized a Salvadoran production.
The documentary Our freedom, directed by the Swiss-Salvadoran Celine Escher and who denounces the persecution of women from that country who try to have an abortion, won the Opera Prima prize, awarded by a jury made up of Geneva students, in the twenty-third edition of the festival.
To half voice summarizes the audiovisual correspondence maintained by Hassan and Pérez, childhood friends in Cuba who emigrated to Europe but spent 15 years apart, after the former settled in Switzerland and the latter in Spain.
The two filmmakers send each other videos, united in this story, in which they recall their friendship and Cuban childhood, “in an emotional and intimate journey about friendship, the roots and the itinerary of an entire generation,” the festival organization stressed. .
‘A media voz’ summarizes the audiovisual correspondence maintained by Hassan and Pérez
Hassan, who lives in Geneva itself, stated that it was very special for her to receive the award in the city that has hosted her for two decades, and she dedicated it to “all the friends that I have been lucky enough to meet again in Switzerland. “.
“Emigration or prison are the only options that the Government leaves to people who denounce the wave of repression that is shaking Cuba, or to those who simply ask to participate in the construction of their country,” lamented Hassan, who wanted to take advantage of the concession of the award to ask for the freedom of Cuban political prisoners.
On Our freedom Escher portrays the life of Teodora Vásquez, the spokesperson for “17 y más”, the name by which Salvadoran women imprisoned for having abortions are known.
The Swiss-Salvadoran filmmaker dedicated the award “to all those women who continue to be unjustly imprisoned and criminalized by the prohibition of abortion in El Salvador,” and reminded some of them who lost their lives while in prison.
‘A media voz’ is “an emotional and intimate journey about friendship, the roots and the itinerary of an entire generation,” the festival organization underlined.
Escher wanted to take advantage of the award ceremony to ask for “freedom for ’17 and over ‘, as well as legal abortion in El Salvador and around the world.”
The festival presented 60 films from 16 countries in a double format (some were screened in theaters and others by telematic means) after last year it had to show all its cinematographic offerings by virtual means, due to the pandemic of the covid-19.
In this edition, it exhibited a selection of great classics of Cuban revolutionary cinema and a retrospective dedicated to the Chilean Alfredo Castro, considered by some critics as one of the best contemporary actors in Latin America and who traveled to Geneva for the festival.
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