Zurich, the economic heart of Switzerland, its airport covered with billboards and never-ending promotional videos that sign the praises of beautiful, far-away destinations. Every day, people hurry through these shimmering halls and terminals that take them to the ends of the world.
The airport, a melting pot of various symptoms of our age and a complex and controversial stage on which the destinies of six protagonists – all of them seeking their own freedom – develop and play out.
Camille Briffod ponders the concept of freedom and the privileged and absurd position of Switzerland, her home country, in essayistic form. The film is constructed of multiple, fragmented layers. As in her earlier films, Camille Briffod is interested in creating a narrative that moves away from traditional, conflict-ridden dialogues which often lead to an escalation of the story in a verbal exchange. The artist mainly wants to work with bodies in order to create a sensory gateway to her subject matter. Pictures and physical movements illustrate the story. Faces, expressions and glances take the place of dialogue, while the airport itself represents the inner dialogue. Accordingly, we receive information not through dialogue – which, where there is any, is only very brief – but through various means of conveying facts or subtle hints about the protagonists’ situation.
In her two preceding projects, Camille Briffod used the radio as a way of providing the audience with the necessary information. In addition to the radio, this project also uses the telephone, public announcements on the airport public address system, a letter, a newspaper, voice messages and digital messages on illuminated panels. This information guides viewers through the story.
The use of the various media enables the artist to approach the topic of freedom via a less direct, more subtle route. Of course the story is structured in such a way that the things being communicated via these media can be linked to one figure or another in the film. At the same time, this narrative form gives the audience greater freedom of interpretation.