Signis

Austrian Film Wins SIGNIS Prize at Monte Carlo TV Festival

Brussels, June 19, 2007 (SIGNIS/Silvia Costantini)- The SIGNIS Jury at the 47th Monte Carlo Television Festival have awarded their prize for a television film to the Austrian programme On the Road to Santiago -Brothers III by Wolfgang Murnberger, ORF.

(JPEG) "The film follows three brothers on the way to Santiago, looking for meaning in life. This pilgrimage is full of clashes but they must deal with difficult situations and learn how to get along together."

The Jury members were: Copel Moscu (President, Romania), Silvia Costantini (Italy), Miranda Iping (Netherlands), Fr Patrick Keppel (Monaco).

On the Road to Santiago was chosen between other 14 TV- movies. It was a difficult choice, because of the high quality of the competition. Disabilities, strong women who fight to help their sons in difficulties, the big dilemma of euthanasia, persecutions, wars, are all the most common topics of the films in competition, a scream of desperation and hope, in a world where the impossible can be possible too.

Flower for Algernon is the very poetic story of a retarded adult, Charles, who becomes more intelligent through an experimental treatment. However the side effects and dramatic consequences of the experiment quickly destabilize him. The central question is "where is the border line between experimental treatment and respect for the human life?"

Determination and willpower against the odds of life: this is the subject of The Moon’s Child , inspired by the true story of Fulvio Frisone, an acclaimed Sicilian scientist, who was born with severe birth defects and, according to the doctors’ diagnosis, the impossibility to physically and intellectually interact with the world. But, with the courage and willpower of his mother, Fulvio will learn step by step to grow up and to realize his dreams, and he’ll become a nuclear physicist. The film is an hymn to the power of the love of a mother, and an example and an invitation to never give up in front of the ignorance of the people, to accept life as a gift, in any way it could be.

Another interesting strong story, even if questionable for the dilemma of the euthanasia, is Marie Humbert . Marie Humbert, is the mother of a boy who became tetraplegic after a car accident. She is convinced her son will get better, "it’s just matter of time and love". But a little initial progress is all that the son will physically achieve. Lucid and aware of his severe pathology, the boy asks his mother to help him to die.

Not all were murders is the title of another well-done tv film, a story of pain and love, of fear and escape, of a Jewish woman and her son, who try to survive and escape from the Nazis in the Berlin of 1943. A two year odyssey through the region, with the Nazi net drawing ever tighter around them. It’s only due to a steady stream of sympathetic and brave Germans, who offer them safe haven, that the mother and son are able to survive. Probably, we could remember this festival for the poetry of the films and for the great characters of women, and mothers in particular.

http://www.tvfestival.com