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.
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.
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).