The Hearing

Anhörung

This thought-provoking and innovative film challenges immigration processes through the accounts of four people whose lives were impacted by it.

A Nigerian woman, a man from Cameroon, a transgender woman from Sri Lanka and a young Afghan man all had their applications for asylum rejected by Swiss authorities. In a drab, anonymous room, they were forced to account for their lives, with every word and gesture recorded and used in judgement against them. But how can we prove our life story, without a physical record beyond our own experience, to those who have not lived it? Lisa Gerig’s subversive film re-enacts these interviews as a way to explore the dynamics of power, then shifts focus, towards the officials whose job it is to interrogate the validity of those seeking asylum. In doing so, the film highlights the disparity between subjective and objective perspectives, and the need to find a common ground between the two.