Prune Jaillet

After May 1968, they experimented with communities, squats or free love, with the hope of real change. Today, at retirement age, they live in new places and promote ways of living better and growing old together. What if they were right, these former protesters whose utopias have been muted by triumphant individualism?

The film tells the story of the incredible fate of pianist Clara Haskil. She was celebrated very early as a prodigy. At the tender age of five, she was sent by her family from Bucharest to Vienna, and later, under the care of her strict uncle, to Paris to continue her studies. She will suffer from chronic health issues, survive two world wars, anti-Semitism, before having to go into exile in Vevey, Switzerland. That’s where she found the proper support, in the early fifties, to begin the career she deserved for so long, world fame and undeniable recognition.

Switzerland still carries out special flights, where passengers, dressed in diapers and helmets, are chained to their seats for 40 hours at worst. They are accompanied by police officers and immigration officials. The passengers are flown to their native countries, where they haven't set foot in in up to twenty years, and where their lives might be in danger. Children, wives and work are left behind in Switzerland. Near Geneva, in Frambois prison, live 25 illegal immigrants waiting for deportation. They are offered an opportunity to say goodbye to their families and return to their native countries on a regular flight, escorted by plain-clothes police officers. If they refuse this offer, the special flight is arranged fast and unexpectedly. The stories behind the locked cells are truly heartbreaking.