2021 Radio Documentary and Reportage Shortlist

21 aprile 2021 ore 16:14
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AUSTRIA    ORF

Willkommen in Weikendorf
(Welcome to Weikendorf)

In 2019 the small Austrian village Weikendorf made international headlines. A Muslim family from Palestine wanted to buy a house there but did not receive the necessary permit from the mayor. Khalid Abu El Hosna, the father, turned to the media for help. What followed was a public outcry. Various NGOs expressed their solidarity with the family. But many people supported what they believed was the right decision by the mayor, including the neighbours. Some locals claimed that racism or Islamophobia were not the "real problems" here. To them, the family of 11 looked suspicious. The refugees without Austrian citizenship were heavily attacked on social media. On the other hand, the image of the village and its inhabitants was ruined by countless media reports. A lawsuit that lasted for months ensued.

FRANCE    ARTE RADIO / ARTE FRANCE

L'écho du bataclan
(The Echo of the Bataclan)

Five years after the Nov. 13 terrorist attacks in Paris, survivors from the Bataclan describe the damage their relationship to sound suffered that evening. From their love of live music to the trauma they endured, from the post-traumatic experience to personal reconstruction, their accounts resonate with the latest research in sound and music. Told to Jérémy Leroux and assembled with Samuel Hirsch, the survivors' essential stories are commented on by researchers and sound experts. By creating a dialogue between personal narratives and the explanations of music therapists, ethnomusicologists, acousticians and philosophers of music, this podcast probes the role of sound in society, and takes a journey in the world of sound, leading perhaps to a glimmer of light.

FRANCE    RADIO FRANCE

Une Histoire Particulière : Fabienne Kabou
(A Unique Story: Fabienne Kabou)

The two parts of the series A Unique Story tell us about the life of Fabienne Kabou. Fabienne Kabou has become part of the history of major criminal cases, and her crime no longer belongs to her. A modern and melancholic drama that has the makings of a myth, presses authors and onlookers to the trial of Fabienne Kabou, an infanticidal mother with "impaired discernment", persecuted by acts of witchcraft, who will be sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2016 and then to 15 years in prison on appeal a year later. The documentary was made from hundreds of pages of Fabienne Kabou's testimony, which were cut to capture her unique phrasing. The binaural sound was chosen to be as close as possible to the haunting aspect of her words. Only people who faced Fabienne Kabou were interviewed.

GERMANY    ARD

Ein Totenschädel und kein Ende. Die Kirche und die deutsche Kolonialherrschaft in Namibia
(The Skull - A Tale with No Ending. The Church and German Colonial Rule in Namibia)

Thousands of skulls from Africa are stored in ethnological museums in Germany. During the German Empire, researchers wanted to use these relics to prove scientifically that the inhabitants of Africa were Untermenschen - i.e. subhuman. For decades, Gerhard Ziegenfuss fought to return a skull his family was given by his great uncle, the missionary Alois Ziegenfuss,to where it belongs - to Namibia, formerly German South-West Africa. When Gerhard finally succeeded in 2018, he was 80 years old and could have retired at last. But too many questions still remained unanswered. What role did the German missionaries play during the rebellion of the Herero and Nama peoples? And to what extent did they contribute to the genocide?

SLOVENIA    RTVSLO

Glas šakala
(The Voice of Jackal)

The documentary sound walk The Voice of Jackal departs from a case study of the migration routes of the Canis aureus species, which has recently spread from the Balkans to Europe. The growing number of jackals has triggered conflicts related to human interests. The authors sum different discourses, field recordings, and composed sound landscapes to reflect the relationship between human culture and non-human species (the Other). Special attention is paid to the research of sensory language and the physicality of sound experience. Inventing a voice capable of representing the one who has none, the work unfolds into another organisation of temporality. By listening to one's own walking pace, a very different presence and openness is achieved, so different from the contemporary listeners' short attention span.

SWEDEN    SVERIGES RADIO

Estonia - natten jag inte dog
(Estonia - The Night I Did Not Die)

She was standing on the side of a sinking ship, in the middle of the night. Soon, she and the woman whose hand she is holding, will follow the ship to the bottom of the sea. Suddenly, they are hit by a ten-metre wave - which washes them out into the sea. Ulla did not die that night 25 years ago, when the passenger ferry, MS/Estonia, was lost on the Baltic Sea with 989 people on board. She did not die, but it would be some time before she was able to start living again. For a long time, being one of only fourteen surviving women felt more like a punishment than a gift. Guilt, grief and despair were intermingled with a sense of the unreal. But there was also the conviction that there was a light at the other side of that horror.

UNITED KINGDOM    BBC

Girl Taken - Omnibus Edition 2

Girl Taken is an original narrative radio series told in real time; a thrilling, heart-stopping investigation into the journey of a young girl smuggled into Britain. At its centre is a little girl, Bru, whom the Producer, Sue Mitchell, first met in the Calais Jungle refugee camp. Rob Lawrie, a British volunteer there, offered to help Bru and her father Reza by taking them to England in his lorry. Rob was arrested at the French border. Sue went to France to Reza who said his wife had been killed in Afghanistan and he'd fled with Bru. A court acquitted Rob after hearing how he'd tried to help. But, more than a year later, Sue was unexpectedly contacted by a refugee worker who'd met a woman, Goli, claiming to be Bru's mother … This edition starts with Sue and Rob planning to tempt Reza out of hiding in the UK.

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