GENEVA, March 14, 2010 (AFP) - Films about dissident journalists in Myanmar and dangerous river pollution in French Guiana won the top prizes at a human rights film festival and forum in Geneva, organisers said on Sunday.
    Danish director Anders Hogsbro Ostergaard won the Grand Prix offered by the state of Geneva for his film "Burma VJ-Reporting from a closed country", the festival organisers said in a statement.
    The film is about journalists who risked their lives to cover a revolt by Buddhist monks against Myanmar's military junta in 2007.
    "By honouring the film, the panel of judges intended to support an entire people on the way towards liberty," the organisers said.
    Swiss director Daniel Schweizer also won top honours for his film "Dirty Paradise" about clandestine gold-diggers who have sparked a health and environmental disaster by dumping mercury into a river in French Guiana.
    The film shows how the dumping contaminates the food chain, causing local indigenous people to suffer from neurological problems.
    The judges intended to help the Wayana Indian tribe in French Guiana denounce "an environmental crime which has hit a poor and peaceful people hard," organisers said.