Away from Home

July 28th, 2014 No Comments

Fotograma de “Al otro lado”. Fatih Akin, 2007

When we speak of migration, we are inevitably speaking of ourselves. There is no country, region or city to which the concept is foreign. Migration is an intrinsic phenomenon to human beings and, therefore, to their identity. In this sense, there are few means as capable as the cinema of describing it, portraying the factors at play and influencing its expressive nature. It is important to know the circumstances surrounding migratory movements as well as their terms, tone and forms of expression, whether recounting the journey of sub-Saharan immigrants through North Africa and across the Strait or of young Spaniards who leave to try and make a living far from home. Films such as the recently premiered 10.000 KM (Carlos Marqués-Marcet) and El Rayo (Fran Araújo, Ernesto de Nova) respond to these phenomena, at once manifesting the permeability and importance of the cinema as a showcase for present-day social realities.

This is why, this year, in the framework of Gandules’14 – Gas Natural Fenosa, we propose a series of films that deal with these issues. With the title Away from Home, a total of ten works will be screened al fresco in the CCCB’s courtyard in the month of August. The programme proposes a comprehensive, heterogeneous interpretation of immigration, with films that traverse all the continents in every direction and show these enforced journeys from departure to settlement and, in some cases, the subsequent return home.

Gandules’14 – Gas Natural Fenosa starts on 5 August with the Senegalese film La pirogue (La piragua) (Moussa Touré), which describes the departure and eventful journey of a boat that sets out from a small fishing village near Dakar, aiming to reach the coast of the Canary Islands. The second session, Welcome (Philippe Lioret), features an Iranian adolescent who dreams of reaching England, and the third, Amreeka (Amerrika) (Cherien Dabis), is about a Palestinian mother who sets out with her son on a bitter-sweet journey to the United States. Week two opens with the film She, a Chinese (Ella, una joven china), by the director Xiaolu Guo, who follows the steps of a young Chinese woman as she crosses her country and ends up in London. And we premiere the Chilean film I am from Chile (Gonzalo Díaz), a tragicomic account of the misadventures of a young man in the English capital. The second week closes with the film Auf der anderen Seite (Al otro lado), by German-born director of Turkish descent Fatih Akin, which tells the story of two families in their respective countries. The final week opens with the brutal Korean thriller Hwanghae (The Yellow Sea) (Hong-jin Na), which explores a story of crime across the borders between North Korea, Russia and China, and continues with the Spanish-Mexican production Aquí y allá (Antonio Méndez Esparza), about a Mexican father who, after a long time working in the United States, returns home to be with his family. Closing this year’s Gandules’14 – Gas Natural Fenosa is a special showing of Charles Chaplin’s film The Immigrant (1917), followed by the premiere in Spain of Illégal (Il·legal) (Olivier Masset-Depasse), a Belgian film set in a French immigrant detention centre that uncovers the reality of these sordid facilities.

All the sessions will be accompanied by one of the nine winning shorts in this year’s contest, which you can vote for on the CCCB’s website.

Tariq Porter is a researcher and film critic.

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