November: In Transit II
November: In Transit II, FLMTQ Releases 213-216
During the month of November Filmatique presents In Transit II, a film series offering humanizing perspectives of migration, displacement, diaspora, and the search for a better life.
Both Philippe Faucon's Fatima and Iram Haq's What Will People Say foreground female perspectives in the exploration of family, duty, and cross-generational assimilation in Europe—in the former, a Northern African mother struggles to adjust to her adopted country of France, while in the latter, a Pakistani-Norwegian teenager encounters the fault lines between her family's traditional values and the modern, urban lifestyle she has carved out for herself among classmates and friends. Lixin Fan's stunning debut feature Last Train Home chronicles the mass exodus of China's 130 million migrant workers each spring, as they travel home to reunite with their families for Chinese New Year; Gianfranco Rosi's Golden Bear-winning documentary Fuocoammare (Fire at Sea) traces the intersecting trajectories of island denizens and African migrants who arrive on the shores of Lampedusa each year.
Filmatique's In Transit II series is designed to coincide with this month's political reckoning. It serves as a companion not only to In Transit I, which explored similar themes, but to one of Filmatique's very first curated collections—Banned Nations, a series of award-winning films from nations affected by the United States' 2017 Muslim travel ban.
In Transit II features two narrative works and two documentaries which chronicle experiences of flux both individual and collective. At a time when 545 Mexican children remain separated from their parents due to illegal and inhumane US border policy, these stories of kinship, family, and sacrifice gain new valences. Mere days after the United States became the first country to exit the Paris Climate Accord, witnessing the European refugee crisis up close is more important than ever. As Western nations, we are responsible for the results of our actions. For the lion's share of climate change that has rendered vast swaths of continents uninhabitable; for geopolitical interventions that have systematically destabilized our southern neighbors over the course of decades. Visibility itself is political—thus this collection of films, which seeks to depict in palpable, personal, sensory detail the extraordinary measures taken by ordinary people with no fixed location.
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Fatima, Philippe Faucon (2015)
Fatima, Philippe Faucon / France-Canada, 2015
Fatima is a mother of two of North-African descent. Having relocated to France, she works as a cleaning lady so she can help pay her daughters' way through school, providing them with opportunities that were never available to her. While her children have integrated reasonably well, Fatima struggles with the French language and is subjected to brazen and subtle forms of everyday racism. Despite this inhospitable environment, and her wariness of her adopted home, Fatima perseveres for the sake of her children.
Based on the poetry of Moroccan writer and poet Fatima Elayoubi, Fatima is study of cross-generational assimilation, a patient and generous portrait of one woman's journey to feel at home in modern-day France. Morccan-born French director Philippe Faucon's eighth feature premiered in Quinzaine des Réalisateurs at the Cannes Film Festival, and won three César Awards, including Best Film. Fatima is a New York Times Critics' Pick.
What Will People Say, Iram Haq (2017)
What Will People Say, Iram Haq / Norway-Germany-Sweden-France-Denmark, 2017
Sixteen year-old Nisha lives in Oslo. At home, she adheres to the conservative values of her Pakistani family, who have immigrated just one generation ago. With her friends, Nisha is an average Norwegian teenager, hanging out at basketball courts, sipping beer, and engaging in casual flirtations with a classmate, Daniel. When Nisha's father finds her alone with Daniel late one night, however, the door to one sphere of her life is abruptly shut—making an example of her for the sake of the community, Nisha is sent to live with her extended family in a small village, 200 miles from Islamabad.
A dynamic portrait of a young woman's journey to reconcile her dueling identities, What Will People Say navigates themes of heritage, family, honor, freedom, and gender expectations as mediated through vastly different cultural vantage points. Based on her own life experience, Iram Haq's second feature film premiered at AFI Fest, where it won the Audience Award; Göteborg, where it won a Special Mention; Fribourg, where it won the Audience Award; and Palm Springs Film Festival, where it won the Youth Jury Award. What Will People Say is a New York Times Critics' Pick.
Last Train Home, Lixin Fan (2009)
Last Train Home, Lixin Fan / China-Canada-UK, 2009
Zhang Changhua and Chen Suqin are middle-aged migrant workers living in a boarding house in Guangzhou, China. They rise early each day to work at a clothing factory, sewing together garments for export. Their family lives some 1,300 miles to the Northwest, in Sichuan Province—Qin, their rebellious teenage daughter, and Yang, their bright young son, are cared for by their grandmother, harvesting corn in the local fields and attending a rural school. Overcoming many obstacles, Changhua and Suqin manage to visit their family for Chinese New Year. Imploring their children to commit themselves to study, the parents discover that Qin has other dreams—soon, she has left school to work in a factory, spending her earnings on stylish hairdo's and jeans manufactured in China.
Captured in a vérité style, and attuned to the human cost of China's transition from a rural past to an industrial future, Last Train Home is a startlingly intimate document of the world's largest human migration, as some 130 million Chinese migrant workers make the arduous journey home each year. Lixin Fan's first film premiered at Sundance; San Francisco, where it won the Investigative Documentary Feature Award; Zurich, where it won a Special Mention; and the Amsterdam International Documentary Film Fest, where it won the IDFA Award for Best Feature-Length Documentary. Last Train Home is a New York Times Critics' Pick.
Fuocoammare (Fire at Sea), Gianfranco Rosi (2016)