Aptly named Indiepix Films continues its fine tradition of monthly film festivals centered around a leitmotif with three April 17, 2018 DVD releases of art house movies centered around recent immigrants experiencing challenging new lives in their strange new world.
The previously reviewed "That Girl in Yellow Boots" chronicles the trauma of an English-born 20-something woman working at a sleazy massage parlor in India to finance her search for her father. The Indonesian film "Jermal" finds a 12 year-old boy stuck living on a floating fishing platform with his unloving father.
The 2009 U.S. drama "Entre Nos" brings things closer to home on a few levels. Writer-director-star Paola Mendoza plays mother Mariana in this fictionalized account of Mendoza moving to New York City as a young girl.
The following YouTube video of the dialog-free trailer for "Entre Nos" provides a strong sense of the life of the family.
"Entre" opens with the central Colombian family living a modest but generally happy life in a small but decent apartment in New York a few months after Mariana moves her roughly six year-old daughter Andrea and approximately 10 year-old son Gabriel (a very charming Sebastian Villada) from Colombia to join husband Antonio. Antonio is in New York because of a seemingly incurable wanderlust.
The catalyst for the primary action of "Entre" is Antonio announcing out of the blue that he is moving to Miami; the rest of the story is that he is leaving his family behind but allegedly is going send for them once he gets settled and saves some money.
Things turn dire as Mariana soon discovers that she is left with very little money to support her and her children and that Antonio seems to have fully abandoned his family. An added insult to this injury is that Mariana leaves a good life in Colombia behind to move to New York to literally and figuratively stand by her man.
As is the typically so in real and reel stories of this nature, Mariana initially has hope of maintaining a decent standard of living only to have that dissolve. Her efforts to sell her tasty homemade empanadas fail, she finds herself unemployable even for illegal labor at a sweatshop, and the family finds itself literally living on the street without any warning. The consequences of a bundle that Antonio leaves behind does not help matters.
"Entre" expertly putting a very human face on the intertwined numerous timely issues of the struggles of recent immigrants in the U.S., of husbands abandoning their families, and of homelessness earns the many festival awards that it has to its name. Virtually all of us who always have had a comfortable home and have never faced the prospect of sleeping on a park bench never think about the folks pushing grocery carts full of cans or assertively selling street food sans a truck.
This impact includes the feelings that particularly Mariana and Gabriel prompt genuine interest in the "where are they now" portion of "Entre." Mendoza supplements this with information on the plight of folks like this family and provides a website for folks who want to know more.
The DVD includes the documentary "Still Standing" by Mendoza. This one shows her coming to help after Hurricane Katrina literally flattens the home of her grandmother. Like "Entre," family and a place to call home are primary themes.
Other special features include a lesson on how to make empanadas and a separate presentation that is a PSA on immigration reform.
Anyone with questions or comments regarding "Entre" is encouraged either to email me or to connect on Twitter via @tvdvdguy.
No comments:
Post a Comment