Winner of a phenomenal four awards at the 2010 Locarno Film Festival, Romanian director Marian Crisan presents an elegantly judged film about “an immigration story not from the immigrant point of view but from the point of view of the people he meets on his way.” Inspired by a news article on illegal Turkish emigration, the film demonstrates how borders between people are just as real as the borders between countries.
Nelu, a man in his forties, works as a security guard in the local supermarket in Salonta, a small town on the Romanian-Hungarian border. This is the place where many illegal emigrants try to cross, by any means possible, to Hungary and then further to Western Europe. For Nelu, every day is the same - fishing at dawn, then working and finally home with his wife. They live alone at an isolated farmhouse on the fields outside Salonta. Their problem these days is repairing the old roof of the farmhouse.
One morning, Nelu encounters a Turkish man trying to cross the border. Not able to communicate verbally, the two men will somehow understand each other. Nelu takes the stranger to the farmhouse, gives him some dry clothes, food and shelter. In return, the Turkish man gives Nelu all the money he has on him so he will help him cross the border…
Colm McAuliffe,
Jameson Dublin International Film Festival
With Support from the Romanian Cultural Institute in London
