Barcelone ou la mort

In People’s War, Robert Kramer showed a pirogue being built by Vietnamese farmers, a modest but vital contribution to the fight against American imperialism. Here too, in Barcelone ou la mort, a pirogue is being built, from the tree-felling to its launching. As in Kramer’s fi lm, the pirogue symbolises a grassroots struggle, in Senegal… by fishermen whose livelihoods are threatened by competition from European, Japanese, and Chinese trawlers. They are driven to engage in the perilous activity of smuggling immigrants into Spain… men who risk all they have to reach Europe so as to provide for their families. Emigration is not filmed focusing on the journey or exclusion in the country of destination, but on the departure, on what is left behind, notably parents and families. In Senegal, the dead are remembered: sons, brothers or cousins. No family has escaped losing a member on one of the voyages to El Dorado. The film dovetails two stories. A teacher back from the USA to set up a school and teach English, convinced that every effort must be made to stay in the home country, but he leads a solitary fi ght. The other is of an immigrant back home after twelve perilous days at sea, during which he almost died, and who is getting ready to try again. The would-be emigrant writes and reads an e-mail in which he relates the horror of his journey, an e-mail that sounds much like his very last letter. (Yann Lardeau)