KELLY

There are encounters that make filmed interviews into something more than portrait: this is the case when the filmmaker meets Kelly. The quality of the framing and a keen ability to listen are clearly felt from the very first shots. Kelly is a Peruvian who has lived in French Guyana and is now waiting in Tangiers to cross over to Spain. She seems giftedly able to take hold of her eventful past, by sketching out her journey from South America to Morocco or talking about her first love, her expulsion from Guyana, her prostitution. The filmic beauty of the shots of the surroundings and the Tangiers rooftops, which alternate and physically interact with their conversation (Kelly speaks in a room opening onto a terrace, between washing and forests of TV antennas), broadens the scope of her story: even at a young age, Kelly ventured across borders. She is no stranger to expulsions or arrests and has doubtless also become used to the idea of a sham marriage. But these landscapes, where the nearby sea gives a glimpse of the Spanish coasts, also counterpoint the hope that Kelly expresses – a youthful hope where the childlike borders on the childish: the Tangiers that she may or may not leave is a city of “burners”, the future illegal immigrants trapped in the uncertainty of waiting. (Charlotte Garson)