Madrid Travel Tips

This week's postings are up on the Madrid section of PlanetEye. I talk about an upcoming film festival, my favorite plaza, and my first experience with Guinean food. If there's anything you'd like to see me blog about on PlanetEye, drop me a line or leave a comment here.

Great Movie About Illegal Immigration

I watched an excellent movie about illegal immigration to Spain last week titled 14 Kilómetros. The title is taken from the shortest distance from Morocco to Spain, a route traversed by thousands of illegal African immigrants every year. The film follows three people from Mali and Niger as they trek across vast deserts and several borders trying to make it to the First World.

This is a seriously depressing movie. Almudena couldn't even watch it to the end, despite its good acting, beautiful scenery, and a soundtrack that we intend to buy. What struck me was the similarity to movies and documentaries I've seen about illegal imigrants crossing the desert from Mexico into the U.S.--the same natural dangers, the same hostile and occasionally helpful policemen, the same exploitative smugglers. The only things different were the culture and language. It would be interesting to see how a Central American audience would react to this movie.

Highly recommended, but not if you only watch movies to escape reality.

Great Film from Nepal

I've been attending the 7th Annual Madrid Indian Film Festival, indulging in my love of foreign film. Despite the name, only about a half were from India, the rest being from various Asian and Middle Eastern countries. The best film I saw by far was Kagbeni, a Nepali film. I'd never seen a Nepali film before so I didn't know what to expect. Considering that it's one of the poorest countries in the world and just emerging from a nasty civil war, I figured I'd see a low budget effort.

Boy was I wrong! This is the best film I've seen this year. Cinemaphotographer Bidur Pandey has lots of fun with panning shots of Nepal's beautiful scenery, perfectly capturing the wonderful colors that are still vivid in my mind from my visit there more than ten years ago. The acting was well done, the scripting tight, the cultural mores are made accessible to a foreign audience, and the plot was engaging. The fact that this is Bhusan Dahal's directorial debut is simply amazing.

I won't give away the plot, but it's based on the famous story The Monkey's Paw, written by W.W. Jacobs in 1902. The story revolves around an ancient monkey's paw that can grant wishes. But as we all know, wishes come at a price. . .

If you get a chance to see this film, by all means do.