La espalda del mundo (2000)

User Rating:

7.7/10   

Director:

Javier Corcuera

Writers:

Javier Corcuera (writer)
Elías Querejeta (writer)

Release Date:

6 October 2000 (Spain)

Genre:

Documentary

Plot:

This documentary looks at "the back of the world": small children working as quarrymen in Peru, Kurdish political refugees from Turkey, and families and inmates awaiting the end on Mississippi's Death Row. |

Awards:

2 wins & 1 nomination

Cast

Guinder Rodríguez	...	Himself (segment "el niño")
Mehdi Zana	...	Himself (segment "al palabra")
Thomas Miller-El	...	Himself (segment "la vida")

Also Known As:

The Back of the World (International: English title) (UK)

Runtime:

89 min

Country:

Spain

Language:

Spanish | English | Kurdish | Turkish | Quechua

Color:

Color

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Certification:

Argentina:13 | Peru:14 | Spain:13

Filming Locations:

Ankara, Turkey

Company:

Elías Querejeta Producciones Cinematográficas S.L.

A moving, solid and ethically committed film

This fine moving film was awarded the International Critics Award in San Sebastián International Film Festival (held in Spain every September). It's a shocking, artistically rock-solid and ethical film, very well made indeed.

It was ment to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Human Rights. It's made up of three episodes or cases, following a logical progression - children's rights, the right to freedom of expression and the right to life. But it also speaks of hope.

The Spanish director and his international team have really succeeded in portraying social, racial and political exclusion - a moving document about our nowadays world, where citizens who are "different" live in both the Third and the First World.

"La Espalda del Mundo" / "The Back of the World" gives you the shivers while you see it and this restlessness endures even when you leave the cinema theater. As a critic said: <<I bet it won't stop you from having a good meal afterwards (nor from sleeping like a baby). "What can one do in view of how things stand, of so much misfortune?", you will say. Suffer for a while, bless your western-citizen luck, put up with a bad conscience for a while, give donations to non-governmental organizations which try to help the dispossessed of the earth?>>

It's good need having someone who dares to make us have an unresting bad time, not through fiction but through harsh, matter-of-fact reality, but with a hopeful message in it.