The USA has Alvin Straight, Spain has Hassan Ben Oudra. But where the hero in The Straight Story by David Lynch is a stubborn old grumbler, the protagonist in Hassan’s Way is a modest optimist, a fighter and a survivor. At the age of 28, Hassan crosses illegally from Morocco to Spain with the ambition of getting on in life. After toiling for 13 years as a woodcutter, grape-picker and welder, he has saved just enough money to buy a second-hand tractor that is as old as he is. The crisis is at its height, work is scarce and Hassan decides to return to his homeland – by tractor.
El Rayo is a road movie about the Spanish provincial road network. Hassan suffers a mechanical breakdown and conflicts with traffic cops and the immigration service. In an intimate documentary style, El Rayo shows that’s it’s just as difficult to leave Fortress Europe unscathed as it is to get in.
Film details
- Countries of production
- Portugal, Spain
- Year
- 2013
- Festival edition
- IFFR 2014
- Length
- 86"
- Medium/Format
- DCP
You may also like this
-
Late at Night – Voices of Ordinary Madness
Strong, original film essay on the changing East End of London. A model for Europe and the rest of the world. Author and filmmaker Xiaolu Guo has b
-
Géographie humaine
This documentary forms a pair with the fiction film Gare du Nord by the same director and, remarkably, is the lighter of the two. An almost elegant
-
Mother Europe
Road trip through the periphery of the EU shows present-day Europe through the eyes of a much-travelled six-year-old, wise beyond her years. A fres