Detailing the plight of an illegal alien is not a novel concept in cinema. In the past two years alone, the United States has released at least a dozen films that detail this harrowing and often dangerous experience. Of those dozen, Sugar, Under the Same Moon, Frozen River, Goodbye Solo, Sin Nombre and The Visitor are the first that come to mind.
In France, director Philippe Lioret has crafted a film that may be equally as wrenching. Welcome centers around Bilal (Firat Ayverdi) a 17-year-old Kurdish refugee who walked (yes, walked) from Iraq to Calais in an effort to move to London to be with his girlfriend Mina (Deryat Averdi). After being caught by border patrol for illegally jumping aboard a truck, Bilal convinces himself that he’s going to swim the 22-mile stretch of the English Channel. Upon finding a municipal pool he embarks on lessons with Simon (a near-perfect Vincent Lindon), a former French gold medalist in the midst of a divorce.
Simon hopes that in helping Bilal, he’ll win back the affection of his estranged wife Marion (Audrey Dana), an English teacher who runs a volunteer soup kitchen for the illegal immigrants that wait by the ports of Calais. But as the two men grow closer, Simon’s uptight neighbors and a local police inspector (Olivier Rabourdin) begin to get apprehensive. And what started off as a cut-and-dry working relationship goes far deeper than any of the two imagined.
A controversial, albeit commercial success in France, Welcome quickly become one of the highest grossing French films of 2009.
Equal parts gripping, heartbreaking and triumphant, the film is a stirring tale of hope, compassion and the power of the human spirit. Laurent Dailland’s photography and the triumvirate screenwriting team of Lioret, Emmanuel Courcol and Olivier Adam help make this a most indelible, thought-provoking exercise about the plight of migrant workers and the ever-inspiring kindness of strangers.
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