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Remember Your Name, Babylon

REMEMBER YOUR NAME, BABYLON shows life at the border of a huge tomato plantation in Almeria. Immigrants are waiting for work, papers, and news in shanty towns made of wooden pallets and plastic foil.

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Shanty towns made out of steel frames, wires, wooden pallets, and plastic foils have emerged between the endless, plastic covered tomato plantations in Almeria. Immigrants, mostly from Morocco, but also from other African countries, are waiting for work there. They have crossed the Mediterranean under great danger. They were at sea for three days without food or water, says one man. The Belgian documentary REMEMBER YOUR NAME, BABYLON by Bram Van Cauwenberghe and Marie Brumagne is mostly concerned with creating atmosphere. There’s no reference to a specific place and we don’t find out the names or other biographic details of the people on camera. The filmmakers show disorienting snippets from this world, with dust, flies, dog barks, cat yelps, the wind, and the rattling of sheet metal serving as the soundtrack. You can pretend as though you have settled in, like the Moroccan woman who hangs a mirror cabinet and pictures on a plastic wall substitute, but you can’t really live here. REMEMBER YOUR NAME, BABYLON shows this world as a post-apocalyptic slaveholder society. It’s always burning, either in the huts or in the mountains. Most of all the people wait here; for a job that’s almost impossible to get, for papers, for news. REMEMBER YOUR NAME, BABYLON tries to be a bit too universal which makes it too unspecific. It is not revealed whether the economy of tomato production relies on migrants and Almeria, the gate to the EU, is a very specific place. An impressive film that could have done with less atmosphere and more analysis.

Hannes Stein

Translation: Elinor Lewy

Credits

Belgien 2015, 76 min
Genre: Documentary
Director: Marie Brumagne, Bram Van Cauwenberghe
Author: Bram Van Cauwenberghe, Marie Brumagne
DOP: Marie Brumagne, Bram Van Cauwenberghe
Release: 01.12.2016

Screenings

  • OV Original version
  • OmU Original with German subtitles
  • OmeU Original with English subtitles

Keine Programmdaten vorhanden.

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