This evening at 7 p.m., Casa Árabe in Madrid will be screening the Spanish-produced film Return to Hansala, by director Chus Gutiérrez. The screening will be followed by a debate in which both Gutiérrez and Farah Ahmed, the main actress, will take part.
In the early 2000s, on the beaches of Rota, the bodies of eleven young Moroccan immigrants who were trying to cross the Strait of Gibraltar in a patera appeared. It was discovered from their clothes that the eleven boys belonged to the same village, Hansala. The film aims to recreate the event as seen through the eyes of two characters: Martín, an undertaker who intends to do business with what happened, and Leila, sister of one of the deceased. Both embark on the adventure of trying to repatriate the boy’s body in a van, where they will live an intense moral experience that will lead them to rethink all their beliefs. The film was awarded the Special Jury Prize at the Seminci (Valladolid, 2008) and received three nominations for the Goya Awards that year.
