Information from LA Film Festival website:
Those Who Remain
Los Que Se Quedan
Documentary Competition (Mexico, 2008, 96 mins)
In Spanish with English subtitlesDirected By: Carlos Hagerman,
Juan Carlos Rulfo
Producers: Juan Carlos Rulfo, Carlos Hagerman, Martha Sosa Elizondo, Nicolas Vale
Cinematographer: Juan Carlos Rulfo
Editor: Valentina Leduc Navarro
Music: Ruy Garcia
Cinematographer: Juan Carlos Rulfo
Editor: Valentina Leduc Navarro
Music: Ruy Garcia
Those Who Remain shines a light on the families left behind by loved ones who have traveled North for work, while also illuminating the rich glow of the Mexican spirit.
With great balance and sensitivity, this intimate documentary follows a number of families who each share their stories, ranging from the American Dream to heartbreakingly tragedy. Examining the emotional cost of long-term estrangement, directors Juan Carlos Rulfo and Carlos Hagerman find rich cinematic metaphors in the deserted, newly constructed homes on the highway, their empty rooms a powerful reminder of the absence of loved ones at otherwise joyous occasions like communions and graduations. Despite this void in their communities, many of those profiled emerge as colorful characters with boundless vitality and wonderful senses of humor.
By deliberately eschewing politics in order to focus on "the other side" of the immigrant story, Those Who Remain speaks to the generations of families divided by the U.S.-Mexico border. Beautifully crafted and featuring a soundtrack by Cafe Tacuba, this vibrantly shot film speaks volumes about Mexican culture and identity.
With great balance and sensitivity, this intimate documentary follows a number of families who each share their stories, ranging from the American Dream to heartbreakingly tragedy. Examining the emotional cost of long-term estrangement, directors Juan Carlos Rulfo and Carlos Hagerman find rich cinematic metaphors in the deserted, newly constructed homes on the highway, their empty rooms a powerful reminder of the absence of loved ones at otherwise joyous occasions like communions and graduations. Despite this void in their communities, many of those profiled emerge as colorful characters with boundless vitality and wonderful senses of humor.
By deliberately eschewing politics in order to focus on "the other side" of the immigrant story, Those Who Remain speaks to the generations of families divided by the U.S.-Mexico border. Beautifully crafted and featuring a soundtrack by Cafe Tacuba, this vibrantly shot film speaks volumes about Mexican culture and identity.
Host Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival (LALIFF)/Consulate of Mexico in Los Angeles
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This movie was presented free to the audience on Saturday 20 of June. The theater was crowded. The response of the people to the movie was moving expressed by themselves with a long standing applause during the credits presentation of the families involved aswell as for the directors, producers and sponsors.
This very natural and not make up documentary, as confirmed by the director, was done with simplicity asking to the families involved about their lives and their feelings. The images, and the emotions released there were completely natural, making the audience break to cry for the identification of their own lifes in the lifes of others. At the end of the presentation there was a surprise.
During the Q&A session a man well dressed who seems of Mexican origin but speaking in English and probably now American citizen?, asked to the director what were the political intentions of this movie. The director and filmmakers answered that this just was a documenting work.
We strongly recommend this movie but also invite those to think what are the real causes of this situation and how we could stop this situation of dismembering of complete communities in Mexico, changing the social geography of the country. Filmmakers presented the facts that talk by itself, facts that are eloquent by itself.
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