Nés derrière les pierres
Switzerland | 2012 | 7 min
World premiere
Language : French
Subtitle : English
Aged twenty, José and Teresa leave Portugal for wealthy Switzerland. They at least enjoy a happy home life and a modest standard of living as immigrant workers. Their daughter – the filmmaker – has begun to go out with an affluent young Swiss… The encounter between two very distinct worlds, told with humour and verve in the form of a photo-romance. A bitter-sweet view of integration.
Aged twenty, José and Teresa leave Portugal for Switzerland. They enjoy a happy home life and a modest standard of living as immigrant workers. Their daughter – the filmmaker – has begun to go out with an affluent young Swiss… The film is the story of this meeting, from one generation to the next, of two separate worlds: Portuguese workers arriving in the country of banks and luxury hotels; their daughter passing “through the looking-glass” and mixing with the French-Swiss bourgeoisie. Heir to her parents’ dream of Switzerland, the filmmaker takes a detached view of her family’s “adventure”. A story of integration, in which old clichés are reluctant to die. To illustrate them, what better than a photo-romance? Nés derrière les pierres is a lively decoding of immigrants’ fantasies and the imagery associated with them, while the idea of (social and cultural) contrast dictates the shape of the film. The discrepancy between the image and the ironic commentary, together with some carefully crafted rhythmic editing, gives this fairy tale its bitter-sweet flavour.
Alessia Bottani
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