Adú

In a desperate attempt to reach Europe and crouched before an airstrip in Cameroon, a six-year-old boy and his older sister wait to sneak into the holds of an airplane. Not too far away, an environmental activist contemplates the terrible image of an elephant, dead and fangless. Not only do you have to fight against poaching, but you will also have to meet the problems of your newly arrived daughter from Spain. Thousands of kilometers to the north, in Melilla, a group of civil guards prepare to face the furious crowd of sub-Saharan people who have begun the assault on the fence. Three stories linked by a central theme, in which none of its protagonists know that their destinies are doomed to cross and that their lives will no longer be the same.

Production data:

Juan Pando, FOTOGRAMAS

«Adú, the character that gives title to this drama of a polyhedral approach to immigration, is a six-year-old Cameroonian boy. A small hero of the lineage of the courageous protagonists of Sammy, fleeing south (Alexander Mackendrick, 1963) and Lobo – Theeb (Naji Abu Nowar, 2014) Like them, deprived of their parents, embarks on a portentous initiatory journey through a hostile land, a survival adventure full of intrigue, emotion and truth, with overwhelming moments such as the sequence of the plane. A journey through the worst and the best of the human soul, in which the kid will know the authentic friendship and generous beings.

The film becomes another when its adventures are contrasted with the other two plots that integrate it and choose to rationalize the phenomenon of immigration. One addresses the point of view of those who monitor the borders of Europe and the other, that of cooperators and NGOs. But when one has surrendered to the infantile innocence of Adú, masterfully embodied by Moustapha Oumarou, everything else seems imposed and superfluous. ”

 Oti Rodríguez, ABC

«Very well built and dosed, with clarity of ideas on the feelings that are debated, from the purest and necessary to the banal and accessories, and with the natural expressiveness of the child Moustapha Oumarou, who drags with authenticity what they have of forced and retouched the other two stories Tosar and Anna Castillo knot their characters of men with principles and daughter looking for them, and both, like Adú, face their journey to the border of the other, also fenced and with concertinas. Civil Guard awareness is treated with more detachment and rigidity, and regarded as without removing the shell. «

Elsa Fernández, EL PAIS

« Adú, Salvador Calvo’s second feature film, stops before a human tragedy of such proportions that it costs to digest his 90 minutes. And it costs precisely because the film does not tell anything exceptional, but something everyday: children deceived by mafias, lost at sea, hidden in the landing gear of an airplane, prostituting themselves to eat, sick or dying in their desperate search for a world best. The germ of the script emerged during the filming in the Canary Islands of Calvo’s first film, 1898. The last ones in the Philippines. There, in contact with the CEAR (Spanish Commission for Refugee Assistance), he learned the stories of the child and the adolescent in which the film is inspired. Unfortunately, in this matter the cliché is fulfilled and reality surpasses fiction. Without loading the inks and with a good pulse, Calvo conducts a film aimed at wide audiences to common places that are neither as obvious nor as friendly as they usually are in this type of great productions.»