Netflix Original Film, Telecinco Cinema, La Terraza Films, Ikiru Films, Un mondo Prohibido, present Louis Tosar (Gonzalo), Alvaro Cervantes (Mateo), Anna Castillo (Sandra), Moustapha Oumarou (Adu), Adam Nourou (Massar), Miquel Fernandez (Miguel), Zayiddiya Dissou (Alika), Noras Nava (Carmen), Issaka Sawadogo (Kabila). Director, Salvador Calvo; Producers, Ghislain Barrois, Alvaro Augustin; Executive Producer, Paloma Molina; Associate Producer, Christobal Garcia; Director of Photography, Sergi Vilanova Claudin; Screenplay, Virginia Lacorzana © 2019
It is one thing to take a boat full of adults across the ocean to England, America, or the Indies into slavery. But for two babies who have hardly shed diapers, plunged into crossing the Atlantic Ocean all by themselves, seems terrifying for them, as it is painful and hair-raising for viewers to watch. The life of Adu (Moustapha Oumarou) and his sister Alika (Zayiddiya Dissou), whose life was short-lived in the film, is a horrendous and harrowing experience, a semblance of a hideous dream.
The plot strands for Adu are three and starts separately from the equatorial forest in Cameroon, but converge in the Spanish and European Union border town of Melilla. In Melilla, the refugees have just stormed the fence bordering the Moroccan village and into the Spanish city, manned by both the Spanish government and United Nations Refugees Organization. A Congolese political refugee gets caught in the barbed wire that rips his stomach open and killed. Three security guards during the incident on the border stand questioned of murder and brutality.
In the African jungle, Alika and her six years old younger brother Adu on a joy ride on their bicycle in the thick equatorial forest of Cameroon, witness the killing of Kemba(Elephant) by poachers. Still, they can escape the wrath of the poachers and leave the bicycle behind. When Gonzalo (Luis Tosar) and his crew of wildlife guards could reach the scene, the poachers had killed and ripped the tusks from the elephant and fled. Gonzalo orders the remains of the elephant burned, which didn’t go well with Kabila (Issaka Sawadogo). The poachers leave Adu, and his sister’s bicycle that they found, and Gonzalo claims it as an exhibit to hand over to the authorities in Yaounde.
In the dark of a rainy night, in Mbouma, in Cameroon, rebels attack Alika and Adu and their mother; they kill the mother. Adu and his sister flee from the village to the city, Yaounde, to their grandmother. She hands them over to a local driver to help the children find their way to their father in Spain and thus begin the most harrowing, horrendous, and terrifying crossings from the Equitorial forest in Africa, to cross the desert, to Europe by a lonely six years old boy.
Adu’s journey itself is the main plot around which the killing of Kemba (elephant), and the border incident in Spain plots form the backdrop of the entire movie. Seemingly, the wildlife securities are in on the poachers killing of the elephant, and Gonzalo isn’t happy. Kabila still confronts him and demands that they (guards) do not want Gonzalo in the wildlife reserve. He travels to Yaounde, to get his visiting daughter Sandra (Anna Castillo) back to the reserve camp. She falls in love with the bicycle which she would take with her to Spain.
Meanwhile, at the border, Security Mateo and two of his fellow officers stand trial for the death of the political refugee Tatou, from the Congo who gets stuck in the barbed wire, and his stomach gets ripped open and dies. United Nations sends an investigator to the border to interview all concerned about the incident:
Investigator, “We’ve located the other immigrants who were with Tatou. They say you guys hit him over his head with a baton.”
Mateo, “Did they say that Tatou kicked my chief in the head and almost killed him?”
“Are you saying that your Corporal was justified in doing what he did?”
“I’m not justifying anything. It’s a fact.”
“You know they started throwing quick lime at us? Blood and shit? Three of us holding back hundreds of them. No one cares. The headline is Tatou.”
“You’re wrong, it isn’t Tatou. The headline says it’s those who should uphold the law ended up killing an immigrant.”
“It’s not true. We didn’t kill anyone.”
Gonzalo arrives in Yaounde with Alika and Adu’s bicycle, initially to present it to the government as an exhibit he collects from the poachers who killed Kemba. But he decides to give it to her daughter as a gift, to take with her to Spain. Aliku and Adu hide in the wheel well of the plane to flee Africa to Spain, where their father is waiting for them. Adu almost gets carried away at the take-off before the well shuts off. Immediately, the unbearable cold air in the wheel well compartment got Adu to cry, “Cold!” Alika wraps and pads him with the rags the driver had given them, knowing what condition awaits them. They both lay quiet. But when nearing Senegal, Adu wakes up and shakes Alika. She had died of cold. And at arrival, when the wheel well opened for landing, Alika’s dead body rolled out and plunged into the abyss. She must be lying somewhere in the mangroves of Senegal birds of prey feasting on her. That’s so much for her dream of Spain
Adu survives and fall from the well and fainted on the tarmac, by the wheel, when the securities find him. But he soon finds company and friendship in Massar, another illegal from Somalia, on the same pilgrimage to Spain. Massar is a young adult who has been on the road for quite a while. He allows himself to be sexually violated for money or steal. He some times gets caught, beaten, and bloodied. And he some times pull tricks to survive. That is how he feeds and cares for his new ward, and friend, Adu, until they get to Mount Gurugu, a refugee camp in Morrocco, a strait away, into Spain. Instead of them going through immigration everybody else, Massar and Adu use inflated inner-tubes and swim their way into Melilla, Spain. They get apprehended in Spain.
The story is not so much about Adu than telling or narrating and exposing the demise almost half a million children go through to get out of the African continent. Adu’s reaching Spain is a rare case of success and good fortune. During the abuse case, Mateo stands almost as guilty. But as the border security who receives Adu and Massar from the rescue boat, it seems his heart goes out to the illegal aliens. It is also a mystery, that Adu and his bicycle, started in Africa, arrive in Spain together, though perilously on his side, but joyfully for Sandra.
There is an exciting scene that encapsulates the theme of this movie: Mateo and his fellow security officers get discharged of the offense against the immigrant Tatou, and they are in the bar drinking and toasting to the victory. Mateo’s fellow officers observe him as not in the elements. He excuses himself and walks out for a smoke. Fellow Miguel follows him. Read, and think:
Mateo, “He was a political prisoner from the Congo.”
Miguel, “What?”
Mateo, “Tatou. A political prisoner in the Congo. He was imprisoned for protesting against an electoral census.”
“Where did you hear that?”
“Internet, Facebook.”
“You know, the problem with Africa Mateo? They all leave. Teachers, politicians, nurses…And if they all leave, who the fuck is going to fix it, huh?” (Beat). “You know, my grandad who was red (Communist), always said, if France had put up a fence, in the Pyrenees, General Franco wouldn’t have died in his bed. Don’t you think?”
Mateo, “There’s a difference.”
Ah, No difference. When the Africans see that fence, they think it says, “You are not welcome. This is forbidden territory for you. Do you know what the fence really means, “Solve your own problem.”
Adu and Massar are too innocent kids who surgeon their way through deserts, and unfriendly climate all by themselves surviving by their whims. Adu, at his age, gives an excellent performance to boot.