En tierra extraña
In a Foreign Land
Icíar Bollaín
Carte Blanche – Dràc Magic
I wanted to find out first hand why people are leaving. And you discover they really have no other option than to look for a future abroad.«
– Icíar Bollaín
The new documentary from Spanish film-maker Icíar Bollaín looks at the wave of emigration that has swept over Spain since the financial crisis and it examines the lives of Spanish emigrants who have moved to Edinburgh in search of work. In Scottish exile, well-educated academics now earn a living doing menial jobs for which they are overqualified but which they are at least paid for. Gloria is one of 700,000 Spanish people who have had to leave their home since the beginning of the economic crisis. The 32-year-old unemployed teacher from Almería, who has worked as a sales assistant in Edinburgh for the past two years, launched the campaign »Not lost and not silenced« to raise awareness and express the frustration and anger felt by many of the 20,000 Spanish people living in Scotland’s capital.
Icíar Bollaín
Icíar Bollaín was born in Madrid in 1967. She worked as an actress and appeared in such films as El Sur (1983) by Victor Erice, Malaventura (1988) by Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón, Land and Freedom (1995) by Ken Loach and Leo (2000) by José Luis Borau, for which she was awarded the Goya Prize as Best Actress. She is a partner in the production company La Iguana SL and produces both feature and documentary films. In 1995, she made her debut feature film Hola ¿estás sola?, which won the award for Best Director at the Valladolid Film Festival and became a major box office success in Spain in 1996. Her second film Flowers from Another World received the International Critics’ Week Award in Cannes in 1999. Her next film Open my Eyes received seven Goyas, including the Best Film Award. Even the Rain won three Goyas and the Panorama Audience Award at the 2011 Berlinale.
Films by Icíar Bollaín
Katmandú, un espejo en el cielo 2011 | También la lluvia 2010 | Mataharis 2007 | Te doy mis ojos 2003 | Flores de otro mundo 1999 | Hola, ¿estás sola? 1995
