Contraluz. Historias del exilio republicano español en el norte de África

About this movie

Contraluz, directed by Marcello Peres and Nicola Tagliabue, is the second in a series of documentaries on Republican exile produced by the Domingo Malagón Foundation in collaboration with Heracles Archaeology and with the sponsorship of the Ministry of the Presidency, Parliamentary Relations and Democratic Memory. The film documents the exile, from 1939 onwards, of tens of thousands of Spanish Republicans to Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia. The flight of the Republican fleet and aviation to the other side of the Mediterranean, the dramatic evacuation of civilians from the port of Alicante with the last available ships, the direct testimony of those who lived through the crossing of the open sea of a Stanbrook overloaded with up to 3028 passengers, the solidarity of the citizens in the port of Oran, the arrival of the Republican fleet in Bizerte, the transfer to the concentration camps of Meheri-Zebbeus, Camp Morand, Foum Deflah, Bou Arfa and Kasserine, the forced labour in the mines of Kenadza and in the quarries of the Méditerranée-Niger railway line, the humiliations and deaths forgotten in the middle of the desert, the punishment camps of Djelfa and Hadjerat M'Guil. Through historical photographs, present-day videos and oral testimonies, the documentary rescues one of the most unknown and forgotten pages of the Republican exile. "Contraluz" is a story that is difficult to watch: hidden in the yellowed pages of clandestine personal diary, revealed in the details of wrinkled photographs, silenced by time, covered by sand, buried in desecrated cemeteries in the middle of the desert. The documentary also aims to change the perspective on the exodus of refugees across the Mediterranean, a phenomenon that has not always been unidirectional and that, on several occasions, has been marked by integration and multicultural coexistence.

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