[rating=7.00]
The refugee crisis has received some much needed attention from the documentary filmmaking in the last year or two, with good reason. Refugee stories are, by their nature, intimate gazes into humanity, giving us a window into nature of survival and how we all might respond to tragedy. They are stories of what connects us, shedding light on a connective tissue that runs much deeper than country of origin or shared language. They are stories of the human spirit.
They Live Here, Now is a film that peers inside the realities of life as a refugee, shining a much needed light on the effects of fleeing one’s home country and attempting to build a new life in America. The film focuses on the refugee house Casa Marianella, located in Austin, Texas, and its residents, whose diversity of language and origin pales in comparison to their shared hopes and dreams.
The film’s verite approach allows us a clearer glimpse of what life is like for those who would flee their homelands. Featuring interviews with people from Cuba, El Salvador, Mexico, Iraq, and Somalia, They Live Here, Now takes an almost detached approach to the issue, giving us a fly on the wall perspective of these people and their hardships without trying to weave in much of an overarching narrative.
This narrativeless approach might be difficult for some people to engage with, but it also allows its subjects to tell their stores in their own words, and in their own ways. The light it shines on the realities of being a refugee runs much deeper than it might have had the film focused on a more traditional narrative approach. What it does is allow us to see that the reasons for refugees are varied and don’t necessarily stem from a single cause, except for the cause of wanting to build a better life.
While a more focused approach might have been easier to adjust, the unstructured set up does provide a kind of mirror to the chaos of this existence, giving us a small taste of the realities these people live with day to day. It also allows us to watch as they do their best to find the few comforts that sustain, offering an insight into the struggle that comes with forging a new life in the face of their collective chaos.
They Live Here, Now is a poignant work of documentary filmmaking that brings into clear focus an oft-undiscussed issue. What it does best is put faces on an abstract cause, allowing us to look into the eyes of people grasping on to any thread of hope they can find. For all the demonizing their subject to, it’s harder to view them callously when confronted with the realities of their life which brought them to our shores.
