DOCU-FICTION
En 1939, les républicains espagnols se réfugiaient en France, mais, un an plus tard, étrangers, juifs, antifascistes, dont Walter Benjamin, essayaient de s’échapper dans la direction opposée… Le chemin est long, l’avance est lente pour un voyage qui conduit peut-être jusqu’à notre époque où les routes sont à nouveau parcourues par de multiples réfugiés.

Portraying the last days in the life of philosopher Walter Benjamin (1892-1940), whose writings such as The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction have become of seminal importance in cultural criticism, Ferraro not only deals with a historical and philosophically fascinating subject, but has also crafted a landscape film of immense beauty.
Shot mostly in the South-Eastern Pyrenees in gorgeous black-and-white, where in 1939 the Catalan republicans were escaping to France, but a year later foreigners, Jews and anti-fascists were trying to escape in the opposite direction from 'collaborationist' France – among them Benjamin. The route is long and the advance is slow but the filmmaker (and agronomist) invites the viewer to a generous journey through Europe's historical past, leading to our times where the roads are once again full of refugees.