“Who cares about us?”

Two of the inhabitants of sector 6, Chule and Toni, of gypsy origin, travel these roads avoiding the puddles that the rain has left in the ruts of the road. “I know the whole of Canada like the back of my hand,” says the second. Its streets served as the setting for the film “City without a Dream”, directed by Guillermo Galoe and in which they both play with other inhabitants, such as Bilal Sedraoui, of Moroccan origin.

For several weeks, the cold has set in in the houses of the protagonists of this film. Bonfires and the power of a few generators light their homes, in addition to the solar panels that some residents installed using generator costs. They tell this newspaper that, for a few hours of operation, it costs them a few twenty euros per day. It was in 2020 that this place fell into obscurity, a situation which represents the social oblivion to which it is still relegated today.

Everyone calls Antonio Fernández Gabarre Toni. “You’re the one in the movie!” » shouts a little boy, pointing at him. He smiles and nods. He says that lately it’s the usual thing. The seventeen-year-old young man has the acid humor of someone who demands accountability for a life to which he owes nothing. He usually spends his hours in a bar near his field, inhabited by a billiard table, a table football and two slot machines. Over a coffee and a cigarette between his lips, he jokes about the beginning of the film. “I thought I was going to do it on my phone and upload it to YouTube,” he recalls with some sarcasm. The recording, however, led them to television shows and film festivals, such as Cannes and San Sebastian.

Faced with the exuberance of these places, they pretend to feel comfortable, even if Jesús Fernández Silva, alias Chule, says he does not want to leave his house. He speaks with nostalgia of a past as a buccaneer at the bar of a bar in the center of Madrid, one of those where “we went for a drink and enjoyed it”, even if he always moved between the cabins, like the one where he lives today in the company of a dog and several chickens, and where he will celebrate Christmas with his extended family. He also has fond memories of the festivals he attended recently and the evenings he shared with other actors and filmmakers, which he laughingly describes as “fun.”

The internal struggle of the protagonists of the feature film, as well as the inhabitants of La Cañada, is a dichotomy between stay or go. He is one of those who stay, he does not want to sell his freedom to the four walls of an apartment. He knows those who have done it and assures that there are those who have fallen into depression, that neighbors ring the doorbell from time to time to complain about them. Toni says today yes, he is leaving, but he doesn’t know exactly what he will think tomorrow. “You can’t be here anymore,” he said in a low voice, looking at his coffee as if he wanted to find some certainty there.

They find differences over how long it will take for La Cañada to die, because if there’s one thing they’re sure of, it’s that it will. Chule has lived in this camp for twenty years now and he is convinced that it will take ten years for him to be permanently expelled. The young man estimates that in six months everything will be over.

“And you, Chule, what will you do if they force you to leave?” He laughs, it’s clear: “I’m going to buy land there and build four cabins.” He is not made for the city and he believes that the city is not ready to welcome people like him either. In one scene in the film, during a conversation in a bar, an actor declares: “Gypsies bother us everywhere.” Quickly, Toni confirms her statements. The oldest also nods. A few days ago, he went to have breakfast at a shopping center cafeteria with his son. “They looked at me as if to ask me what they were doing here, as if we weren’t going to pay,” he recalls.

That’s why in La Cañada they feel comfortable. There, the gypsies do not arouse suspicion and claim to live well together with the Moroccan community. Despite everything, they say that their house has changed, that there is now fewer drug movements than a few years ago. “They took it from us and dropped it off at your door. You came here fifteen years ago and you didn’t know it,” Chule said seriously.

Telling the story of a forgotten Cañada

Guillermo Galoe, double winner of Goya for “Fragil equipo” and the short film “Even if it’s the night”, he spent six years with the population of La Cañada until he decided to get a camera. He wanted to soak up the atmosphere, the aesthetic and above all the people. He sought to be a friend before being a director. He convinced those who would be his actors in this project that his film would not be about crime, shootings or other songs that one might think of when talking about this colony, or this neighborhood, as he prefers to call it. He was there to talk about their lives, to show the world the beauty of a white greyhound running through the countryside and the family chasing her, amid cheers and laughter, from their car. There would be drugs, affairs and dilemmas, yes. But above all there would be people, them, and there would be the truth.

Galoe presented the idea to those who would be his filming partners and convinced them that the people who lived on that skyline that constituted the capital were eager to meet them, even if they didn’t know it yet. “Who cares about us?” some asked him. A doubt that dissipates over the weeks. Televisions, radios and newspapers have echoed the life of La Cañada, reflected through cinema, and invited their protagonists to participate in programs and interviews. The colony follows in the footsteps of Toni, Chule, Sulami and Bilal.

The body remembers and that’s why, during filming, the actors worked on meditation, relaxation and even yoga. Additionally, they improved emotional memory, deepening memories and feelings. “They arrived on set after unloading three trucks of scrap metal or after working all day. Even some They came after using heroin. We had to prepare these bodies,” the director recalls. It wasn’t difficult for Chule to go and film, he considered it a job like any other, but one he enjoyed. “It didn’t seem like a chore to me, but it was for this idiot,” he laughs, pointing to the young man, who arrogantly defends himself by asserting that the work of a director is always more tiring.

“There was regularize many people so that they can receive their salaries, have their contracts. “Through this film, we have done great social work,” says Galoe. For him, the biggest victory is “to place at the center something that is on the margins and that we don’t talk about.” They tried the same thing with the short film “Although It’s Night”, which was talked about for a while before disappearing from public discourse again.

With “City without a Dream”, the filmmaker wants to put an often forgotten reality back in the spotlight, but by moving away from romanticism or paternalism and by seeking, through cinema, an honest look. “Poetry is the most direct way to access what we mean by reality, an access to life through mystery,” he says. A film to bring eyes back to a world that has forgotten to look.