Welcome is a really special film. It’s just one of those that stays with you for days afterwards. I saw it a couple of weeks ago at an arts cinema in the UK and the whole audience was silent for several minutes afterwards.
French director Philippe Lloret’s moving film offers an extraordinary insight into love, life and obstacles for a young Kurdish migrant crossing the English Channel from Calais in the hope of being reunited with his sweetheart in London.
Welcome to the Promised Land
From the moment the film starts, with a group of migrants sneaking aboard a truck in Calais, bound for the UK, you realise that you’re not about to watch a fluffy, warm love story. From the opening sequence, Welcome gives you life, love and perseverance without frills or a first class lounge.
Among those crossing the Channel is 17-year-old Iraqi Kurd, Bilal. He and his fellow migrants are seen putting plastic bags over their heads to fool the custom agents who are known for sticking devices in the truck that monitor the air for signs of breathing.
Their plan fails, and a group are rounded up by police. Among them is our Kurdish protagonist, who has walked across Europe to France and made it to Calais hoping to cross to London. Bilal isn’t looking for work, he’s seeking to be reunited with his love, Mina, who lives with her family in London.
Love Will Find a Way Out
Despite his interlude with the police, Bilal is determined to get across to England to rekindle his love with Mina, even if he has to swim for it. And that’s precisely what he decides to do.
Except he doesn’t know how to swim.
So he takes up lessons at the local pool with a former champion French swimmer, Simon. Before long, the instructor puts two and two together and eventually decides to help his apprentice out on his mission to cross the Channel in the name of love.
Simon has his own cri du coeur to with which to contend. On the verge of reluctantly signing his divorce papers with his wife, who is a migrant worker, he realizes that helping Bilal might actually help win back his ex’s heart.
I’m not going to spoil the ending for you, but take some hankies, whatever you do!
What Some Will Do for Love
The film’s director Philippe Lioret spent time in Calais, which he referred to as “France’s equivalent to Mexico.” Welcome was a revelation to me and I suspect to many other members of the audience with whom I saw it, in its depiction of this French port town as a hub for migrants hoping to hop over the Channel to a better life.
Their willpower is encapsulated in this brave young Kurd’s mission for love, vs. the authorities’ determination to prevent it. The story really struck a chord with me about how fortunate I am in my own life.
Coming from a family of migrants, it really brought home to me the sacrifices that some set their hearts on in the hope of a better life, for themselves and for their children.
