“With a little help from my friends...”

 

           “Would you believe in a love at first sight,
Yes I’m certain that it happens all the time.
What do you see when you turn out the light,
I can’t tell you but I know it’s mine.
Oh I get by with a little help from my friends
Mm Get high with a little help from my friends
Oo I’m gonna try with a little help from my friends...”

 
            Landmark song of the “Peace and Love” era of the 1960s and 1970s, With a little help from my friends – truly a Beatles’s masterpiece from which these few lines are taken – would have been, in my humble opinion, a tailor-made soundtrack for the Korean film I was lucky enough to watch this morning, the justly-named Bandhobi.

            Screened as a European premiere in Nantes, Bandhobi – the title of which roughly means “female friend” in Bengali – is undoubtedly my favourite film so far (and judging by the thunderous roar of applause from the audience at the Katorza at this early time of the day, I am certainly not the only one to have high expectations for this film...).

            Funny, tender and unflinching, Bandhobi is the unlikely friendship of two lost souls in the South-Korea of today – a country which, since the early 1990s and the “economic miracle” of the Asian Tigers, has been home to thousands of overseas migrant workers. But beyond what may be considered as a “crude political satire”, this film is first and foremost the story of two young people struggling to find their voices against the odds.

            Focusing on the characters of Min-Seo, a cheeky and rebellious 17-year-old high-school girl whose single mother goes through a living hell because of her and Karim, a Bangladeshi migrant worker whose survival in South-Korea is far from being a bed of roses, film-director Shin Dong-il perfectly succeeds in translating to screen “embarrassing” issues such as racism, illegal immigration and work or yet again teenage angst and sexual awakening.

            There is a hint of Ken Loach in Bandhobi – this naturalistic and social realist directing style being surely reinforced by Bae Jin-Hui’s and Mahbud Alam’s acting. One has indeed to bear in mind that this latter is himself a migrant worker now strongly involved both in the South-Korean Migrant Workers’ Union and in the Migrant Workers’ Television.

            “Open your mind” exclaims the film's hero: open yourself to other cultures and ways of thinking. Shin Dong-il’s message seems at least to have reached the minds of most of the festival-goers. Moreover, straightaway, I am going to share a meal with some of my colleagues that I did not even know about a week ago. That’s just another aspect of The Festival of 3 Continents: amazing friendships that strike up unexpectedly...