“When faced with people fleeing war, some report, others welcome and the rest look the other way”

They came from Germany, Austria, Poland and France. They had nothing left but the hope of reaching Portugal to cross the Atlantic and take refuge in America. Some 8,000 Jews fled the Nazis through the Pyrenees between 1942 and 1943. Now the Catalan filmmaker Judith Colell has brought their story to the big screen in Fronteraa film that has screened at the Valladolid festival and will hit Spanish theaters next December.

Colell delves into this drama of exile through the character of Manel Grau, played by Miki Esparbé, an official in charge of managing the border between Spain and France in the Pyrenean area near Sort. Manel lives with his family in a small border town. In 1943, a group of Jews arrive at customs, but receive orders not to let them pass. The Nazis appear on the other side of the fence and arrest the refugees.

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When this situation becomes commonplace, Manel decides to take action and help the exiles cross the border through alternative routes with the complicity of a French maqui, the town’s tavern keeper and the person in charge of the Civil Guard. The rescue team runs into the town’s mayor, an ally of the Nazis. Asier Etxeandia, Bruna Cusí, María Rodríguez Soto and Jordi Sánchez complete the cast of this production filmed in the vicinity of Sort, where Colell spent the summer as a child.

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“When they offered me the script, I found it very interesting because it forced me to get out of my comfort zone. Frontera It is a big film, with many characters, action, thriller and at the same time I found it very interesting because it dialogues with the present when talking about people fleeing war and hunger,” says Colell in an interview with The Vanguard.

And he adds that when refugees arrive at a place, local people “take three positions, some want to denounce them, others want to welcome them and third parties look the other way as if saying this doesn’t suit me.” “Most people opt for the latter, to turn their heads and it is precisely those gray characters who in the film decide to get involved and help people even if that means taking a risk.”

Frontera takes place in 1943, but the parallels with what is happening now in many places in the world are inevitable: “The film is more relevant than ever at this moment because there is a genocide underway. In Gaza they are killing people simply for being Palestinians,” says the director. “I once read a poem that I have never forgotten, it said something like that no one goes into the sea unless the land is more dangerous than the sea itself,” concludes the director.