Being Unwelcomed

I don’t know how they got there, they must have walked all the way or hid under trucks that crushed them whenever bumps were hit. It did not matter to the hosting nation that they would all huddle at soup kitchens on the Calais coast yet there was not to be any contact with the locals. If you were caught abetting these immigrants you could be sent to prison and if they swam across the Channel and drowned, they would be sent back anyway. Their soaked bodies would be useless across the sea.

The story is quite believable, there have been issues with people wanting to get across the channel just like that and the acting is quite realistic. Aside from a couple of slight editing glitches, like one where you see the French gold medal winner picking up the Kurd boy at the soup kitchen all of a sudden. One supposes he must have seen him waiting in line for food, as before, only the public likes to be reassured of a certain sequencing of events in the editing process.

I was not clear of how the police obtained the gold medal from the dead body of the boy; maybe there was a mention that it was found with his mate that accompanied him to the house of the swimming instructor. The two Kurds were hosted at this instructor’s house against the will of the authorities who questioned the man on several occasions; that was the backdrop to creating the necessary tension in the plot as one wondered whether the boy would get sufficient training before his host would be caught. Bilal, the boy never made it and his girl had to marry someone else her successful father chose, the life of the girl and her dad was the subplot in the picture. Naturally she was brokenhearted to learn of her lover’s demise in his effort to reach her.