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Hollywood may not have caught on yet, but the rest of the world is making movies about the growing problems of displaced people and illegal immigration. Shot in grainy black and white in a lyrical, neo-realistic style, Argentine director Adrián Caetano’s 2001 film Bolivia observes a case study and a society with detachment and eloquence. Freddie (Freddie Flores), a meek little man who left the title country when the "Yankees" burnt down the coca fields where he worked, has come to Argentina to find employment (illegally, as the cops who shake him down make clear) to support his wife and three children back home. He gets a job as a cook in a Buenos Aires dive, dishing out coffee and beer to the losers who congregate there; in exchange, they dish out resentment and abuse. Everyone is in debt to everyone else and looking for someone to blame, and the dark-skinned foreign worker is an easy target. Not that Freddie is a saint. On his first night out, he goes dancing with his sympathetic, fellow émigrée co-worker Rosa, gets loaded, and puts the moves on her at a hotel. The pathos of the situation surges to the forefront as the camera pans over the paltry belongings, including his family photos, scattered about Freddie’s room. A soundtrack of traditional Bolivian folk music makes the poignant coda heartbreaking. In Spanish with English subtitles. (75 minutes)
BY PETER KEOUGH
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