Land of My Children (Im land meiner kinder)(Aguirre, 2018): Germany, Switzerland

Reviewed by Matheus Clorado. Viewed at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival 2019.

Oh how come, how come… German!  This Ecuadorian is about to become.

A fancy letter placed in the mail announces new waters to sail.

Shocked for a moment, quiet for a while, he tells his wife and she doesn’t smile.

She brings a question instead, something that stays in his head:

“What do they mean ‘where are you from’? You’re already here, this is your home.”

Aguirre has blanks to fill, dreams to fulfill, but take us along – he will.

His doc, solid as rock, talks that talk: family separation, culture appropriation, alienation…

Many topics for what’s simply labeled as immigration.

It’s not about who went from A to B.

Anyone would hate to be – left out, you see?

Bottom line indeed: “Have you ever missed someone thousands of miles away?”

This is an incredible memoir, featuring artwork that’ll certainly blow you away.

Land of My Children shines bright, speaking with truth and the heart.

Luckily for our sight, it also includes the filmmaker’s profound art,

a significant resident of this masterpiece of the craft, about which I wrote this draft.