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Guillermo Galoe Unpacks His Insider’s Vision of a Family Riven by Its Shanty Town’s Demolition in Critics’ Week’s ‘Sleepless City’
Seen from the point of view of Toni, 15, the fiction film, acted by non-pros, chronicles the end of a Roma community just outside Madrid.
Jaw-gaping, Rayo, a white greyhound, sprints after a hare over grassy fields, encouraged by Toni and family in a truck driven by his grandfather Chule: “Ciudad sin sueño” (“Sleepless City) opens with a sense of celebration and freedom, enjoyed by a Roma family living in La Cañada Real, a nine-mile road housing what is described as the biggest shanty town in southern Europe, a short drive west of Madrid. Though he hasn’t told Toni, Chule has already borrowed money from the local drug-dealer to buy land and build a legal home, selling Rayo into part of the deal. 15, written off by the girl he likes as a metal scrap dealer, he’s in two minds about the move, as indeed is the film which channels the melancholy of an autumnal Western, a town overtaken by the sweep of gentrification, and the passing of an freer age.
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