ABSENTEES' HOUSE

OVERVIEW
Feature-length documentary
Expected Running Time: 70-75 mins.
Language: Spanish with English subtitles
Stage: Post-Production

With the support of: Participation in:

SYNOPSIS

When Doña Silvia walks around the unfinished house that her son Rene is building with the money he sends from Philadelphia, USA, her voice oscillates between the expectation of his return and the suspicion of not seeing him anymore. He, like Margarito, Pablo or Benito was born in the majestic valley of Metztitlan (Mexico); an area declared a Biosphere Reserve by UNESCO in 2000. They all left for the North with the desire to save money and build their dream houses. But, after years, these houses are still uninhabited, even those that are furnished. This documentary explores the absence left by migration in the places of origin, which is manifested in these uninhabited houses, in the promise of return, in family and affective relationships, in hard-won dreams and in the desire for prosperity in a territory that, despite its natural and cultural wealth, does not offer conditions of prosperity for its inhabitants.
 
Like Doña Silvia's story, Doña Cecilia's opens up a panorama in which absence is generated because the owners of the houses continue to live in the United States and the return has become a promise. Furthermore, the stories of Margarito, Benito and Doña Margarita explore absence when affected by love, tradition and spirituality. Sergio's story closes the cycle, as we meet a character just a few hours before his departure to the North: a future absent.
 
‘La casa de los ausentes’ is a choral documentary that explores the different senses of the experience of home when it has been crossed by migration. It takes as its starting point the stories behind the houses built with remittances and which their owners do not inhabit. With delicacy and poetic force, this film observes the landscape from the uninhabited architectures in order to give them back their vitality through the eyes of those who live these absences. The promise of return is often conditioned by unequal access to economic resources and restricted mobility between countries. This documentary subtly narrates how these buildings, which at first glance only seem to be great economic misunderstandings, acquire ethical, existential and spiritual connotations that have determined the way of being and living in an entire region... Also traceable in many other places in the world.

"Absentees' House" is part of “Mi Casa My Home,” a documentary trasmedia trilogy by Colombian director Oscar Molina that explores the notion of home when is affected by migration. It centers its attention on stories of migrants who, from within their host country and financed by their remittances, construct their dream homes in their country of origin. Many of these houses stand incomplete, some derelict, and many stand uninhabited for years, large-scale containers of the deferred dream of returning and a visual testament to an illusory economic viability. “Mi Casa My Home” aims to capture the sheer breadth of this phenomenon with two documentaries, “The House of Mama Icha” and “Absentees’ House”; and through an interactive platform as a tool for reflection, calling attention and poetic translation of this global phenomenon of remittance houses.