Owners of Nothing
Owners of Nothing
Dueños De Nada / Sebastián Talavera Serrano / Spain / 2003 / 47 min / Spanish
Five-year-old Fatima has very poor eyesight: without glasses she is virtually blind. Most of her life takes place in a haze; it is only at school that she sees well, for there, in a locked drawer, lie her greatest treasure: blue spectacles with thick lenses. At the end of every school day, she has to put them back in the drawer. Fatima lives in El Vacie, a slum on the outskirts of Seville, Spain. Her parents are extremely poor; they have practically nothing, not even a proper roof over their heads and they cannot afford glasses for their daughter. In their shanty, which the first downpour will easily wash away, rats and other vermin have free play. There is no running water. In his film about the shockingly shabby El Vacie – one of the oldest slums of Europe – the young filmmaker Sebastián Talavera makes use of hip editing techniques and striking photography. Owners of Nothing is a poetic portrait of the slum and its people, devoting equal attention to daily misery and the zest of the children, who dream of a better life "anywhere, as long as it’s not in El Vacie".
screenplay | Sebastián Talavera, Carlos Hermo
camera | Sebastián Talavera Serrano
editor | Sebastián Talavera Serrano
sound | Sara Talavera
