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    ‘A Million Miles Away’ Review: From the Fields to Outer Space

    In this biopic, a boy from a family of migrant farm workers watches the moon landing in 1969, which ignites his desire to be an astronaut.The dream of being an astronaut was planted in José Hernández (Michael Peña) early, when he and his family were migrant workers in 1960s California. Back when the U.S. immigration policy resembled a revolving door more than a steel wall, tens of thousands of families would travel north to harvest seasonal crops. For his parents, the work was in service of a long-held dream: to build a house in their native Michoacán. The children were frequently uprooted and placed in new schools as the family zigzagged across the state, following the work. It wasn’t until a teacher, Ms. Young (Michelle Krusiec), intervened that the Hernández parents settled in Stockton, Calif., forsaking their dream for their children’s education. That’s where young José saw the 1969 moon landing on T.V., a moment that ignited a lasting passion for flight.Sacrifice, grit, perseverance, tenacity: These are the themes that drive “A Million Miles Away,” directed by Alejandra Márquez Abella and based on José Hernández’s memoir, “Reaching for the Stars: The Inspiring Story of a Migrant Farmworker Turned Astronaut,” a true up-by-the-bootstraps tale. The film spans decades, from childhood to, eventually, the NASA space program. He married Adela (Rosa Salazar), a car saleswoman and aspiring chef, with whom he had five children; along the way he also worked as an engineer at a federal research facility. He is propelled by the support of his wife and family as well as a “recipe” for success from his father, Salvador (Julio César Cedillo), around which the film is framed.Beautifully shot and interspersed with historical footage of migrant workers and spacecraft launches, the film’s most effective and touching scenes revolve around the family relationships, particularly José’s with his cousin Beto (Bobby Soto), who became a farmworker like his parents. In one scene, Beto says: “I just think it’s great that I get to be so freaking proud and have no idea what you’re talking about, cousin.” It’s a line that aptly distills what many upwardly mobile immigrants face. There are moments that show the clashes of the two worlds, and those that show their melding: José’s driving to work blasting a ranchera on the radio; using a corncob as a spaceship; or washing dishes in his astronaut uniform. These are heartwarming scenes, and it’s hard not to be moved by the enormity of the challenge he undertook and conquered.But the grit narrative at times becomes a bit heavy-handed, with quotes such as “Hard work or nada,” from his father, and “Tenacity is a superpower” from his NASA trainer, Kalpana Chawla (Sarayu Blue). José Hernández applied to the space program 11 times before succeeding, and the film centers almost exclusively on this plight. There are meaningful glances at his hands, an echo of the calloused hands that supported him, and montages of his persevering through training.In peddling the mythical American dream narrative, the film misses an opportunity for conflict or character development and falls short of delving into bigger, more interesting themes: assimilation, immigration, gender roles, family conflict. Doing so would have made for a more meaningful watch and felt more in line with our present understanding of the reality of migrants’ lives.A Million Miles AwayRated PG. Running time: 2 hours. In theaters, and streaming on Prime Video Sept. 15. More

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    Marcos Witt, the Pop Star Bringing Latino Evangelicals to the Pews

    The sanctuary of Northside church in Charlotte, N.C., is built for joyous adoration. Enormous speakers hang from its domed ceiling, along with an elaborate system of colored lights. Its semicircular stage has wide, carpeted steps that lead down on all sides to rows and rows of wine red pews, which hold about 2,700 people. The evening I visited last February, they filled to capacity with Latino families who had come to see the evangelical superstar Marcos Witt.Listen to This ArticleFor more audio journalism and storytelling, More

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    Young Rappers in Seville, Spain, Turn “Tears Into Rhymes”

    La Barzola, a neighborhood in Seville, Spain, is home to a diverse population of working-class families, many of them immigrants, with the pulse of community and creative resistance running through their veins. The heart of the barrio is the Plaza Manuel Garrido, a public park and social nexus. And within this space is a basketball court that a group of aspiring rappers call their own.

    Hip-hop was born 50 years ago from the rubble of urban distress in the Bronx, an act of resistance and self-expression by society’s most vulnerable. Today, the music is everywhere: a multi-billion-dollar ecosystem. But it also remains a deeply personal form of expression, including for the young men in this community.

    “Whatever pain, anger or frustrations we harbor from our everyday experiences, music allows us to excavate those things and make something useful out of it,” Zakaria Mourachid, 21, who makes music under the name Zaca 3K, said. “We take our anger out on the music. We turn our tears into rhymes, because it makes us feel free in a world that creates barriers around us everyday.”

    Just like the originators of hip-hop, the rappers of this collective ground their material in their personal narratives.

    “Overcoming immigration, overcoming having to leave one’s country of origin, overcoming being separated from our families and overcoming the loss of those we meet who may or may not continue the journey with us.” More

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    Ireland Cheers Paul Mescal for Embracing Irish Language

    On the red carpet for the British Academy Film Awards, the Oscar-nominated actor gave an interview in Ireland’s national language.Paul Mescal, the Irish actor nominated for an Oscar for his performance in “Aftersun,” is a familiar figure on red carpets. But on Sunday at the British Academy Film Awards, he did something he had never publicly done before: He spoke Irish.Mescal, 27, was walking the red carpet in London when he stopped to talk with TG4, an Irish-language public broadcaster. The interviewer opened the conversation in Irish, also known as Gaelic, and the actor nervously followed suit.For a man whom the BBC had erroneously identified as British only a few weeks before, it was quite a moment. The two-minute interaction, posted on Twitter, has been viewed one million times and set off a conversation across Ireland about the state of one of Europe’s most endangered languages.“I found it very emotional,” said Eithne Shortall, an Irish author who lives in Dublin. “The whole country is bursting proud of Paul Mescal.”The interview resonated in Ireland, where many want to speak the language but may find themselves short on confidence, Shortall said. According to the 2016 Irish census, the latest for which numbers are available, 39.8 percent of the Irish population can speak Irish, which is down from 41.4 percent in 2011. Of the 1.7 million people who said they could speak the language, only 73,803 — 1.7 percent of the population — said they did so daily outside an educational setting.“I’m sorry about my Irish — it was much better when I was in school,” Mescal said in Irish during the interview. “It’s slightly lost on me now.”Interviews With the Oscar NomineesKerry Condon: An ardent animal lover, the supporting actress Oscar nominee for “The Banshees of Inisherin” said that she channeled grief from her dog’s death into her performance.Michelle Yeoh: The “Everything Everywhere All at Once” star, nominated for best actress, said she was “bursting with joy” but “a little sad” that previous Asian actresses hadn’t been recognized.Angela Bassett: The actress nearly missed the announcement because of troubles with her TV. She tuned in just in time to find out that she was nominated for her supporting role in “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.”Austin Butler: In discussing his best actor nomination, the “Elvis” star said that he wished Lisa Marie Presley, who died on Jan. 12, had been able to celebrate the moment with him.Irish is a mandatory subject in primary and secondary schools in Ireland, said Deirdre Ní Loingsigh, director of the Irish Language Center at the University of Limerick. As a result, almost all Irish people have a “cúpla focal” — a few words — but some are reluctant to use them. Shortall said seeing Mescal himself being hesitant to speak was encouraging.“A lot of the reason we can’t or we don’t is we’re nervous, and we’re kind of embarrassed,” Shortall said. “Maybe there’s a feeling that because it is our national language, we should be able to speak it better than most of us can.”Mescal wasn’t the only Irish actor who spoke Irish at the BAFTAs. Brendan Gleeson, a well-known Gaeilgeoir, or fluent Irish speaker, also gave an interview in Irish, while Colin Farrell, his co-star in “Banshees of Inisherin,” slowly backed away and was relieved to quickly find someone who would ask him questions in English.“Shame on me,” Farrell, who is also Irish, said.Mescal’s viral clip appeared against the backdrop of the so-called Green Wave — also affectionately referred to as Ireland’s going Oscar Wild. Twenty-five percent of this year’s acting Oscar nominees are Irish, according to The Los Angeles Times, and this is the first time an Irish-language film has been nominated for an Oscar, with “The Quiet Girl” up for best international feature film.“The language is almost like the central character of our film, you know, it’s been silenced over many years,” Colm Bairéad, the director of “The Quiet Girl,” said in an interview. “There’s something quite appropriate about the fact that the year where we have the most nominations in our history, our language is also part of that.”Irish, a Celtic language closely related to Scottish Gaelic, is the oldest spoken language in Western Europe, according to Gearóid Ó hAllmhuráin, a professor at Concordia University’s School of Irish Studies in Montreal. While Ireland was occupied by Britain, speaking Irish was often punished; when Ireland signed its Constitution in 1937 — after gaining independence in 1922 — Irish was designated as the national language, with English considered a second official language. Factors such as mass migration stemming from the Great Famine and present-day emigration have contributed to the language’s decline and led to the creation of Irish-language schools across the country, Ó hAllmhuráin said.Irish is currently considered “definitely endangered” by UNESCO. Shortall said part of the issue is the way the language is taught in schools, which is more academic than conversational. Bairéad said that as a result, Irish had failed to feel like a “living language” to many people and that had contributed to the country’s complex relationship with its native tongue.“Irish people do have a yearning for this expression of ourselves, as a people, that belongs to us,” Bairéad, who was raised bilingual, said. “This is a mode of expression that is ours, and that we can reclaim, but it takes a certain level of commitment. And when you see people like Paul being willing to do that, that’s inspiring for people.”The Irish have a phrase, “Is fearr gaeilge bhriste ná béarla cliste,” which translates to, “Broken Irish is better than clever English” — an idea that Mescal has come to embody, Shortall said.Mescal’s example has motivated her to speak more Irish, even if she needs to mix in the odd English word.“I really don’t think you can overstate how great this is for the language, to have someone so visible, young and cool speaking Irish,” Shortall said.As the interview wound down on the red carpet Sunday, the journalist asked Mescal one final question: Would he ever consider acting in an Irish-language film?“Yeah, absolutely,” he said — in English. More

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    A Cop Called Coco, an Actor Named Mani, a Quebecer Exploring Quebec

    MONTREAL — Just five years ago, Mani Soleymanlou, a Quebec actor of Iranian origin, was playing characters named Ahmed, Hakim and Karim on French-language television shows produced in the province. Today, his roles include Patrick, a banker, in one successful TV series, and a corrupt police officer with the very Québécois name Robert “Coco” Bédard, in another.Coco appears in “C’est comme ça que je t’aime,” or “Happily Married,” a dark, rollicking comedy set in the 1970s in a suburb of the provincial capital, Quebec City — a time and place where the chances would have been slim of running into someone like Mr. Soleymanlou: an immigrant who was born in Iran, and grew up in Paris, Toronto and Ottawa, before landing in Quebec.“I think,” Mr. Soleymanlou said in French, with an accent picked up in Paris, “Québécois culture has long been very homogeneous.”But that is changing — thanks in part to people like him.That Mr. Soleymanlou, 40, went from playing typecast outsiders to an insider named Coco Bédard in a few short years is also indicative of larger shifts in Quebec society.Though it still remains rooted in the French language, in ethnicity and in a shared history, Québécois identity is in flux right now — and what it means to be Québécois is what Mr. Soleymanlou has spent the past decade deconstructing in his other career as a playwright.With his family, Mr. Soleymanlou was among the Iranian exiles who streamed to France in the years after Iraq invaded Iran in 1980.At a recent performance at the Théâtre Jean-Duceppe in Montreal, the packed audience gave Mr. Soleymanlou a standing ovation for his trilogy, “Un, Deux, Trois.” For four and a half hours, he dissects his own search for identity after arriving in Quebec, which made him feel like more of an outsider than anywhere else, and he explores the meaning of identity itself and the place of French speakers in Canada, an otherwise overwhelmingly Anglophone country.Collectively, the three plays raise difficult questions that go to the heart of Québécois identity.Can an immigrant from Iran, or anywhere else, ever be considered Québécois? If the French language is a pillar of Québécois identity, what is the place of the French spoken by newcomers from the Maghreb or West Africa, accents heard more and more throughout the province? Is French Québécois identity fated to disappear because of demographics and geography? Or can it — should it? — reinvent itself by becoming part of the global Francophone world?If the success of Mr. Soleymanlou’s trilogy and the arc of his acting career suggest that Québécois identity is expanding, the recent provincial elections also show that the evolution hasn’t been smooth and isn’t a given. The provincial premier, François Legault, and his allies won in a landslide, partly by promoting a cultural nationalism that portrayed immigrants as a threat to Quebec society.Quebec nationalists, especially during the heady days of the independence movement in the 1970s and 1980s, upheld immigrants’ mastery of French as the key to acceptance and integration in Quebec society.But Quebec nationalists have moved the goal posts in recent years, emphasizing instead that immigrants must adhere to an amorphous notion of Quebec values. Politicians like Mr. Legault and his allies, while stressing the importance of French, have also described immigration as undermining Quebec’s identity.“They’re using identity to score political points, especially among older voters, because that’s where fear works,” Mr. Soleymanlou said. “And that’s the problem. They’re not talking to the new Quebec.”Mr. Soleymanlou’s trilogy, “Un, Deux, Trois,” explores identity in Quebec and the place of French speakers in Canada, an otherwise overwhelmingly Anglophone country. Mr. Soleymanlou spoke recently during an interview at a café in Hochelaga, a Montreal neighborhood where he lives with his partner, Sophie Cadieux, a Québécoise actress, and their son. Appointed to the prestigious position of director of the French theater at Canada’s National Arts Centre in Ottawa last year, Mr. Soleymanlou was in the middle of a tour of eight Canadian cities with his trilogy.“In his work, he was able to use humor and laughter and this technique almost like standup comedy to talk about his experiences,” said Yana Meerzon, a professor of theater at the University of Ottawa, contrasting his plays with the straightforward tragedies of some other migrant stories.She added that his work acknowledged the differences between adult immigrants and child immigrants. “They don’t speak from that culture, necessarily, they speak from their own culture, which is mixed.” Mr. Soleymanlou’s successful dual career as actor and playwright points to the opening up of French Québécois popular culture, which has long existed apart from the rest of Canada. Despite the province’s demographics being changed by successive waves of immigration over many decades, the stage and the screen had until recently been dominated by stories told by French Québécois for an audience of French Québécois. “We were very late,” Mr. Soleymanlou said, “but now we’re accelerating to catch up.”Born in Tehran a couple of years after Iraq invaded Iran in 1980, Mr. Soleymanlou and his family joined a stream of Iranian exiles to France. In Paris, he attended public schools and learned French, before the family packed up again, this time for Toronto, when he was 9.In Toronto, he went to schools with immigrants like himself and eventually “forgot about himself” — immersed in the ever-widening circle of multiculturalism that is the ethos of Canada outside Quebec.He arrived two decades ago in Quebec to study at the National Theatre School of Canada in Montreal. By then, newcomers from Francophone Africa, many of them Muslim, were reshaping the city’s landscape, the way previous immigrants from Europe and Asia already had for decades. Still, the arts were the domain of the French Québécois.That was made clear to him on his first day at the school where he and three others accounted for the only non-French Québécois students. Four was the most there had ever been in a school with more than 100 students.“Since my arrival in Quebec, I’ve never felt more like a guy from elsewhere, like a stranger, an exile, lost, an immigrant,” Mr. Soleymanlou said in his play “Un.” The school director at the time made a joke of struggling to pronounce his name, Mr. Soleymanlou recalled. Then, using two common French Québécois family names, she said, “They’ll stop criticizing us for having only Tremblays and Girards at the National Theatre School.”“I didn’t understand at all why we were being separated into two categories of students,” he said.That first day set off a search for identity — his own and that of the French Québécois — that, almost by accident, eventually launched his career.In 2009, he was invited to perform at the Théâtre de Quat’Sous in Montreal, which then showcased immigrant artists every Monday evening. Drawing on his life, he wrote and performed a monologue that would become “Un,” the first part of his trilogy.“Since my arrival in Quebec, I’ve never felt more like a guy from elsewhere, like a stranger, an exile, lost, an immigrant,” he said in the play. “Never have I had to explain so often where I came from, to justify my accent, to describe my path, to pronounce over and over again my family name.”His anguished search for identity in “Un” resonated in a province where the dominant French Québécois had long fought to preserve their own sense of self, surrounded as they are by an English majority.“Quebec is a society that’s had to protect and defend itself, always positioning itself in opposition to the other,” Mr. Soleymanlou said. “That’s something I didn’t understand in the beginning — that the Québécois want to know how you define yourself because they have to define themselves to protect themselves.”Mr. Soleymanlou continued his search for identity in “Deux,” in a dialogue with a bilingual Jewish Montrealer, and then in “Three,” which featured three dozen French speakers who were not French Québécois.Before 2017, Mr. Soleymanlou had never been offered a role with a French name. “There’s been a radical change in the past decade, a phenomenal paradigm shift in the arts in Quebec,” he said. As his theater career took off, the scripts sent his way changed. In 2017, while performing his trilogy in Paris, he got a call from Radio-Canada, the public broadcaster, offering him the role of “Philippe” in a new series. He had never been offered a role with a French name before.“Philippe on Radio-Canada? My God, yes,” Mr. Soleymanlou recalled answering.But when he got the script, he found that his role had been changed to a Greek named “Yaniss.” The producers said sorry, but he remained Yaniss.He had to wait two more years for his first meaty role as an ethnic French Québécois — that of the corrupt, though lovable, cop in “Happily Married,” a series about two couples in a very French Québécois suburb, Sainte-Foy, who turn to organized crime while their kids are away at summer camp.“The role of a police officer, in the 1970s, in Sainte-Foy, in Quebec, played by someone of Iranian origin?” Mr. Soleymanlou said. “Ten years ago, that would have been impossible.” More

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    ‘What We Leave Behind’ Review: A Father’s Final Project

    At 89, Julián Moreno began building a home in Mexico for his children who had immigrated to the U.S. His granddaughter made the poignant documentary “What We Leave Behind.”When Iliana Sosa’s grandfather Julián Moreno turned 89, he stopped making trips from Mexico to El Paso, Texas, where Sosa’s mother lives. In her documentary “What We Leave Behind,” his granddaughter follows Moreno to his home in the Mexican state of Durango and watches as he undertakes one last project: building a house next to his own that his children who migrated to the U.S. might return to.With an approach that is more elegiac than sociological, the director signals the passage of nearly seven years with the progress of the new building and the evidence of Moreno’s decline. He shovels a bit. He fries an egg that begins sunny side up but ends scrambled. He carries a plank, annoyed that he can’t carry two. A quad cane appears.Eschewing the politics of policy, “What We Leave Behind” honors the poetics of a life: Moreno’s memories of his long-dead wife; his affection for the land; his fealty to his son Jorge, who is legally blind and lives with him; but also his belief in hard work. His face holds traces of the handsome young man pictured on the ID card he used as a bracero — an agricultural worker issued a temporary work permit to come to the United States after World War II.Compositionally calm but never static, the documentary trusts in motes of beauty: a dog lapping water out of a mop bucket; Jorge’s green bristled broom poised above a courtyard floor as he listens; a once-sturdy man lying in bed, his family surrounding him. “What We Leave Behind” insists upon power in stillness, and the poignancy in staying — and leaving.What We Leave BehindNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 11 minutes. In theaters and on Netflix. More

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    ‘The Bengali’ Review: A Woman Reconnecting to Her Roots

    In this travelogue-meets-mystery documentary, a granddaughter seeks out her grandfather’s past.“The Bengali” documents the parallel journeys of Shaik Mohamed Musa, a Bengali man who leaves his village in India for New Orleans in 1893, and that of his African American granddaughter, Fatima Shaik, who travels from New Orleans to India well over a century later.In telling the story mostly through candid interviews with the modern-day residents of Khori, the village the elder Shaik left behind, the director, Kavery Kaul, captures the inconvenient realities the younger Shaik faces — realities that diverge from her vision of a storybook homecoming where she can bend down to touch the land her grandfather once owned. In this travelogue-meets-mystery documentary, Shaik, a novelist, shows her grandfather’s picture to villagers who have never heard of him, and who question whether this American visitor has pure motives.Viewers could easily walk away from “The Bengali” thinking the Shaik family’s story is an anomaly unique to New Orleans. But it actually isn’t. It’s part of a newly recovered body of history about a smaller wave of Indian immigration to America before the landmark 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act. In the early 20th century, Indian men came to U.S. cities as solo workers and, subject to America’s racial hierarchy, often married Black and Puerto Rican women (like Fatima’s grandmother Tennie Ford, who is African American).This significant omission from “The Bengali” underlines that, despite an intriguing premise, what Kaul actually wants to say here is in need of a lot more fleshing out. The documentary meanders from scene to scene without sufficient dramatic tension (or relevant historical context) to propel it forward into denouement.As much of the film is Shaik essentially journaling aloud in direct-to-camera interviews or in voice-over alongside stiff kitchen table scenes with her family, the visuals land as inconsequential. In other words, this feature-length documentary probably should have been a podcast.The BengaliNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 12 minutes. In theaters. More