Adu ( 2020 ) - Spanish

 

In Melilla, a Spanish enclave surrounded by Morocco , hundreds of African refugees try to climb a barbed wire to enter "Europe". Mateo, a Spanish guard witnesses his colleague Javi strike down one of them who falls down dead, . Meanwhile , in distant Cameroon, the killing of an elephant reserve`s star elephant by poachers is inadvertently witnessed by seven year old Adu and his elder sister Alika.The forest guards along with their Spanish external advisor Gonzalo , arrive too late to find the elephant`s carcass and Adu`s abandoned bicycle. How the seemingly unconnected stories of Adu , Gonzalo and Mateo intersect forms the plot of the movie - Adu.

Adu and his sister Alika , having lost their mother to the vengeful poachers , decide to undertake an arduous journey to Spain to join their father. They travel from Cameroon to Senegal , where their aunt pays a human trafficker to put them on a flight to Spain. They are cheated by the trafficker and asked to travel as stowaways in an aircraft`s undercarriage. Alika dies enroute and is flung into the ocean when the undercarriage opens. Adu lands in Mauritania instead of Spain , where he befriends another refugee teenager Massar . Both of them go through many painful episodes before they finally decide to drift in lifebuoys to the Spanish coast.

Meanwhile , Mateo is under tremendous pressure to testify at Javi's trial and is faced with a dilemma - whether or not to give factual evidence. Gonzalo is also on his way back home , albeit with an issue of his own - his wild daughter who is resentful of him for abandoning her and her mother . 

These three stories gallop at a considerable pace , ultimately to intersect at the climax.The end of the story produces what you could call a  a bag of mixed emotions. Happy in a way but with a tinge of sadness, that`s quite reflective of how reality is.

Adu , a film worth watching ....a tale that fuses  hope, despair, sentiment and human bonding - all into 90 minutes of screentime.