'Stories of the good valley': the possibility of a hidden peri-urban arcadia in the north of Barcelona

"What should a film about Vallbona show?" asks José Luis Guerin, from off-screen, to the inhabitants of this neighborhood in the far north of Barcelona, ​​in the audition in situ which the team organizesStories from the Good ValleyThe filmmaker introduces at the beginning of his new film excerpts from the casting process for this project, which stems from First impressions (2023), a commissioned piece for the occasion ofexposure An unknown city shrouded in fog at the MACBA. Guerin thus positions himself as a director willing to shoot an open film (a "work in progress", according to the credits), but not merely observational; rather, it is constructed from the reality presented to the camera.

Stories from the Good Valley inevitably connects with Under construction (2001), in its docu-fictional immersion, with a poetic undertone, in a neighborhood undergoing profound transformation due to reforms that, far from benefiting the residents, dispossess them. Even some of the current protagonists speak of these displacements from the city center (El Raval) to this peripheral neighborhood in the Nou Barris district, which confirms this continuity in a narrative where Barcelona's identity is marked by conflict with urban planning policies. But this new film pulsates with the unique personality bestowed upon it by the demographic and geographical idiosyncrasies of Vallbona, a border territory, crossed by highways and railway lines, shaped by self-built housing and social housing that coexist with farmland and the open road.

This peri-urban landscape is almost always present in a film that combines attention to individual experiences with the portrayal of a community. Vallbona is a neighborhood with hardly any documentary history. That's why the director improvises some opening images shot in the old-fashioned way, on Super 8 film. But we also don't know the present of its inhabitants. Guerin stops to listen to their stories, which unfold on the margins: the fear of Russian women, the story of the boy who jumps from the bridge, the couple with the husband suffering from a neurodegenerative disease, the man rehomed after being evicted, the girl whose mother gave birth in prison, the neighbors... The film is attentive to the cultural diversity that a neighborhood like Vallbona brings together; it's worth noting the genuine Catalan dialect of the farmers chatting around the café table, a register rarely found in Spanish cinema.

José Luis Guerin:

"The warmth of normal life no longer exists in the center of Barcelona"

If the neighborhood's demographics themselves bring with them a mosaic of diverse histories and languages, José Luis Guerin employs cinematic strategies to construct a sense of community. Catalan is not only the language of the farmers, but also the one shared by the children at school, in the film's first group scene. Through framing, recurring motifs (the trains constantly passing in the background), editing, and the continuity between shot and reverse shot, the director creates shared spaces and connections between initially individual experiences. In the most cinematic scene, the neighbors gather to bid farewell to one of the most endearing characters, Antonio, at a funeral where music plays. The Red River Valley and which recalls the idea of ​​community in John Ford's films.

Contact with nature unites many inhabitants: the farmers tending their tomatoes and roses, the sugarcane planted by the Indian family, the wildflowers gathered by the Portuguese family in the film's most beautifully poetic sequence... But it is above all through the Condal irrigation system (which Guerin depicts, inspired by Renoir) that the possibility of a free and popular meeting place arises, open to all backgrounds and generations, sensual, playful, and welcoming, a riverine agora with almost utopian resonances until the very end, despite the off-screen threat of security forces determined to dismantle this beloved little Arcadia.