Foreign Land (2018) poster
2018 · documentary · music

Foreign Land

Directed by Rafi Girgis1h 34m2018
ElsewhereIMDb4.9182TMDB4.510
Movie DNA

Neutral, steady, measured documentary / music, grounded in texture. Ambivalent, intimate, measured, hand-scored across twelve axes of taste.

How every film is hand-scored →

Life changed for Alejandro Reis - Alex - in just a few brief moments when he discovers that he is not an American citizen. His parents brought him across the Mexican border when he was just months old. Flora Hendricks, on the other hand is born in Missouri. She decides to run away from home. Alex finds himself deported to Mexico On a seeming parallel track, Flora is arrested for shoplifting. And put in the same deportation bus with Alex. Once on Mexican soil Alex and Flora find out quickly that they are way out of their depth. They learn quickly that Tijuana and most of the other border towns are ultra violent places that are overrun by dangerous, warring criminal factions.

Our read · Foreign Land (2018) reads as a neutral, steady, grounded documentary · music entry — measured in intensity, intimate in scope, measured in temperature, ambivalent in outlook. Hand-scored on twelve axes of taste — mood, pacing, weirdness, hope, stakes, humour, reality, density, warmth, auteur, intensity, and era — with a derived palette drawn from its dominant cinematography.

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The shape of Foreign Land

Tonight, this looks like

What watching it is actually like.

You want a quiet drama about identity, deportation and chance connections.

ends bittersweetit stays with yousteady all the waygrips by minute 18attention 3/5earns its length
Date nightWith friendsSoloWith parentsKids around

Skip it tonightYou want escapist entertainment or fast-moving plots tonight.

DNA · twelve axes

The reading.

Each axis is hand-scored — not derived from votes or genre averages. The marker shows where this film sits; the gradient fill uses the film's own cinematography palette.

Mood · HeavyCosy
Pacing · Slow-burnKinetic
Intensity · GentleExtreme
Weirdness · ConventionalSurreal
Hope · NihilisticRedemptive
Stakes · IntimateEpic
Humour · NoneBroad
Reality · GroundedFantastical
Density · SparseTwisty
Warmth · ColdTender
Auteur · TransparentSignature
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