Carles Bosch, Oscar nominated director of Balseros, takes the stage after the Austin premiere of Septiembres. To audience members who wonder where else the film might be seen, Bosch responds, there is no US distributor and he is not optimistic.

It is a beautifully shot film about the love lives of several prisoners in Spain who all happen to participate in a karaoke-like singing competition. To be honest, as I watched, I had two thoughts–one, the film is quite long. At 2 hours, it requires a commitment to watch and I’d venture that cutting it down would make it tighter story-wise as well as pick up the pace a bit. But it’s so beauitful and there are so many wonderful moments, that is the lesser issue. The bigger issue is that the film is about prisoners but unlike punishment in the US where we seem to collectively agree that unending sentences, vile conditions and heavy-handed personnel are the pathways to make our society safer, in Spain, they believe (and their low recitivism rate attests) that better prisons result in reforming criminals. Or it could be, as Bosch suggested, that since the film doesn’t show horrible conditions, it’s not what distributors want. Possibly that is two sides of the same coin?

Septiembres shows humanism between state and individual; it illustrates that putting energy and resources into criminals pays off with low crime rates; if the film doesn’t gain traction in the US, it might very be because it makes clear that where another country is succeeding, we are failing miserably. But we are too proud to admit that we might be wrong. Wouldn’t all those people who have been treated illy by our system then want to sue? Probably. The film launched the Cine Las Americas Festival here in Austin, and what a wonderful way to kick off an international fest. It painted so clearly a picture of life outside of our own myopic view… the very wonderful thing that happens when we sit down to watch stories that come from afar.