It’s not a surprise that film and urbanism overlap. Film serves a medium of social commentary, and urbanism in itself is highly concerned about social outcomes. In some films, the nature of social commentary and urbanism intersect overwhelmingly. It is such intersection, that allows one to draw parallels with urban phenomenon that take place in other cities or in other time periods, and reflect on the current state of the places we live in today.

I recently had the chance to watch my first Carlos Saura film, ‘Deprisa Deprisa’ (1981). An important film during the era of cinema ‘Quinqui’, the period of films that evoked the immediate aftermath of the Franco era. A hugely transformative period in Spanish modern history. The film evolves around a group of high school age young adults. Taking place largely on the periphery of Madrid, in newly built social housing projects. With long shots of suburban trains flying by. It immediately evokes the sense of a forgotten group of outsiders. Driven to delinquency and drug abuse, these young adults seek societal fulfilmenent outside the confines of school, presumably which they don’t attend at all.

Seemingly abandonded, or at least portrayed to have very weak or non-existent familial ties, Saura drives home their sense of marginalization and outsiderness. The bleak landscape of suburban Madrid, of half-complete apartment projects and empty lots, showcases a forgotten urbanism that mirrors a similarity with a lost generation that grew up in the era of Franco. The contrast in greenery, between the affluent neighbourhoods that the young adults terrorize and the ones where they have access to spend their leisure time, portrays the stark difference in the quality of community investment in their lived spaces.

To me, the incredible poignancy of Saura, among notably the usage of non-professional actors whose realism does not go unnoticed, is the spotlight it shines on a kind of universal uburban periphary. One that feels not to disimmilar to Morocco. In Morocco, the transition between historic and economic city-centre, affluent suburban villa and the various forms of popular neighbourhoods, similarly mirrors a sense of forgotten urban communities. It’s especially the neighbourhoods that ring around the larger Moroccan cities that parallel Saura’s depiction of Madrid’s suburbs. The half-completed apartment buildings that hug the highways and the high-speed train lines of Morocco have a similar feeling of being passed by as a country develops.

One character from the film, Angela, particularly symbolizes the unrecognized bitterness of needing to survive without falling by the wayside of the peripheral wall. It is no coincidence, that after her incredible performance in ‘Deprisa Deprisa’, seemingly having scaled the wall, she disappeared from the public gaze, never appearing as an actor again, mirroring her final act in the film.