Welcome 💖 Bienvenidos
Welcome 💖 Bienvenidos

Spanish Version
Las películas basadas en personajes de la India o en su cultura siempre son dolorosas, porque muestran una realidad cruel que no estamos acostumbrados a ver ni queremos aceptar, que no solo sucede en la India, pues son problemas socialmente difundidos en el mundo. Cada vez que me dispongo a mirar una película de esta cultura, respiró profundo pensando que estaré preparada, pero no es así, termino sorprendida y con muchas emociones y triste, hay un poco de masoquismo en mi deseo cinéfilo.
Haramí trata de los niños que nadie quiere, los bastardos, huérfanos que terminan en la calle a manos de un pederasta que los pone a trabajar a cambio de un poco de guía, porque hasta para ser un ladrón se necesita aprender del oficio, tener una red de apoyo y una forma de vender lo robado.



Films based on characters from India or its culture are always painful because they show a cruel reality that we are not used to seeing and do not want to accept, which does not only happen in India, as these are socially widespread problems throughout the world. Every time I sit down to watch a film about this culture, I take a deep breath, thinking I'll be prepared, but I'm not. I end up surprised, emotional and sad. There's a bit of masochism in my love of cinema.
Haramí is about children that nobody wants, bastards, orphans who end up on the streets at the hands of a paedophile who puts them to work in exchange for a little guidance, because even to be a thief you need to learn the trade, have a support network and a way to sell what you steal.

55 is the protagonist, a teenager who is the leader of a group, who has risen through the ranks in the paedophile's school. 55 has earned a space for himself, a room in a shack, while the others in the group sleep in isolation, but this young man does not feel like a winner. On the contrary, he feels worthless and is searching for his place in the world. However, it is very difficult to change his predetermined destiny, because even though he dreams of changing his name and having another identity, he is known by the number 55, a tattoo with which he was marked from day one and which is a sign that he has an owner and is a slave.
55 has become an expert at his job, stealing at the train station or inside it, along with all his companions, who are usually groups of 8 or 10 children and young people of different ages, who act as shoe shiners, lost children, or young people helping the elderly; all with a strategy to attack the victim, which I understand through signs, photos, and other means. In the end, 55 can keep the victim's ID card and, after handing over the loot, decides to follow his victims, learning about their reactions when they realise they have been robbed and the consequences of this act.
One day, he follows one of his victims, an elderly man who has just left the bank with a large sum of money. He observes how this man tells his daughters, the only people he lives with, about the theft. From their reaction, it seems that the money was for something very important. The money was his eldest daughter's dowry. Losing it meant losing the chance for her to marry and have a better life, a commitment that had been made since she was a child.

In this part of the film, I learned that this tradition still continues in India, but I thought it was the groom who had to pay the dowry. This is not the case, as marriage is a commercial transaction in some ways, and the party that does not have the status to offer must provide the money. Well, back to the film, 55 felt guilty about what he was doing and knew the consequences of his thefts. The next day, at his usual time for stealing, he saw the man he had robbed the day before take his own life by throwing himself in front of a train. From then on, he decided to make amends in some way for the damage he had caused.

He met the man's daughter, and they touched each other's lives. Although 55 could not turn back time, he chose to risk everything, even his own life, for a change. In the process, he began to learn lessons and receive messages of inspiration, such as:
A person's greatest value is called self-esteem, and it begins with recognising and accepting your identity. No one can own you, a number is not a name, and the main human right is identity.
For me, this film is based on love, forgiveness and transformation in such a subtle way that it makes you fall in love. Before I finish, I would like to share some of its profound dialogues, such as this one:
When they say to 55:
You have the power to choose the man you want to be:
A thief who steals people's money,
or someone who risks everything to give it back?
You have to choose; you cannot be both at the same time.

Cover image created by me with canva Source with resources from imdb
Translated and formatted with Deepl Translate
Posted Using INLEO