I don´t see no crisis

A road film. After having moved away from Spain five years ago, the protagonist and friends travel back to Spain for four months. With an all-including gaze, she observes the changes in a country that, since her departure, has come economically unraveled. The visual recordings show classical holiday pictures—a sunset, ocean’s spray splashing on the rocks. Surfers doing their thing. Familiar clichés that are nonetheless impossible to soak in lightheartedly. Too gloomy are the landscapes flashing past, in which unfinished hotel complexes rise like present-day ruins. The images are underscored by the narrator’s voice-over commentary. Her thoughts shape realities that remove the salt water from the holiday bliss. Historical facts and geographical distances measured in numbers meet with information on global relations of production, wages, and ticket prices. Statements by friends and fleeting acquaintances are reproduced, telling of unanticipated military jobs, self-optimization guides on television, scientists who play in game shows to win enough money to attend congresses and conferences. The images from the disembarking ferry with which the protagonist has travelled are linked with a commentary on the fatal crossings that have driven African refugees to death for decades. The display of skewed political situations makes a glorified reception of the former holiday paradise impossible. The anti-idyllic scene topples only once. At the end of the journey, the protagonist looks out over the roofs of Madrid from a terrace. Here, high above and far from the abandoned beaches and ghostly harbor, she gives a rough translation of a statement made by one of her co-travelers at the beginning of the film—Yo no veo crisis – I don’t see no crisis. For the end credits a brass band plays “Griechischer Wein” (Greek Wine). The taste is bitter.

(Melanie Letschnig)

Translation: Lisa Rosenblatt


Yo no veo crisis is a holiday film in the broadest sense, set in Spain, a country with proclaimed ninety percent national debt and skyrocketing youth unemployment. Inspired by conversations and observations, the travelers formulate a spirited and witty story about disparities – a sensory approach to that which the media tends to blithely sum up as the “crisis.”

(Diagonale Catalog, 2014)