ANYWHERE ANYTIME
(The 2024 Toronto International Film Festival runs September 5-15 and HtN has you covered once again. Check out Chris Reed’s Anywhere Anytime movie review. Seen it? Join the conversation with HtN on our Letterboxd Page.)
Life can be a challenge for migrants everywhere. The reasons why people leave their home are manifold, and though laws and procedures exist to ensure legal immigration, if someone’s circumstances are dire, it may seem faster and simpler to enter a country by circumventing such systems. Judge not too harshly, ye who have not been in the shoes of those pursuing such risky strategies.
In Anywhere Anytime, director Milad Tangshir (Star Stuff) follows the travails of one such undocumented worker in Italy. Issa (Ibrahima Sambou) is from Senegal, and has no papers. As the movie begins, he is hard at work in a local outdoor food market, moving boxes and goods. Unfortunately, the nearby police spook his employer, who chooses to let him go rather than chance getting fined. And so Issa finds himself suddenly without a job.
Fortunately, he has a good friend, Mario (Moussa Dicko Diango) who is set up more securely (working in a restaurant) and is willing to help. He offers Issa both his cell phone and his profile as a bicycle food deliverer on a local app (“We all look the same to them, so no one will notice”). They strike a good bargain on a bike, and off Issa goes, a new source of income coming soon.
At first, all is good, and Issa even has time to romance fellow migrant Awa (Success Edemakhiota). But anyone who has seen Italian neorealist master Vittoria De Sica’s iconic 1948 Bicycle Thieves can guess what happens next. After just a day on the job, Issa leaves his bike unprotected and someone steals it. For the rest of the narrative he will look for it, eventually taking drastic action with horrific consequences.
Director Tangshir is originally from Iran, where he was a member of the rock band Ahoora. He moved to Italy in 2011, and though he clearly came legally, he brings a sharp sensitivity to the plight of those who have not. This dovetails with a detailed concern with the difficulties of being poor. Anywhere Anytime allows him ample space to explore the precarious existence of so many people on the planet who have no safety net.
This is his first fiction feature, though much of the footage feels informed by his previous documentary background. He also has a fine way with actors new to the profession, from whom he elicits powerful performances (just like De Sica before him). The final result is a poignant examination of how poverty and desperation lead to bad decisions and more desperation. It’s a vicious cycle that can happen to anyone, anywhere, anytime.
– Christopher Llewellyn Reed (@ChrisReedFilm)
Toronto International Film Festival; Anywhere Anytime; Milad Tangshir
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