Valados (‘Walls’)

Synopsis

Helen and Adrian are inseparable friends, they love being together and playing as much as they can.  One day, worrying events begin to happen in their town, as if a strange wind were blocking happiness from the streets and leaving hate and fear in its place.  The authorities order barriers to be raised – barbed-wire fences, concrete walls, armed guards – to separate and isolate part of the town and the people who live there.  Visible walls, and also invisible ones, which separate Adrian and Helena and prevent them from being together. The two children have to come up with different strategies to keep the intense friendship which unites them alive.

Valados deals with a story of universal reach.  There are currently more than 7,600 km of walls in the world, erected to separate people or to impede migrations.  To these must be added other, more numerous ones: the invisible walls, which favour social exclusion and injustice.