Synopsis
I match up ROUTE ONE with THE WAY SOUTH. Obviously also a road movie, except that the road surface has mostly been rolled up by the wheels of a car or a plane and taken along to the next stop, so that one is moving by fits and starts.
Once you are here, then there - and what is between here and there is up to you to fill in: the inner journey, the route you plot out for yourself. The film starts on the 30th of April 1980 in Amsterdam - coronation of a new queen, occupation of a building by squatters, confrontation with the forces of order - and moves via Paris, Southern France, the Alps, Rome and Calabria to Cairo and Upper Egypt. It is a story of outer emigration and inner alienation, but also an ode to the courage of living. It is the obsession of the places, the rooms, the streets where people try to communicate their lives to other people and fight their battles against the daily injustice of the world.
Johan van der Keuken