The Visitor

What would you do if you came back to your apartment and some illegal immigrants had settled in it? This is what Walter Wale, a professor in economics, has to face when he comes back to New York to participate in an academic conference in the NYU. Without stopping to think about the caliber of this unexpected situation, Walter will get in a new life that cannot be further away from what his life in Connecticut used to be. He will make friends with Tarek, an immigrant from Syria, and his wife Zainab, from Senegal, who will show him how important to live your own life is. However, a reversal of fortune will carry the main character to a series of dreadful events that will make him reconsider the idea of coming back to his old city or, on the other hand, staying in New York to get involved in a hurricane of passions and feelings for example, love that will make him know why life is worth it.
Immigration is treated as a delicate and fragile theme. The director shows the blind side of immigrants, how they help other people to find their way and what they get in exchange. Prejudice and injustice are present all along the movie to represent the kind of turbulent society in which an immigrant apparently looking for a better life is continuously fighting to get a better life.
Brilliantly portrayed by Academy Award nominee Richard Jenkins and directed by Thomas McCarthy, The Station Agent _or Up, this is an independent movie about loneliness and darkness; about what we live and what we leave along the way; about obscurity and rejection; in other words, about light after darkness.