As Belgian-produced documentaries attracted great turnout during the DOCVILLE festival, the praise for 'Grande Hotel' did not fail to be recognised. 'Grande Hotel' depicts with great naturalism and a hint of nostalgic humor, the unbearable yet frivolous survival trek that is called poverty in Beira, Mozambique.

'Grande Hotel': the name rings a bell with the luxurious and well-endowed crowd that pass through the grand corridors and shining hallways of the grotesque place in the fifties. With its 12,000 square meters and 110 rooms, on top of being a five star- project that was to be the "pride of Africa", it was doomed to fail. Decades later, the rooms are now populated by 3000 squatters that stripped the glory off the walls, recuperating every tiny valuable aspect in monetary funding (or alcohol for all that matters). The movie's contradictions embody the nation's cracks: deficiency alongside distorted extravagance, simultaneous glee and gloominess, daily routines filled with 'saudade'. No place on earth could represent the torn willingness of a voluntary group having to live together better than this extreme household.

A family living in the staircase, a street vendor selling her vegetables on the boardwalk and lending money to her costumers, a former pool filled with rainwater that serves as a washing table: everything finds its way in 'Grande Hotel'. Cinematographic ingenuity and a narrative-like structure had the hotel-environment come to light as an illustrious fairy-tale: one that would be told and re-told until the palpability and verifiability of the story's content would fade and appear lost and surreal. But surrealism is exactly what makes the documentary stand out: this city-within-a-city, this walled survival spot seems to be out-of-place, recalling its authentic goals infinitely and confronting its inhabitants daily with their impossible destiny. A future of getting away, of escapism, that is impossible to attain and therefore only appropriate to laugh with and ignore.

'Grande Hotel' is the story of an unexpected here and now, that needs to be dwelled and lived through, so as to overcome the cruelty in the outside world. Pity the nostalgic inhabitants would never know the hilariousness of their situation with Belgian crowds: it is as if Belgian audiences have the need to laugh away the sadness of being. But maybe that is for the better: no good can come out of lamenting, as one of the protagonists stated, and therefore we move on.