Dialect

The poetics of documentary, performance, and choreography combine to politically question the bureaucratic dead time for young migrants trapped in the Spanish legal system.

Dialect encompasses three years of state violence for nine young Moroccan migrants exiled in a Kafkaesque limbo in Seville, southern Spain. When migrant children enter the country illegally and cannot be verified as adults, their custody remains with the state, subjecting them to a lengthy process of up to three years to obtain legal status.

In this state of suspension and liminality, Beltrán uses the body as a metaphor: through a carefully articulated language of photography, performance, and collaboration, the weight of dead time is recorded on the shoulders of these young people, entering into dialogue with their memories, their journeys, and the humiliating monotony of waiting and migration. Along with video works and dance choreographies, Dialect opens new paths in the documentary field to shed critical light on the practices of bureaucratic oppression.