New Movies: Demographic Disaster

In Europe and the U.S., Latin America and the Middle East, dirt-poor farmers and peasants whose forebears never dreamed of leaving the land are trekking to cities by the millions. Instead of finding the promised good life and good pay, most of them end up in a demoralized, debt-ridden limbo of menial jobs and ghetto housing. This contemporary demographic disaster is the subject of Voyage of Silence, a somber documentation of a Portuguese peasant's emigration to France. Produced by Philippe de Broca—a new wave filmmaker best known for frothy fantasy (That Man from Rio, The Five-Day Lover)—the movie is...