San Sebastian 2023 Review: GAMMA RAYS Illuminates Youth Immigrant Lives

Quebecois director Henry Bernadet returns with adolescent docu-drama Gamma Rays (orig. Les rayons gamma), zeroing in on the lives of young immigrants.

The patchwork of three interlinking stories has been crafted in a collaborative manner with non-professional actors from immigrant communities, particularly from the neighborhood of Villeray and St-Michel. The story is a timely portrait of youth during a summer, idling, doing odd jobs, arguing about the future with parents, breaking or mending bonds of friendship, or mingling with an estranged family.

The script's core has been devised through extensive workshops with high school students, primarily from Georges Vanier School, establishing a framework born out of authentic interactions and real-life anecdotes. The dialogues are loosely scripted and stem from organic expressions, offering an unvarnished glimpse into the lives and opinions of Canadian immigrant youth.

Gamma Rays explores intertwined lives through three distinct narrative arcs. Fatima (Chaimaa Zinedine) is a firecracker Moroccan who works as a supermarket cashier and has problems with attitude. The nagging of her parents about her future professional prospects does not appear to bother her. She has her tough exterior, and is more concerned with her unfinished business with a drug dealer who wants his money back.

The arc of Abdel (Yassine Jabrane) starts as a comedy when his cousin Omar (Hani Laroum) arrives for the summer and their cohabitation takes the shape of Perfect Strangers. However, the twist comes when Abdel forces Omar to go on his own, a misunderstanding turning into a search and rescue mission.

The third character is Toussaint (Chris Kanyembuga), a preternaturally intelligent yet introverted Afro-Canadian loner who finds a telephone number in a bottle while fishing. Calls to the stranger turn Toussaint into a more socialable person, seeking advice, and consulting on his daily doings.

Bernadet’s venture into exploring the lives of these young individuals is a conscious departure from his prior work, aiming to delve into the lives of those forming the fabric of the future Quebec society. Gamma Rays has the feel of a British coming-of-age film, following the many dramas and incidents in the daily dealings of British youngsters in a socio-psychological probe into the collective consciousness.

Instead of tower of blocks, housing estates, and city periphery, Bernadet observes the lives of inner-city kids around the authentic ambiance of St-Michel and its surrounding locales of Montreal vistas. Gamma Rays is as much about the youth as about the city itself.

The director acknowledges the influence of Ken Loach and Mike Leigh; Gamma Rays leans more towards the latter, if one reference should be picked. The film's title hints at an underlying theme of invisible forces driving and redirecting the lives of youngsters in a predictable and unpredictable manner.

Gamma Rays is underlined by a documentary approach while Bernadet infuses inner-city realism with a poetical depiction of the city, leading to a contemplative mood. The plot is free-flowing, rather  than meticulously crafted and calculated. The protagonists are swept along by circumstances, nudged into action by minor happenings, sudden twists, or sour revelations that in their young lives may seem like world-shattering and dramatic shifts.

Gamma Rays explores coming-of-age, cultural diversity, and the group consciousness of the rising generation against the backdrop of immigrant communities in a medley of fates and happenings that oscillate between realist and oneiric in a docu-drama format. 

Read more about the film at the official San Sebastian International Film Festival site.