Casas para todos (Houses for all) is a film about the visible relicts of the financial crisis and raises the question what's left after promising plans and big hopes. The film is a collage-documentary, which deliberately avoids a journalistic approach - images of abandoned towns , half-finished resort developments and ' squatters ' houses. Gereon Wetzel takes us to a parallel universe that seems strangely familiar but full of absurdities. Sometimes it feels like you’re watching stills, photos of ghost towns after a nuclear strike. There is no explicit explanation for what we are seeing, but the publicity videos of overambitious real estate megaprojects speak for themselves. Most Spaniards can barely make ends meet – let alone pay a mortgage – but the developers keep on building. It makes for bleak yet beautiful scenes of desolate roads and playgrounds overgrown with weeds, and of Spanish people living in some woods by the side of the road with all their belongings, because in spite of all the vacant housing, they can't afford to live there. The film leaves it to the viewer to judge, but really there is only one possible conclusion: if there is one country that’s really suffering from the real estate bubble, it is Spain. In breathtaking pictures and stories Wetzel shows us the insane implications of a world wide crisis that hit Spain and its formerly booming real estate market. Over 3,6 Million housing units are unoccupied but whoever cannot pay the mortgage is homeless.
Gereon Wetzel, born 1972 in Bonn, Germany. He studied archaeology in Heidelberg, and from 2000 to 2006 at the department of documentary film at the University of Television and Film Munich. Gereon Wetzel is co-founder of the DVD Label ‘DocCollection’ and works in Munich as a freelance author, filmmaker and tutor.
