What if a parallel universe truly exists? This idea forms the starting point of The Other Side of Town, an observing documentary in which two villages are portrayed that are namesakes; Bakel in Senegal and Bakel in The Netherlands. The more than six thousand kilometres that separates the two places has allowed them to flourish into two analogous worlds. They however turn out to have more in common than just their village name. By mirroring analogous lives of a myriad of villagers in both Bakels, coincidence is put to the ultimate test. What initially seems to be a comparison of black versus white gradually becomes more colourful and nuanced.
In The Other Side of Town we enter a microcosm that bathes in nostalgia: two sleepy villages that slowly awake in the dawn of globalization, the great march of civilization. Through them we investigate what progress and modernity mean, developments that slowly make their appearance into both places. From the loss of religion and community values to the growing domination of television and pop culture, more and more cracks gradually become visible in the otherwise utopian biotopes. Which coping mechanisms do people use when change arrives? And what does that say about us as human beings?
While some villagers entrain the train of modern day, others stick to their nostalgic ideas of what the village once was. What remains are two villages in similar despair, some desperately longing for the past, while others toxically dreaming of the other Bakel. And precisely through these constant comparisons it also reveals a universal portrait of humankind, playing with clichés and filled with paradoxes.
