f Heading east: Spanish Bengali collisions in El próximo oriente/The Next Orient

In El próximo oriente/The Next Orient (2006), director Fernando Colomo takes on the always controversial issue of immigration from Muslim countries and the European struggle to understand and come to terms with its new multilingual, multicultural reality. In this case, the focus is on the once-again multicultural Spain, which has been dealing in healthy and unhealthy ways with the twin challenges of a high immigration rate and a very low native birth rate. Rather than focusing on the banal plot, however, we think about the importance of the sound track in this film, both spoken and musical (including the Goya-nominated Bengali song, ‘Shokal Fire Ashe’/The Morning Returns, and the crucial information provided in the nonsubtitled exchanges in Bengali by the Bangladeshi immigrant characters.