Vincenzo Amato, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Aurora Quattrocchi, Francesco Casisa.

****

IT'S hard to believe the Italian director behind 2002's bland arthouse film Respiro could have produced this challenging, richly compassionate film. Emanuele Crialese looks like a director to watch. Golden Door is the story of a hard-scrabble Sicilian family's emigration to America in the early 20th century. It's unflinching and unsentimental but told with a benevolence that recalls the raw humanism of Roberto Rossellini's Paisan.

Life is one long labour for the Mancuso family. After much agonising, they decide to emigrate with two locals girls: the men are lured by forged photos of enormous vegetables and trees that grow money; the girls by rich husbands. They sell their livestock to buy used clothes and look respectable, but the second-hand suits cannot disguise their ragged, deep-worn faces.

The story is really about the journey: the leaving of a barren, howling landscape; the transAtlantic trip crowded below deck like livestock; and eventually to Ellis Island, where they are vetted, condescended and IQ tested to weed out "the feeble minded." On the boat, they become entwined with Lucy (Charlotte Gainsbourg), an upper class, English speaking woman who is a bit of a puzzle to them . . . and to us, because her character seems needless, shoehorned in for film star lustre.

Still, Crialese captures the false dreams, the indignity of immigration and wide-eyed innocence: the look and feel of a first pair of shoes; the first time stepping into a shower. There are some exquisite visual metaphors composed by cinematographer (and Claire Denis regular) Agnes Godard. The film speaks as a challenge to a common belief that immigrants are happy to leave their homes; the truth is, no matter how poor, leaving home can be one of the hardest and most demeaning things to do.

Dixie Chicks: Shut Up And Sing (Barbara Kopple and Cecilia Peck):

Natalie Maines, Emily Robison, Martie Maguire.

Running time: 99 minutes.

***

AT A gig in London in 2003, the words: "Just so you know, we're ashamed that the president of the United States is Texas, " tumbled out of the mouth of Dixie Chicks' Texan-born singer Natalie Maines. The crowd cheered; the singer laughed. But she might as well have said, "I've got the pox."

Red belt America went apoplectic, and overnight they lost their core country audience. They were targeted by protesters, banned from radio networks and received a death threat. Directors Barbara Kopple and Cecilia Peck were granted intimate access and they capture the turbulence, the insecurity and the band's ultimately successful fight back for free speech. The three women manage this while having kids and raising a family too. They make the Spice Girls look like adolescent twits. Sections of the film are clunkily put together, but it succeeds in making the point that free speech is an inalienable right in America, so long as you shut your mouth.

The Ugly Duckling and Me (Michael Hegner and Karsten Kiilerich):

Morgan Jones, Paul Tylak, Barbara Bergin.

Running time: 88 minutes.

***

HANS Christian Andersen's fairy tale is given a twist in this lively computer animated kids movie, co-produced by Magma Studios in Galway. It has a bit of the ugly duckling about it itself: the start is flecked with garish rough edges, but it gains in confidence, taking flight with sharp-angled fun and sweet characters.

Ratso (Morgan Jones) is a selfobsessed impresario who goes on the run to the countryside to escape a street gang who want his neck. When he stumbles upon an egg, he finds himself the unwitting parent of a duckling he calls Ugly . . . so ugly he plans to make a killing by turning it into a carnival act. But Ugly has a winning personality and noble character; soon Ratso finds himself confronting his own shallow prejudices.

This fable about growing up is written by Mark Hodkinson, and proves it's possible to take on the big-budgeted studio cartoons.