The image of the boat drifting into New York harbor past Ellis Island is a mythic one, used in countless films about the immigrant experience. Emanuele Crialese grounds his tale of immigration in the mythic and the wondrous, much as he did in [Respiro]. In 1913 Sicily, a community of peasants awaits word from some of the men they have sent to the new world. An American stranger arrives one day, charged to escort the remaining families to the Promised Land. All they have to do is abandon their history, jettison their beliefs and swear new loyalties. [Golden Door] is “the story of an odyssey: of a past abandoned, of a people transformed. Of history made and humanity reborn.”