Junkyard Palace

Two men are boxing inside a junkyard in the suburbs of Barcelona. It’s pure fighting: without protection, without rules, without a ring. Young men encircling the fighters are filming them on cell phones and cheering them on.

So many young men are drawn to the clandestine junkyard fights that Javi Garcia Roche decides to change tactics. He stops the junkyard fights and opens Junkyard Palace, a free boxing gym, where he now teaches young men without many prospects to become real boxers and, in the process, men of honor with values, fighting for their recognition in society.

The film shows the relationship between Javi and three of his most “problematic” boys: Bengana, Musa and Juanito both inside and outside of the boxing ring as Javi tries to help them to avoid falling into crime. But it’s not so simple. The boys are fighting an everyday reality of discrimination as immigrants, an impossibility in finding employment affected by the Spanish crisis, poverty and an environment where crime is the most probable path they’ll follow because of what they see in their most immediate circles.

As they prepare for their next championship and we enter into their worlds both inside and outside the ring, it becomes clear that this isn’t only the boys’ mission to fight marginality but the project is Javi’s fight against himself.