Starring: Daniel Karimyar, Fardin Mijdzadeh, Milad Eskandari, Belal Faiz, Elaha Faiz, Zahra Mehrwarz
Distributor: Madman Films
Runtime: 89 mins. Reviewed in Mar 2022
Reviewer: Fr Peter Malone msc
| 
| 
An Afghan refugee story told in animation with inserts from actual film footage. Amin escapes in the 1980s to Moscow, then to Denmark in the 1990s. He has had to keep his story secret but now reveals his journey and life.
A film about refugees from Afghanistan, with its release more poignant by the collapse of Kabul and the retaking of the country by the Taliban in 2021.
This striking film was Oscar-nominated in three categories: Best Documentary, Best Animation, Best Foreign Language Film. It has been nominated in, and won a number of, awards at various festivals.
But the refugee at the centre of the story, Amin, takes us back to 1984. It is a seemingly ordinary life in the capital with an amount of freedom. However, the monarchy has been previously toppled, the Mujahadin are exercising power and there is the Communist influence. Amin’s father is arrested, imprisoned and disappears. His family suffer oppression, an older brother drafted to the military but escaping, the family relying on help to escape to Moscow. By the mid-1990s, after years in Moscow, Amin leaves Russia, with the help of a refugee trafficker, a teenager finding that instead of going to Sweden to meet with his brother and family, he is sent to Denmark, having to keep quiet about his identity, a fabricated story about the death of the rest of his family, something that he conceals for many years.
While we might say that this is a familiar enough story, repeated over the decades and relevant to 2021, it is the way that the story is told that continually demands our attention and keeps us fascinated.
While there is a voice-over from Amin, narrating his story throughout the film, the visual method used is that of animation. The style is direct and broad, bringing to life the many episodes in Amin’s life, as a little boy (prone to wearing his sister’s dresses), playing in the streets, his home life, the older sister telling heroic stories about their father, then the arrest, imprisonment, oppression and fear and the effect on the mother.
Animation means we probably pay more attention to Amin and his story than we might have in a direct biographical documentary. The narrative has its moments of pain, uncertainty and relief.
Intercut with Amin telling his story is the revelation that until now, even with friends and his partner, he has not revealed the truth, that his family are still alive. The director has him lie down on the carpet, interviews him like a psychologist, eliciting more and more truth from Amin.
We also learn that Amin has had a successful life, an academic career, time in the United States. He also reveals his sexual orientation, his uncertainties, the grim view of homosexuality in Afghan society, the family accepting him as he is, and his marriage with his partner.
The animation is more effective because of the wide range of newsreel and television footage interspersed throughout, which brings a heightened sense of reality to situations in Afghanistan, war, suffering and escape.
It is a moving story that invites audiences to be more understanding and sympathetic to refugees, and to appreciate what they have experienced and suffered.
12 Random Films…
