A simple line at the beginning of the film—“Everyone is fleeing”—sets the context for In the Land of Brothers, the debut feature of Raha Amirfazli and Alireza Ghasemi. Things begin in 2001. The US crackdown on the Taliban government in Afghanistan has resulted in civilian casualties, forcing people to leave their homeland and seek refuge in distant shores. One such extended family lands in Iran which, incidentally, is currently supposed to be housing 5 million Afghan refugees.
Through three different stories spanning three decades in time, revolving around three members of the same family, Amirfazli and Ghasemi present the predicaments, conflicts, and contradictions of trying to find a home in a land where you are an outsider. An acceptance that is hard to buy. A struggle that doesn’t seem to end.
The Iran-France-Netherlands co-production that won the Directing Award in the World Cinema Dramatic section of the Sundance Film Festival is a brave expose of the permanence of governmental, administrative, authoritative, and institutional threats to the immigrants, and the harassment, violence, and cruelty, both insidious and glaring, that they get subjected to physically, mentally, and emotionally.
There is a painful precariousness to their lives—often undocumented and unaccounted for—with death, deportation, and separation from family looming large on the horizon. So dire and bleak are things that disappearances and deportations seem to harbour a bigger sense of loss and grief than even the finality of death.
All three stories have a common thematic thread tying them together. That of all that is hidden and covert. The first chapter, set in 2001, is about a young and bright student Mohammad, who, despite a valid identity card, catches the evil eyes of the cops, is forced to do free labour, becomes the object of exploitation and bullying, and then, one fine day, doesn’t return home. Even as his ladylove Leila waits for him.
Ten years later we meet Leila again, now a young wife and mother, and a maid in a kind Iranian household. She is facing loss yet again but can’t go public about the sudden death of her husband Hussain lest she and her son Omid be forced to go back to Afghanistan. The last story set in 2021 is centred on Leila’s brother Ghasem. His son leaves home, in the guise of finding a job in Turkey, only to join forces in Syria to never return from the battlefront. How long can his Ghasem hide this reality from his wife?
Amirfazli and Ghasemi believe in the power of the implicit. It’s the TV and radio in the background that help fill up the details of the time. The stories are told straight and simple, without sentimentality and stylistic flourishes. It’s quietude and thrift that lend the film its humane depth and overwhelming compassion. There’s clarity, conviction, and grace to their filmmaking.
It’s quite evidently a character-focused film, and each of the three leads is dealt with empathy, leaving one affected and moved by their plight and boundless tragedy. The non-professional actors are surprisingly competent, making the pain vivid with their wonderful performances marked by gravitas and profundity.
There is fluidity and subtlety of expression and an easy and effortless presence to all three. Mohammad Hosseini makes you care for his innocent, vulnerable, and imperiled Mohammad, Hamideh Jafari is luminous as the anguished Leila, and Bashir Nikzad as Ghasem truly looks as though he is carrying the weight of the entire world on his shoulder. Together they personify the resilience and spirit of survival, something that is universal to refugees, constantly in the eye of hatred and bigotry, worldwide. But the filmmakers also offer a note of hope in the end. When all doors seem to close, a window could still be open. Beyond the alienation, there could still be a possibility to belong.