MIFF Session 6: THE SWALLOWS OF KABUL

Atiq is a guard at a prison for condemned women. At home his wife is wasting from cancer. Elsewhere in the same neighbourhood of Kabul the beautiful young Zunaria is drawing on the wall listening to hiphop. Her husband Mosheen wanders the streets and comes across a stoning of one of Atiq's prisoners in a market. In a moment of confusion he enters the crowd, picks up a rock and throws it at the woman who collapses, pools of blood forming around her burka. Coming out of his mental haze he is overcome by guilt. When he returns home to the joyous Zunaria he cannot bring himself to tell her what he has done.

This animation from a novel by Yasmina Khadra is heavy on the smothering stasis of life in Kabul under the Taliban. Armed thugs patrol the streets watchful for what seem inconsequential acts which engender explosive violence. Personal freedom is a thing for the veiled fragility indoors but even there anyone might be listening.

This film is animated with what looks like a moving watercolour. Stunning use of chiaroscuro, the muted pallet of the location and an elegant evocation of character. Do you ever remember a film in another language as though it had been in English. I'm almost recalling scenes of this as live action. That's important as the single strongest impression I have of the emotional movement of this extraordinary film as well as its aesthetic is that of Italian neorealism. The search for and discovery of those moments of uplifting humanity in those bare but complex films of Rosselini and DeSica are in the blood here. The horrifying climax of the story held the entire auditorium of The Forum in a thick silence before a quiet almost unified release of breath. I was in tears.

This screened with the short Son of the Sea, a beautiful blend of animation and live action about a couple coping with their grief. Good to see shorts now and then. I feared they'd been policy-ed away. Then again, the feature was only 80 minutes.

This was an exchange for me as I had again to avoid a standby session and pick two others. This was a whimsical choice but I'm glad I made it.