Midnight Traveler is, in my considered opinion,
a must-see documentary. It tells, from the inside, a harrowing and moving
story of a family literally running for their lives. Of necessity, the movie is made in a cinema verité
style with what has been called “radical subjectivity.” It’s a film that is
fascinating to watch and, if you are at all like me, you will find that it
resonates for days afterward.
The movie has screened at over forty film festivals this
year. Among other awards, it has won a Special Jury Award at Sundance, the
Golden Gate Award at the SF International Film Festival, and a Special Mention
Award at the Berlinale International Festival earlier this year. It opened at New York’s Film Forum a couple
weeks ago and begins a nationwide rollout at select theaters this weekend. See below for more details.
Midnight Traveler is by Afghan filmmaker Hassan
Fazili. Fazili’s background includes developing plays, short films,
documentaries and television serials in Afghanistan, as well as working with
British and other filmmakers. His documentary, Peace in Afghanistan was
about a Taliban commander who chose to reject violence, quit fighting and
sought out a peaceful civilian life. In early 2015, program aired on national television
in that country. That March, the Taliban assassinated the former commander and put
a price on Fazili’s head. Fazili moved his family – wife Fatima Hossaini (also
a filmmaker) and two young daughters Nargis and Zahra – to Tajikistan, seeking
refuge. After fourteen months there, during which he submitted numerous asylum
applications - to Australia, to Hungary, Germany and many more, none of which were
granted – the family was given two weeks to voluntarily repatriate themselves
to Afghanistan or face arrest and forcibly deportation.
Fazili formed the idea to turn their journey into a
documentary. So the movie starts on ‘Day 1” as the family is packing the car for
the long trip back to Kabul. They sell or give away most of their stuff and on “Day
2”, parents and children start the journey back home to an uncertain future. Nargis
is about six years old and Zahra is perhaps three at the time. Not long after
returning to Kabul, Hassan learns that the Taliban is cracking down, and that he
must hurriedly leave again. He and Hossaini agree that they’ll try to make their
way to Germany or at least somewhere in the EU. Three thousand five hundred
miles later, they finally smuggle themselves into Hungary - having travelled by
car, train, boat and often on foot, having camped like hoboes in forests, run desperately
across open fields, driven and trekked over arid deserts and snowy mountains, across
Iran, Turkey, Bulgaria (met there by angry, anti-refugee mobs) and Serbia (spending
more than sixteen months in a detention camp there). While Hungary is in the EU,
the family spends over three months in a walled, barbed-wire enclosed, prison-like
detention center there before temporary asylum and a level of freedom are
attained … more than a thousand days after the journey began.
This is not your usual documentary. It’s not the story as
seen and told by an interested outsider showing us what “those unfortunate people”
have had to endure. It is as different from the typical journalistic
perspective as night and day. Rather it is a highly personal story - filmed from
the inside of a refugee’s experience. Throughout, Midnight Traveler
remains an intimate story - about the journey of this family, their struggles
to hold things together, their fears and the very real risks they
faced. Fazili had no fancy equipment. The entire thing was shot with three cell
phones – primarily by Fazili himself, but also sometimes by Hossaini and even
by the children. There are many moments of hardship, fear, depression and such,
as you’d imagine – which being so directly personal to the family have greater
resonance than might be the case in a more “objective” documentary; but also
there are moments of the family at rest, at play, of kids being kids and parents
being parents. Of their attempt to live a normally as possible in the worst of
circumstances.
For the older girl, Nargis, one even senses that she sometimes
enjoyed the adventure of her experience, and of being treated sometimes more as
a companion than as a child. At one point relatively early on (Day 9), in a car
on a highway approaching Qom, Iran, she exuberantly exclaims “I was feeling down, but now that we are in
Iran, I feel great!” Later, however, we
see how being a migrant takes its toll. Holed-up in a temporary shelter, she
has an emotional break down, tearfully repeating over and over “I’m bored.” In
Bulgaria, following a loud demonstration not far from their shelter, the mob
chanting “Deport! No day in court!”, younger daughter, Zahra (who’s four or
five by now) is crying unconsolably and sobs “I don’t like this anymore! I’m
going to tell the gangs to come and take me away from here!”
It’s no better for Hassan and Fatima, who again and again
find themselves at the mercy of strangers. They paid a small fortune to a
smuggler in Afghanistan, who eventually abandons them. More money is paid to
another, who at one point separates their family from a larger group of
refugees. They don’t know exactly where he is taking them. They are scared he’s
going to take their daughters away.
Of course, Fazili and his family are one of literally
thousands of families on the move, literally running for their lives, subject
to arrest, few if any legal rights or protections, bureaucratic rules often
arbitrarily applied and over which they zero control, living day to day and
often hand to mouth, with little more than hope and perseverance to keep them
going. But that’s the background, not
the focus, which steadfastly remains personal. It is full of urgency without
being polemical. It’s the closeness and subjective nature of Midnight Traveler
that it so fascinating and affecting. And universal.
The subjectivity is also what makes this movie so
aesthetically interesting. Because Fazili is both father/husband/refugee and,
at the same time, the filmmaker. This sometimes
creates a moral dilemma and even some self-loathing, which in a voiceover late
in the picture, he discusses quite candidly and movingly. It’s at a point where, in a detention camp,
Zahra has gone missing. Everyone is looking for her Is she playing? Has she
been harmed or worse? It’s a parent’s worst nightmare. At the same time, Fazili thinks about filming
the search because, he notes, in addition to the other frantic thoughts rushing
through his panicked brain, the filmmaker mind is contemplating terrible “scenes”
which he realizes could turn out to be a dramatic centerpiece for his movie. “I
only imagined it for a moment,” he says. But, “I hated myself so much.” “I love
being a filmmaker. But sometimes cinema is so dirty.”
At the beginning of the film, Nargis, by now perhaps ten
years old, narrates a brief introduction, including this: "I’ve learned many
things from traveling across the desert and the plains. And after crossing the
wilderness, I’ve arrived at some truths. For instance, the road of life winds
through hell. ... And this is a story of a journey to
the edge of hell.”
Midnight Travelers is so immediate, so honest,
illuminating, provocative and humane, it is one of those rare documentaries
that stays with you, in your heart and in your mind for days after seeing it.
Indeed, it grows in meaning and stature over time. As I said at the outset, in
my view it is a must-see movie.
1 hour 30 minutes.
Grade: A
Midnight Traveler opens in L.A. and the SF
Bay Area this weekend (October 4th ) (at the Nuart Theater in L.A.,
the Opera Plaza in SF and the Shattuck in Berkeley). Next weekend, October 11th
it will open in Austin, and then in other select theaters around the
country beginning October 18th.
Check this link
for screenings/opening dates in your area.
If you can see it on the big screen, do. If you can’t find it, keep an eye out, as it likely
will be broadcast on PBS’s POV program at some point.
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