NZIFF ’20: YOU WILL DIE AT TWENTY

2019; directed by Amjad Abu Alala; written by Amjad Abu Alala and Yousef Ibrahim; 103 mins

Without wanting to sound like some facile Westerner, You Will Die at Twenty – in stark contrast to Ema – was the film I needed right now. Because, certain key elements of this story about Sudanese people living far more deprived lives than I do, have a universal outreach which gave the frightened, reluctant, lazy bastard in me something to really think about. That aside, Amjad Abu Alala‘s debut feature is a coming-of-age movie with a very different trajectory, as far as the main character is concerned, there’s a very clear full stop at the end of his childhood.

Muzamil’s mother, Sakira, takes her infant son to be blessed by an aged priest. However, during the ceremony, a seriously unfortunate incident occurs and the child is thereby cursed. Muzamil grows up with the full knowledge that he is to die on his 20th birthday, as does everyone else in his village. Dad couldn’t handle it and ran away and so, left alone with these burdens, Sakira becomes very severe, marking off the days and keeping Muzamil from studying. He grows into a very serious young man but his 19th year is notable by its non-achievements. A meeting with the irascible, seemingly sinful Sulaiman begins an awakening for Muzamil, that he is not living his life and there is more to it than devotion and servitude.

Like the best dramas, You Will Die at Twenty, has a wellspring of empathy for all its characters and while it is true that Muzamil is kept from enjoying his brief time on the planet by his mother, you are never left in any doubt as to where Sakira is coming from. In fact, when Muzamil’s other relationships with women go sour, we understand where the women are coming from and Abu Alala makes sure that their voices are as clear as his without losing focus. To be honest, even most western films of this ilk don’t have the fair-mindedness on display here. Even if one of those films doesn’t judge the girl, it doesn’t explore her feelings at all. It doesn’t demonise the men but nor does it let them off the hook when they’re being cowardly or bullheaded regarding their responsibilities and opinions.

That empathetic strain also flags up the film’s clear-headedness regarding its politics. While it is critical of restrictive religious dogma which guides people toward illogical and potentially harmful life choices, which have crippled the lives of Muzamil and his family, Abu Alala along with co-writer, Yousef Ibrahim are cagey about the more arrogant side of liberalism. Soulaiman is introduced as this free man, apart from the community, who smokes, drinks, unashamedly has a prostitute girlfriend and questions the Quran and Muslim faith. He is the man who could steer the nebbish Muzamil to a more fulfilling life course but he is also a self-important man, whose outspoken nature is sometimes hurtful to his nearest and dearest because he’s too full of his own liberal righteousness to shut his mouth every now and again.

Thinking about the film afterwards, one begins to notice certain clichés of the coming-of-age genre but it’s hard to call them flaws in any way when it wasn’t apparent as the film was playing. You Will Die at Twenty has the unconventional mentor and the heartbreak and such like but all couched within a culture and a way of making films which – to me, at least – is almost entirely new and different. Most of these stories are a kid’s awakening to the passage of time and the onset of adulthood. Muzamil’s self-realisation is made more interesting by the fact that, as far as he’s concerned, his adult years will not happen and yet he’s been conditioned to follow a path of religious obeisance which everyone acknowledges will be of no use to him. It also subtly emphasises, in a more immediate sense, the pointlessness of spending one’s entire life preparing for another one. Even if you’re of a sceptical frame of mind, however, the film still has a rising tension because you really don’t know what Muzamil is going to do with his life and it still reaches you as opportunities wriggle free of his grasp. All of which sounds very fraught and yet, like the Malian film, Timbuktu, this has that same naturally understated, undemonstrative tenor which perhaps is endemic of North African peoples (I don’t know). You Will Die at Twenty does let rip a bit more in a couple of scenes and I think really benefits from doing so.

Much of the film has a minimalistic look with figures in wide shots against barren desert locations or mud-brick buildings. From the opening shot of a dead, near-skeletal animal baking in the sun, the film sets up its themes of death and deprivation, laying out both the spiritual and the political, foreground and background themes which will dog the narrative. Dotted throughout the predominant visuals, there are fourth-wall breaking moments and every camera technique in the book, surprisingly, none of which takes you out of the story. True History of the Kelly Gang wanted, incrementally, to jolt you out of it (and did it very well) but Abu Alala and cinematographer, Sébastian Goepfert, are using their camera set-ups to tell the inner story and for no other reason. At least, that’s what it feels like and that is to be commended when it’s so hard not to end up calling attention to yourself – and I think a few Oscar-friendly directors should pay attention to this movie.

At the beginning, I worried about saying that I ‘totally identify’ with this movie for fear of seeming blind to the vast differences between my life and those of the characters but I guess I meant that, like most coming-of-age movies, this one flagged up my arrested development worries about my time left on this planet, particularly as a fat western arsehole. You Will Die at Twenty came along at the right time and just connected better than most other movies.