Kamay

Kamay

Visions du Reel

VERDICT: Haunting and multi-layered, this is a stunning debut doc on death, female resistance and knowledge in the mountains of Afghanistan.

Ilyas Yourish and Shahrokh Bikaran have given their deeply haunting and sensitive debut documentary Kamay the name of a plant that grows wild in the windswept mountains of central Afghanistan. The resilience of kamay has special significance for the Hazara, the Shia Muslim ethnic minority who live in the region, whose armed uprising against attempted annexation was brutally suppressed by the Afghan regime in the late nineteenth century.

The opening titles of the film, which had its world premiere in the International Feature Film Competition at Visions du Reel in Nyon, recount the story of forty Hazera girls who, surrounded by troops and resisting to the last, chose to jump off a cliff rather than become enslaved — a historical event recounted with devastating echoes in one family’s current-day tragedy. Zahra Khawari, a young student from the remote province who had been writing her thesis at the University of Kabul, has poisoned herself after some kind of hushed-up, traumatic experience with her professor, and a legal case against him to hold him responsible for the suicide has been opened. Her remaining family is followed over six years, as they struggle to come to terms with the loss, clarify the hazy circumstances, and pursue justice. With the Taliban’s rise to power in 2021, comes a renewed cycle in the derailment of women’s lives and aspirations. This stunning, poetic doc captures layers of grief that are both personal and political.

Absence is achingly palpable in nearly every frame, in a film that is quietly observational, contemplative and full of solitude. It’s an atmosphere at odds with more standard, fact-heavy and analytical documentaries setting out legal cases, but it conveys how remote the province of Daikundi, often cut off by heavy snowfall, is from Kabul, and how little voice or leverage the Khawari family have to make themselves heard within a system that tends to veil its processes and cover up its power abuses. Zahra’s parents, who are tormented by her final cryptic phone call to the family, take the arduous and treacherous journey of several days by road to Kabul to follow her case, but it’s hard to for them to access information, and despite the legal proceedings and campus protests calling for justice, we too gain scant elucidation. Even the retrieval of her personal affects — the books and clothes that are as close to her physical presence as the family can now get in their grief is long-winded and bureaucratic. Over the course of the film, Taliban take over parts of the route, making the drive even more dangerous.

Zahra’s younger sister Freshta had taken long walks to the dark side of the mountain to gather kamay for her sister, whose original thesis was on livestock nutrition before her professor rejected it and her subsequent topics of research. In breathtaking shots of the landscape we see her small, determined figure framed against the austere sky as she collects the plant from the vast and rugged terrain. Freshta, who still sees Zahra a lot in dreams, addresses her dead sister directly in voiceover in almost a whisper, which at times swells into singing. She is preparing for the school National Entrance Exam, and must decide whether to follow her sister’s academic path, despite her parents’ protective misgivings, and a newly repressive and fearful climate that has seen Islamist terror attacks on educational facilities.

“No matter how the world is flooded, the water can’t reach the mountains,” is an old saying that Zahra’s father is fond of. But the sound of heavy weaponry in the distance signals that, in community as well as personal matters, outside threats cannot be held off forever. As the Taliban advances, panic spreads, and the Khawari family, with other locals, move to evacuate. With these unexpected developments during production, Kamay becomes a farewell for a homeland as well as a sister, and a place to nurture their memories as seeds for the future.

Directors, Writers, Cinematography: Ilyas Yourish, Shahrokh Bikaran
Editing: Joelle Alexis
Sound: Aqela Sharifi, Shahrokh Bikaran
Music: Karim Baggili
Producers: Ilyas Yourish, Hanne Phlypo, Evelien De Graef
Production companies: Kamay Film (Afghanistan), Clin d’oeil films (Belgium), Row Pictures (Germany)
Sales: Cat & Docs
Festival: Visions du Reel (International Feature Film Competition)
In Persian (Hazaragi)
106 minutes