Not every blue moon does a piece of art pervasively sustain the anxiety of living in a dehumanised world, without overt dramatisations, throughout its runtime. In Arabian filmmaker Lotfi Achour’s Red Path — which competed at the International Competition section of the 55th International Film Festival of India — the inciting incident that rattles our bones comes in mere minutes after we are introduced to the arid Tunisian plains, where only the hostile find any shelter of permanence.
We see a teenage shepherd, Nizar Nouri (Yassine Samouni), take his 13-year-old cousin, Achraf (Ali Hleli, a performance that articulates the slightest of thoughts), and their goats, beyond the Mejri Path on the rocky slopes of Mount Mghila, Tunisia — a border of conflict between the government and the jihadis. Nizar wants to show Achraf the pocket of a paradise that prevails untouched on these mountains. They lay bare on the warm rocks, toss around on the pools of water in rocky depressions, and speak about the time the ocean would have covered the mountain.
A still from ‘Red Path’
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Special Arrangement
Doom strikes the boys like thunder. Achraf, beaten mercilessly and befuddled, wakes up next to the severed head of Nizar. “Show it to his mother and maybe then you’ll all learn not to come here,” he was told by the jihadis who vanished as quickly as they had appeared. Paralysed by shock, Achraf thoughtlessly picks up Nizar’s head and journeys back to their village. Only to immediately witness a landmine kill his goats, all except a baby goat named Tatouss.
With Tatouss, resting inside his jacket, and a duffel bag that gets bloodier every passing minute, Achraf idles around, wishing he didn’t have to be the one to bear the news to Nizar’s mother Mbarka. In a rather interesting turn, Acraf chooses to first confide in a teenage schoolgirl named Rahma (Wided Dabebi; the film’s only gentle whisper), who was Nizar’s romantic interest, before breaking the news to Mbarka. Just as Achraf is battling guilt, grief, and psychological ramifications no other soul should live through, social and emotional constraints force him back on the same trodden path he wished he never took; he has to accompany his relatives as they journey back to retrieve Nizar’s body.
Red Path from thereon becomes a story of Achraf’s search for meaning and resolution, if there is one, in his brutal new reality. Beneath all that, the film is also an aching lament on stolen childhoods in places affected by war and conflict; be it how the dire economy forces you to quit school and work; or how you are forced to choose between the jihadis and the pro-government entities; or how your loved one can be beheaded, and you are left to pick yourself up and move on.
In his feature directorial debut, a co-production between Tunisia, France, Belgium, Poland, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, Lotfi Achour refrains from using grand strokes to tell his grand statements. Take for instance how the phone calls between a Minister and Mounir, Nazir’s brother, are never blown out dramatically — something you might expect in such situations — but used only to convey the helplessness of the family in retrieving Nazir’s body, and the authorities’ apathy towards the citizens.
Achour infuses his unambiguous scripting with some magical realism, by taking us through the PTSD-induced hallucinations of Achraf. Nazir’s spirit becomes a shadow that accompanies Achraf on his journey, and Polish cinematographer Wojciech Staroń pounces on these opportunities to create some surreal imagery; in one such instance, we see Achraf standing in front of an empty fridge, inside Nazir’s house, where the head was being kept.
Then there are the aesthetic choices Staroń goes for in the tangible realm of this story. The nights are painted with hues of blue, from the moon, or warm tints, from bonfires or light bulbs. The blue sky over the barren landscapes of Tunisia helps balance the mood Achour goes for. However, the most memorable visual choice is how the director and cinematographer opt to fill the frame with close-ups of Achraf as we try to understand everything that’s going on behind those helpless eyes. Some rare shots appear ostentatious initially, like the shot of blood dripping from the duffel bag and onto the camera; in an otherwise sincere film, they hardly register as an inconvenience.
Red Path is based on the beheading of Mabrouk Soltani in November 2015. In our horrid reality, hope is scarce for boys like Achraf (Mabrouk’s elder brother Khelifa Soltani was later kidnapped and killed in 2017). Achour, though, through a convincing writing choice, shows that maybe there is hope for children like Achraf. May the love of a mother prevail upon all hatred.
Red Path was screened at the ongoing 55th International Film Festival of India
Published – November 26, 2024 03:55 pm IST
World cinema
