YOU WILL DIE AT TWENTY Film Review — Sudan Metaphor

We follow Muzamil and his family for those twenty years.  Actually, it’s just Muzamil and his pious mother most of the time, as his father is too overcome with grief to hang around and watch his son grow only to be cut down at 20. With an eye towards Muzamil coming to meet his maker sooner than any other boys, his mother forces Muzamil to commit himself to religious study in overdrive.  He complies—memorizing the Koran in two different formats.  He remains chaste and obedient.  His mother keeps count on the walls, scratching off the days—fearing the inevitable.  Muzamil, on the other hand, is kept from learning math, with the pronouncement that there is little point in teaching him that, or anything that is irrelevant to one who dies so young. The only training he needs, everyone knows, is to get on the good side of Allah.

YOU WILL DIE AT TWENTY Transports Us To An Exotic World

Although the aforementioned scene of taunting cruel children is cross-culturally knowable—as well as the story arc that is animated by Muzamil’s spirit chafing at the bit for freedom —there is little in the trappings of this film that would feel familiar to the typical American viewer.  Most of the domestic scenes take place in sparse and poorly lit rooms with earthen walls.  Sometimes Muzamil and his childhood bestie (who grows into a woman sweet on him) go by a sandy waterfront terrain on the Nile that seems almost otherworldly to one more familiar with hilly Cape Cod dunes. Whether it’s the Sufi clique making rounds on their boats, his mother overcome in an exorcism of spiritual cleansing, or the high-pitched yips emerging from the women as they sing in a pre-wedding ritual, the scenes are exotic. For this reviewer, this intimate close-up with new sounds and sights from a distinctly foreign culture exalts.

Perhaps we share this trait with Muzamil, whose curiosity draws him into an unlikely relationship with an elderly man now returned to the village after living a more cosmopolitan life abroad. In his house the light is bright, and nearly every rule that Muzamil has lived by in his short life feels subterranean tremors.  How this earthquake resolves on Muzamil’s 20^th birthday is long awaited by us, the viewers, much as it has been by Muzamil’s family and village.

In this writer’s view, the best part of YOU WILL DIE AT TWENTY actually comes in the film’s credits. It’s here when we learn of the film being dedicated to the heroes of the recent Sudanese Revolution that had freed Sudan from the grip of Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir, the world’s first sitting President to be brought before the Hague. Ah!!—you too may think—the film is a metaphor!

If you love films that transport you to intriguingly foreign terrains and customs, YOU WILL DIE AT TWENTY is a top pick for your time.  If you are repelled by slow moving character studies with fewer words and even less action, this film is probably not for you.

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RT: 103 minutes
Language: Arabic with English Subtitles

Directed by: Amjad Abu Alala
Written by: Amjad Abu Alala, Yousef Ibrahim
Cast: Mustafa Shehata, Moatasem Rashid, Islam Mubarak, Mahmoud Alsarraj,
Bonna Khalid, Talal Afifi
Produced by: Arnaud Dommerc, Michael Henrichs, Ingrid Lill Høgtun
Co-produced by: Sherif Fathy, Mohamed Hefzy, Marie Fuglestein Lægried,
Linda Bolstad Strønen
Cinematography: Sébastein Goepfert
Genre: World Cinema/Drama

YOU WILL DIE AT TWENTY is only the 8th narrative feature filmed in Sudan and Sudan's first official entry for “BEST INTERNATIONAL FILM” in the 93rd ACADEMY AWARDS

For information on upcoming screenings visit the Film Movement webpage for YOU WILL DIE AT TWENTY.

Images courtesy of Film Movement.