Short films reviews at the Ajyal Youth Film festival 2015

It was a cultural weekend ... We saw a bunch of short films at the Ajyal film festival: there were Nepali,

Kurdish, American, French,Canadian , Qatari films ...
It seemed to me that the directors competed with each others in choosing the most distressing, topic

they could when they created their films .The French film was the "happiest" story ( By Mutual Agreement ) : There was a couple

about to divorce . They suddenly realized that the cause their marriage deteriorated was their five-year

old only child . . they could not really enjoy life since his birth - so they decided to get rid of him ...

all of this in fun, light and absurd style - after a lots of attempted murder - finally themselves the evil

parents are hit by a car -not the little boy! The story was a bit like Hansel and Gretel , But in that story

the kids are returning to the parents who tried to kill them !
Of course, this was a good critique of parental hedonism and irresponsibility, which flooded the world.


À l’amiable / By Mutual Agreement from oriGine films on Vimeo.

The Qatari film was not so depressing compared to the others : it was about a young man from India or

Sri lanka (?) who worked at the Katara as toilet cleaner . He tried to jazz up his boring ,rootless days with

some jokes that were badly received .It was an attempt to show the real problem of workers in Qatar against

the slavery accusations in the international media.The young man's uncle is having a smart phone and a wife in

India (? ) whom he can kiss good bye at night by the phone . It was just a light touch to the problems of the

labourer's in the Gulf but more than nothing .

The Nepali director had shown the world the real suffering of his own people in the  Beaten Path  . Blood , disease ,famine

,extreme poverty was counterpointed by the beauty of the nature and the noble soul of the main character .

The Kurdish story of the Bad Hunter started with a rape then it turned into a false accusation finally it evolved into a happy

end !It shows the way how a young woman needs to be tricky to turn her own tragedy into a happy event of her

life .

We saw a film about a man whose memory and this way his identity was robbed .It was quite difficult to follow

. Finally the director explained all the story . It was the Artificio Conceal made in UK , USA .

The most depressing topic was about a Canadian Arab man whose baby ( wife as well ?) died at birth and he

is not strong enough to do the usual rituals before the burial .
I missed the women from the film : in the Nepali film there was one single unnamed female character who was mourning the death of her husband . The Qatari film did not have female character ,either .In the American film we just hear the voice of a woman .Only the French and Kurdish films had female main characters .

None of those short films were better than my favourite Hungarian short films . I was a bit disappointed .


Many families arrived with kids . They were allowed to enter and see such painful topics . I can not understand the organizers !