olish filmmaker Agnieszka Holland’s extraordinary war drama isn’t specifically about any of the wars, particularly those in Ukraine and the Middle East, currently at the forefront of our consciousness. Even so, the horrors it depicts—as well as the salve it gives us, in the form of resistance workers fighting for basic human rights—take place on a battleground both ideological and visceral. It may seem like a fool’s errand to try to persuade even hardcore moviegoers to see a serious-minded film about the plight of from the Middle East and Africa.
But Holland’s film, though at times tough to watch, is so beautifully made, and so attuned to all the things we respond to as humans who care about art’s entwinement with real life, that it’s ultimately more joyful than dispiriting. Sometimes movies about tough subjects end up being such brutal experiences you almost wish you hadn’t seen them. is the opposite: it’s likely to leave you feeling emboldened and galvanized, if also a little sadder and wiser.
It’s a quiet masterstroke, a film that won the special jury prize in Venice last year; now, upon its release in North America, it's poised to be one of the best films of this year. Shot in elegant, forthright black-and-white, at first focuses on one family as they leave their home in Syria in the autumn of 2021: Bashir (Jalal Altawil) and Amina (Dalia Naous) and their three young children, the smallest not yet a toddler, have lost everything at home. They, along .