Incredible! Several cold shivers ran through me while I was watching this film. It is a documentary, and if it is honest and authentic (which I believe), it is the best documentary I have ever seen!
A young Danish film director tries to find his father who left him and his family several years ago and went to Yemen. With the help of his girl-friend he documents the whole process of searching for the father, ranging from awfully long and painful telephone calls to finally meeting members of the family in Yemen. The whole story is so gripping, so dense and so full of tension that I don't even dare to reveal the ending. I never thought that a documentary could be so much more exciting than one or the other thriller.
What does a documentay like that do in the middle of the Christmas programme, I asked myself before I saw the film. Now I know that they couldn't have chosen any better. Christmas has a lot to do with families, and this film gives us a clue about that abstract thing we call `family'. In Arab countries, of course, the attitude towards people who are physically related to you is completely different than in the west. To see how Sami is confronted with warmth and love from people he never met before and how, on the other hand, he is urged to love his father, a man who has made him suffer and whom he hasn't met either - it is an incredible experience.
I really hope the film is not staged.
A young Danish film director tries to find his father who left him and his family several years ago and went to Yemen. With the help of his girl-friend he documents the whole process of searching for the father, ranging from awfully long and painful telephone calls to finally meeting members of the family in Yemen. The whole story is so gripping, so dense and so full of tension that I don't even dare to reveal the ending. I never thought that a documentary could be so much more exciting than one or the other thriller.
What does a documentay like that do in the middle of the Christmas programme, I asked myself before I saw the film. Now I know that they couldn't have chosen any better. Christmas has a lot to do with families, and this film gives us a clue about that abstract thing we call `family'. In Arab countries, of course, the attitude towards people who are physically related to you is completely different than in the west. To see how Sami is confronted with warmth and love from people he never met before and how, on the other hand, he is urged to love his father, a man who has made him suffer and whom he hasn't met either - it is an incredible experience.
I really hope the film is not staged.