I had the privilege of attending the New York Kurdish Film Festival this month for the New York City premiere of Kurdish-Swiss director Mano Khalil’s 2021 film, Neighbours. As I walked into the Angelika Film Center in the East Village, I was brought almost immediately to the director. Khalil, a curly-haired man with kind eyes, shook my hand as I introduced myself. Our conversation felt very natural as Khalil told me about other screenings of the film he had attended as part of its film festival run, which includes over 200 festivals. We laughed together, musing on the reasons behind what brings humans to the movies. I could tell that Khalil is a hopeful man, filled with gentle life. Upon seeing his film, Neighbours, shortly thereafter, it became clear that his naturalism and warmth seeped into the tone of the film.
Neighbours follows a six-year-old boy named Sero (Serhed Khalil), who lives in a small village on the border between Syria and Turkey, in Kurdistan, as he begins school during the early 1980s. With his loving family and neighbors guiding him, he navigates the increasingly unstable world around him, and seeks joy amidst the chaos. The cinematography is not flashy, the color grading not overly saturated, the acting not exaggerated. For a film about childhood, which can often feel so emotionally intense such that small moments feel like life or death, the film was surprisingly restrained. Upon deeper analysis, however, one discovers that this naturalistic style is precisely what makes the film so affecting. For instance, the first scene of Sero as a child, since the film begins with him in his mid-forties in a refugee camp, is when he and his beloved Uncle Asam (Ismail Zagros) are releasing balloons the colors of the Kurdish resistance into the sky. The camera fixates on their subtle beauty, swaying gently as they rise, until they are promptly shot down.
Unlike other films depicting war-torn countries or regions, Neighbours does not use the medium of film to explicitly tell the viewer how to feel. Khalil makes frequent use of close-ups, mainly of young Sero, but they do not feel claustrophobic. The slow push-ins of his medium-wide or establishing shots feel as though they are signaling to the audience that important new information is about to be relayed, but manage to resist falling into the overused trap of manipulating the audience – “it’s not a popcorn movie,” Khalil reminds us – into feeling a certain devastation. The devastation comes naturally to any empathetic human through the simple fact that this film is real. The partly autobiographical film features elements of Khalil’s own upbringing in Kurdistan in the 1980s, such as Sero having kind neighbors who are denied citizenship in Syria because they are Jewish; the brief but tense family visitation scene at the Syrian-Turkish border; and frequent depictions of oppression and bias against Kurdish children via the Arab school system. Khalil, in the question-and-answer session that followed the film screening, said: “I don’t have messages to send; I’m not a prophet . . . I just show the reality.”
The accompanying score, rather than being a sweeping orchestral epic designed to transform the film into a blockbuster tearjerker, is understated, eerie, even haunting. Oftentimes, it runs so softly under the scenes that one is consciously unaware of its presence, yet its effect is undeniably palpable. While the film’s score is certainly used to emphasize tension or conflict in any given scene, perhaps just as important is the silence permeating the open landscape, confining the characters. Both the film’s score and its silence serve to remind the audience that the events depicted on screen are difficult and unjust, even as the film is told through the relatively limited point of view of a small child. Children are not usually as cognizant of the atrocities going on around them as the adults who deal directly with them, yet they still deeply feel the ripple effects of injustice.
Perhaps this is why we are never overtly shown what happens to Asam after a family tragedy. As Sero’s mother is washing clothes by the river, a Turkish sniper perched up in a watchtower accidentally shoots her. Later that evening, as the family processes through the field, carrying her body, Asam yells at the border guards watching them. Consequently, he is taken away. When Asam returns home later in the film, we are met with Sero’s shock and fright as his uncle limps through the door, with thick red scars on his back and a badly bruised eye. The effect of his capture and torture is even more striking than if we, the audience, had been presented with it on screen, since we are observing along with Sero, and intrinsically understand how troubling and destabilizing seeing his uncle in that condition would be for him. Kurdish people are “trying to be human in this wild world,” a world which continuously oppresses them, Khalil offers. Not until recently, he continued, could he safely admit, “I’m proud to say I’m a Kurd.”
Despite the film’s almost documentary-like presentation, numerous metaphors and symbols peppered throughout it serve to ensure its narrative poignancy. Toward the beginning of the film, when Sero pleads to his parents for a television set, they inform him that he would not be able to understand the cartoons, since they are in Arabic and he only speaks Kurdish. “It doesn’t matter what they say,” Sero counters, “it’s what they do!” Over the course of the film, Sero learns that it is indeed “what they do” that matters; “they,” in this metaphor, being those who forcefully forbid him from speaking Kurdish in school; those who kill his mother; those who beat and torture his uncle. He learns firsthand the very real threat of violence all around him, both verbal and physical. One of his older friends from school explains to the younger kids that Imperialism and Zionism, two terms they heard at school that none of them could define, are actually dangerous bugs that hide behind houses. “If they bite you once,” he continues, “they never let go.”
Ironically, it is at school where the children are taught a concerning discourse of us vs. them. The strict teacher (Jalal Al Tawil) devises a class play, in which each child represents an Arab nation, and together they must defeat the “Zionist enemy,” a crude hay figure with a Star of David on its straw chest. One by one, the children must go up to the figure and stab it in the heart. At first, Sero refuses, for which he is slapped on the palm by a thick wooden rod. Eventually, the children assimilate, so much so that as they are playing after school, the oldest child in the group traps a stray cat in a straw bag and hands Sero the knife. Evidently, the violent rhetoric the children are exposed to at school trickles down into their day-to-day life.
The troubling course of Sero’s environment toward violence and prejudice becomes increasingly difficult to resist exposure to over the course of the film. When Sero’s father finally does manage to purchase a television set near the end of the film, we watch in a close-up as Sero eagerly awaits his cartoons. The camera pushes in on the television as it springs to life. Instead of cartoons, images of war and destruction flash across the screen, accompanied by militaristic music. Cutting back to the close-up of Sero, his face drops. This scene cements the prevalence of war in his life: even in a small remote village, not even children are exempt from pain and suffering. There is no escape to an enjoyable pastime, since even the vessel for that pastime has been corrupted.
It would be natural to assume that Neighbours is a crushingly depressing and hard-to-watch film about political and regional conflict that will leave the viewer glum after the lights come on. This could not be farther from the truth. The film does depict moments of violence, with some characters touting violent rhetoric, and the subject matter itself is inherently distressing. Remarkably, though, the film carries an optimistic tone, one of resilience and the strength of human connection within families and across cultures. The hope and resilience of a young child are harder to extinguish than hate is to indoctrinate, Khalil demonstrates with Neighbours. Toward the end of the film, as the teacher waits outside with his packed bags, Sero approaches. He notices two small lizards on the wall and points them out to the teacher. The lizard that Sero used to love to watch inside the schoolhouse, that the teacher had smacked down with a rolled-up newspaper and killed, had babies. Although the parent was killed, the child will persist.
Perhaps my favorite moment in the film is when Sero dozes off at school and dreams of his late mother. He walks toward her in a field, smiling as she weaves her colorful scarf around her mesmerizingly. Together they release yellow, red, and green balloons up into the sky, just as Sero and Asam had done at the beginning of the film, watching as their balloons join hundreds of others floating up into space. The result is a stunning tapestry of color against a darkening sky, symbolizing the ongoing Kurdish resistance. Though this time the sky may be darker, there are so many more balloons.
When I asked Khalil if the reception to the film differed based on the location of the screening, he replied with a firm “no.” He emphasized the value of universal themes, reminding me that although languages and customs may differ around the world, “love is the same.” What audiences in Australia teared up at, audiences in Saudi Arabia did as well.
“Only good people go to the cinema,” he said.
Author Biography
Lena Streitwieser is a student in the Dual BA program with Trinity College Dublin and Columbia University, studying Film and Music. She has made eight short films, earning “Best Director” accolades in film festivals from the US to Japan. Studying film has compelled her to author analytical articles and film reviews. She is also a jazz vocalist and active composer.
Film Details
Neighbours (2021)
Switzerland
Director Mano Khalil
Runtime 124 minutes
