User Reviews

Shawkat Amin Korki's 2021 feature film deals with the story of two women who adopts an unethical way to clear entrance exam for the university. The lurking shadow of a toxic patriarchal society has paved their desperate measures. Their situation doesn't justify their actions but it's also the only way of escaping.

The film constructs an engaging narrative from two sisters, one who is forsaking everything in stake to help her sister pass the exam and the sister herself who is suffering from suicidal tendencies and living in fear to get caught during exam. The lead pair is only a fragment of what is going on there, several persons from different strata's of the society are adopting similar ways to pass the exam. The film efficiently pulls off the genre of crime thriller with occasional instances of bleak humor.

A mirror of the horrors of a toxic society, the film is quite a significant milestone in Kurdish film movement.

The lead pair has given stellar performances and the cinematography and editing adds an noirish feeling to it. Still the film doesn't have the rawness the subject matter deserves to have. It is toned down in some places .

This is an interesting movie making the spectators think and posing probably the right questions for the close but also distant - to the Western world - Kurdish community in the Middle East as well as for universal human values.

Is it fine to fight the family, parent, community traditions and rules? How far can we reach in our rebel against these traditions and rules? Is it possible to build up love instead of hate? Can we invest so much in hatred so we can ruin our and others' lives? Is the education an obstacle to a marriage? In other words - will a marriage not need educated people? How much it is easier to learn to hate instead of learning to love (even in an arranged marriage)?

How much personal freedoms may contradict to the community and family traditions? Which is better - to indulge in individual or community rights and obligations?

And more... How to develop a society full of injustice and, respectively, full of corruption? Can the control and supervision ensure justice? Can the education make a real difference in the social standing of the people?

...At the end, was it a university entry "exam" or it was a judgemental exam in front of ourselves?...

Congratulations for the casting and also for at least some of the frames in the cinematography.

A movie which worths a recommendation!

This is a word of warning mainly. It's not a bad film, competently made, but I found it very grim and depressing. The kind of story where no-one wins anything and everyone loses big. OK, it gives an insight into life in Iraq, in particular the university entrance system. But if relentless negativity with no shred of hope is going to bother you, I'd give this a miss.

Rojin, whose miserable life has already driven her to a suicide attempt, is desperate to get into university, not for any stated positive reason and there's no sign of any enthusiasm for her studies (or indeed of the studies themselves) but only because it will allow her to avoid an arranged marriage with a man she dislikes. Her approach to this, or rather that of her concerned sister, is not for her to work hard (for some reason this never gets considered as an option) but to cheat - apparently lots of candidates do this. Neither Rojin nor any other character is given much depth - she looks miserable throughout, cries a lot and nothing she ever does drives the action in any way. Fair enough in the circumstances but none of this makes it easy to sympathise with these two sisters.

Then again it's impossible not to sympathise with women doing anything they can to manipulate the vile patriarchy which pervades Islamic and similar socially primitive societies. Such women have no rights nor protection by the law, depending entirely on their fathers and husbands. In turn many of these fathers and husbands (like Rojin's father and brother-in-law) are selfish and arrogant, regarding women as their property and caring nothing for their wishes or happiness. If you already know about this, I can't see much reason to watch. If you don't, you will learn something - nothing shown here is even unusual for the desperate women in these ghastly places.