User Reviews

I still can't believe this movie has won awards. It's not worth it. It was so stereotypical. Since when are terrorists able to cross the border into Tunisia by car?! Since when do women with Niqab not remove it at home and sleep with it?! What's even more hilarious is that in Islam a woman doesn't need to cover her hair in front of her father-in-law! But here we have a woman wearing a Niqab even in front of her mother-in-law!

The "Syrian" girl can't even imitate the Syrian dialect properly. Non Arabic speakers can't detect this and many other problems in the movie. For this very reason I find this movie to be meant solely for Western audiences to feed their stereotypes.

The director seems interested in winning awards at all costs even if it meant lying about her country of origin.

"Brotherhood" is a co-production between no less than four countries that originally aired back in 2018 already and, despite the title, it is in the Arabic language. No famous actors in here and most likely, you also have not come across the writer and director Meryam Joobeur, who has worked on several short films before this one here. However, this is definitely her biggest success. It won really big at several awards shows and as a consequence was one of the two favorites to win an Oscar last night for Best Live Action Short Film. I got to watch this right before the ceremony and I was very underwhelmed here I must say. It seems like the comfortable choice where you don't have to think a lot. They just throw in subjects like homecoming, IS, disguise/mummery by females (as it is frequently desired by their husbands) without properly elaborating really on any of these in a way where you will really get engaged during the watch. It did not feel too creative to me and also lacking attention to detail. I don't think really the cast was the problem because especially the actor who played the owner of the house (where he cares about his rules) did a decent job and kept these 25 minutes from becoming an even weaker watch. The ending is another example of how this film is really showy and all style over substance with these (I think) police arrest scenes at the beach there. It's very spectacular, but just relies on the audience to already have made a connection, an emotional connection, with the cast members and they just took that for granted it seems because Joobeur delivered nothing in the 20 minutes before that that could jave created such a connection. So the endin, just like almost everything else here, felt very much like style over substance. There is not single perspective from which this film was a convincing achievement to me and I hope that Joobeur can step up her game if she plans on making (many) more films in the future, regardless of them being short or long. Thumbs-down. The worst from the five nominees and I could not agree less with all the awards recognition. Glad it did not win last night as many predicted.