Bekas (or not superman) (2012)

Bekas (2012)

Director: Karzan Kader
Writer: Karzan Kader
Starring: Zamand Taha – Sarwar Fazil – Diya Mariwan
Duration: 97 minutes
Rating: PG13

If you thought that a nation under the reign of a dictator will be destitute culturally and incapable of producing honest art… well here comes a modest and uplifting feature film from the Iraq… following not one but two street rat kids, left in the middle of nowhere growing with the cheapest game on earth, a ball and figurative posts, playing football kick starts the film for what promises to be a journey of hope… a journey of two brothers in search of Superman… not a figurative Superman, but the actual Superman who flies onto the town’s cinema screen, unable to afford the tickets to the movie the two brothers decide they would do anything to meet with Superman…

Along the way they meet with the devil also known to the modern world as the Satellite, and another American culture hero, Michael Jackson… the journey plays on your heartbeats, on the relationship between the brothers, between social boundaries and different classes, the acquiring of the pass beyond borders is in the manner of Casablanca. The people they encounter turns them from two kids into Sancho and Don Quixote in La Mancha… the world starts looking bigger and greater and a more relieving place through the eyes of the young protagonists, but the social boundaries and the shadow of a reigning Saddam keeps on haunting them and bringing them down…

If you are fed up with hits that are made to make money, take a leap of faith and believe in Superman for a whole 97 minutes and you will be talking about this film for years to come…

Metacritic: N/A/100
Daffy Meter: 8/10 (Homeless or not Superman can do anything….)