Reflective Encounters

“Everyone knows their role in the system, and most have come to perform it with a degree of detachment: the Imam produces a Qur’an from a plastic bag, the doctor prescribes some pills to help the prisoner sleep, the court representative insists on finishing watching a video on his phone before outlining the following day’s itinerary. Little here speaks of the enormity of the violence which is soon to befall Farah, the boy-like young man whose own impassivity throughout the process suggests a degree of self-denial about his proscribed fate.

Reality only seems to intrude in his final minutes, viewed in the distance through the policewoman’s car window as she turns up the music on the stereo and drives away. The composition echoes the opening shot of the film, in which she pauses for a moment to gather herself before heading from her car to the prison, a repetition which suggests a circularity: another day will bring another Farah, another Qur’an, some more sleeping pills. Her own insomnia, as evidenced by the film’s final shot, suggests that, on that day, she may need to pause for longer and turn the volume of the music up even further.”

— Jonathan Bygraves