THE UNSEEN (KAGHAZ-PAREH HA)

Writer/Director: Behzad Nalbandi

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ½

One of the most confronting and heartbreaking cinematic works of the year, Iranian graphic artist Behzad Nalbandi’s The Unseen speaks to the inhumane treatment and hopeless futures of derelict and homeless women taken from the streets of Tehran. Utilising cardboard stop-motion artistry to ensure the anonymity of and provide a rare freedom for his subjects to have a voice, Nalbandi’s 5-year project is both a stunning visual work and bold indictment of Iran’s ongoing adherence to brutal patriarchal rule.

The five women that the director speaks with are, figuratively and literally, ‘cardboard people’, the derogatory term used in his homeland to describe those that live in boxes on the street. When international dignitaries are due to visit, police and government officials round up the homeless population of the capital and crowd them into shelters; the men are released after a few days, but the women are not. They become wards of the state, their freedom dependent upon a family member collecting them.

Many of the women have fled abusive men, including fathers, siblings, boyfriends and husbands; most have been raped and/or had drugs such as meth, heroin and crack forced upon them, with several turning to prostitution in exchange for shelter, clothes or the next hit. Once incarcerated in the government-backed ‘shelters’, they have little chance of ever being released.

Provided with unofficial access, Nalbandi (always off-screen) gently probes and compassionately listens while the women relate the downward spirals of their lives. The details are relentlessly shocking and almost always stem from toxic male influence and the systemic abuse women have traditionally suffered. All contend with chronic mental health ailments and are addicts struggling with sobriety (Iran is in the grip of a hard-drug epidemic, with over 6.5 million users). The recounting of the life paths that have led the women to their involuntary incarceration makes for shattering testimony.

The women’s voices are given an on-screen avatar thanks to the director’s remarkable skill with cardboard of all shapes and contours. The interview room in which the sessions took place is recreated, as are the broken streets and askew structures of Tehran’s landscape. Facial details, comprised of precisely coloured and intricately layered material, give true personality to the women (they are given a pseudonym and their ages are revealed, but little else other than what they tell us). In one lump-in-the-throat moment, Nalbandi comments on the beauty of one women’s eyes, soliciting a sweet giggle and the corresponding facial expressions which resonate profoundly via the cardboard artistry.

Revisiting the institution several months after completing his recordings, Nalbandi learns some of his young interviewees have died; ironically, the number of women being held has increased far beyond the capacity of the facility (a meagre staff roster and only 30 beds service over 90 detainees). There is no avoiding the bleakness of The Unseen; this is not the kind of factual film that ends on an upward trajectory of hope or spruiks advocacy. Such false niceties would not honour the daily struggles and aimless destinies of the film’s five souls, each a life ruined by dark forces beyond their control.

Nominated for BEST ANIMATED FEATURE FILM at The 2019 Asia Pacific Screen Awards, to be held Thursday November 21 at the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre. 

THE SEEN AND UNSEEN

Stars: Ni Kadek Thaly Titi Kasih, Ida Bagus Putu Radithya Mahijasena, Ayu Laksmi, I Ketut Rina, Happy Salma and Gusti Ayu Raka.
Writer/Director: Kamila Andini

WINNER: Best Youth Feature Film, 2017 Asia Pacific Screen Awards.

Rating: 4.5/5

The slow dissolution through mortality of the physical bond that twins share only serves to strengthen the spiritual and emotional resonance of their union in Kamila Andini’s quietly devastating The Seen and Unseen. Drawing upon Balinese lore that embraces an existential duality called Sekala Niskala, the Indonesian writer-director crafts a profoundly moving narrative that recalls Niki Caro’s Whale Rider in its depiction of innocence, tradition and destiny colliding.

A natural progression of the themes of youthful sadness and the strength needed to cope that she explored in The Mirror Never Lies (2011), Andini’s second feature glides between a family’s real-world heartbreak and one sibling’s soaring fantasy world. Tantri (Ni Kadek Thaly Titi Kasih) and her brother Tantra (Ida Bagus Putu Radithya Mahijasena) live a life of perfect harmony in rural Bali, until Tantra wanders away from his sister and the living world one day; the boy has a brain tumour and slips into a coma, his days now spent prone and silent on a hospital bed.

Tantri’s life is now half the existence she has ever known, yet she refuses to deny herself or her brother the richness of their shared imagination. The young woman defies the trauma of a fading soul mate by engaging with her brother’s still-buoyant spirit; the pair indulges in traditional costume dancing, shadow theatre puppetry and rice planting, the daily activities that once brought them so much joy. Andini seamlessly melds the real and conjured worlds, often employing long takes and stationary camera set-ups that demand the young actors fill the frame with an entrancing connection between both themselves and the audience.

Western critics have been quick to place the ‘magic realism’ label on The Seen and Unseen, which perhaps diminishes how intricate a connection to the physical and supernatural world the people of Indonesia view their existence. Little difference is implied between, for example, the sadness of a parent’s hospital vigil and the joy of an imagined costume dance, during which the twins leap about the ward with abandon. This connection is no more stirringly exemplified than in the ‘moon dance’ sequence; Andini and her DOP Anggi Frisca frame an early evening full moon, a bamboo tower and a soulful dancer to create what may be the most beautiful series of wordless images in cinema this year.

Though never called upon to over-emote or deliver lengthy dialogue passages, Ni Kadek Thaly Titi Kasih is heartbreaking as Tantri, her slightest movement or glance enough to provide insight into and inspire the deepest of emotions. Her free-spirited scenes in the fantasy realm with Mahijasena, also remarkable, are a wonder to watch.

Instantly worthy of inclusion in the annals of classic children cinema, Kamila Andini has woven a major work of fantasy that courses with a rare humanism. The Seen and Unseen is steeped in eastern philosophy and tradition but universal in its conveying of defining moments, both shattering and joyful, in this life and the next.