7.5
Two shoeshiner homeless brothers named Zana and Dana live on the edge of survival. They catch a glimpse of Superman through a hole in the wall at the local cinema and decide that they want to go to America in order to meet Superman.
Zamand Taha
Zana
Sarwar Fazil
Dana
Diya Mariwan
Helliya
Suliman Karim Mohamad
Baba Shalid
Rahim Hussen
Mama Hama
Abdulrahman Mohamad
Osman
Shirwan Mohamad
Jamal
Bahadin Halabjai
Ali
Nawzad Majid
Hagi Alan
Bakir Mustafa
Professor Rizgar
Baxan Mohamad
Pora Begard
Mohamad Salah
Ismail
Diyar Jamal
Ari
Binay Bahman
Laila
Ari Muhedin
Azad
Xani Nabaz
Saman
Haryad Sabah
Hez
Jwtiar Nashad
Husain
Shawhm Muhamad
Ardalan's wife
Siva Kamaran
Ardalan's daughter
Shwan Mohamad Sdiq
Heresh
Ashna Rawf
Helliya's mother
Zana Husain
Mustafa
D. Taha
Rawf
Mohamad Majid
Reza
Shwan Said
Reza's father
Bahra Abdul Rahman
Shilan
Dlier Hasan Taha
Sherko
Zanwer Faxr Fazil
Big brother
Zaman Faxr Fazil
Little brother
Rebwar Hama Hawrami
Taxi driver
Rebwar Amin
Bahzad Jalal
Bahadin Azabang
Soldier
Ata Hama Salih
Soldier
Twana Xani
Soldier
Abd Hawrami
Soldier
Ali Twana
Truck driver
Muhamad Abdulla
Man
Omar Karim Axa
Man
Sivar Sarkawt
Girl
Omar Mohamad
Boy
Dilman Shwan
Boy
Kamaran Nuri Gulala
Ardalan
Director, Writer
Karzan Kader
May 11, 2015
8
Nowadays its a customary to take the acclaimed short movies to stretch for the feature films by the incoming directors. All they need is a good producer and the distributors, the actors can be managed with the new faces. Yep, this movie was inspired by the short film of the same name like 'Short Term 12', 'District 9' et cetera. Most importantly, these films met a great success because of the beautiful story, characters and narration.
This movie was directed by the Iraq born filmmaker who is now residing in Sweden. Most of the recent movies, in fact, all of them outlines Iraq as a war field. But this film was such a poetic, shot in the real locations, brings a calm and beautiful 90s Iraq on the screen that you have probably never seen in a decade. The main two characters were inspired by the director and his elder brother, when they were kids and lived in the Kurdish part of Iraq. But the story was marginally fictional except the dreams of the children from the third world.
I must agree, this movie practically describes how the influence of American products, films and culture affects the young kids from a country like Iraq. Their over obsession leads to dream bigger without knowing that's impossible to make it true. If you are a non-American you would have had such obsession in your childhood on soft drinks like Cola, Pepsi, or fast foods like from KFC, McDonald, or TV cartoons and Marvel Comic books et cetera. So, in some way, somewhat it's a tiny part of your story as well.
> "If a family is united, they will be strong."
There is no exact one word translation for 'Bekas'. It means 'homeless orphans' according to the director's explanation during an interview at one of the film festivals. This movie is all about two young Kurdish boys, Dana and Zana, and Superman, Michael Jackson and Coca Cola. If we talk about the story, it's when 'Slumdog Millionaire' meets 'In This World'. The movie begins similar fashion to SDM where kids are playing football and after that go straight to their business, instead school. In fact many scenes resemble above two films I mentioned and also other films. When the brothers get separates, that kind of reminded me 'The Gods Must Be Crazy 2'. Thus the screenplay originality lacks, other than that it is nothing less than to consider a wonderful film.
There are some scenes that make you go edge of your seat. Grabs our attention, creating tensions and thrills in the scenes like check-post and landmines. Emotions did not strike well because it's seemed more like a dark comedy. A bit commercialised than being realistic. The music was so good, awesome blend to portray the adventures, along with the two great performances, ignited the movie to emerge as a pleasant family entertainer. There might be millions of reasons to blame this movie because of similarity with other films and other stuffs, but overall I felt happy. Criticisers still going to criticize it, despite those flaws definitely worth to check it out.