Paikar

Baba, an imam and colonel in the Mujahideen, once fought against the Russians after they invaded Afghanistan in 1979. Once the Russians had been driven out, a bloody power struggle erupted in the country, after which Baba decided to flee with his wife and seven children, eventually ending up in Iran. Baba was a thoroughly unsympathetic man; he was authoritarian and violent. His son Dawood Hilmandi also had to deal with this; attempts to build a loving bond with his father were contemptuously rejected. Why, exactly?

The seven children now live scattered across the globe; Hilmandi, together with his filmmaker brother Aboozar Amini, has ended up in Amsterdam. He travels to Iran to visit his father; together they travel on to Afghanistan, where they visit places steeped in (painful) memories. The result: a family portrait about intergenerational trauma, resilience and unspoken love. Winner of several awards at the recent IDFA.