🎟️ Online tickets here! ☀️ Sundance 2024 ✈️ World Cinema 🎭 Drama (2024) 🇮🇷

"What should I do alone?" "Don't let anyone find out. If the ambulance and police come, you and Omid will be deported. There's nothing you can do.... Hide the body until they leave. Leila, can you hear me? Leila?"

In the Land of Brothers is so beautifully filmed that it makes looking at rows of tomatoes or watching a child sit in the snow into a poetic experience. It has me trying to figure out why I am suddenly attracted to slate gray as a color. Every frame is exquisite, and I have a list for that.

If it hadn’t been this beautiful, I’m not sure what my reaction would have been. But it was that beautiful. So it’s worth watching for aesthetics alone. But if you’re a horror only reader, skip this review, this isn’t going to be of interest to you—if you thought Handling the Undead was event-free, this is going to be a bad time at the movies while nothing happens, but this time in Iran. If this is your thing—and you probably already know if it is—then you will find In the Land of Brothers rewarding.

It also made me a little bit confused. I should explain. I think some of the good habits I’ve developed as a horror viewer are not as helpful when watching any other genre whatsoever. For example, when I saw that this film won the World Cinema Dramatic prize, I thought: “Alright! I have no clue what In the Land of Brothers is about—that’s perfect! Time for a blind watch.” Then suddenly they are speaking what I assume is Farsi and I am wondering what genre this is and what I have gotten myself into.

Sundance Online coverage this week: My goal is to get reviews to you while tickets are still available. They were at the time of writing this article. Purchase here. Go watch, or read on and get the context I missed.

Trying to figure out what this film was about without the expository blurb to provide context was interesting, and honestly, it advocates for reading blurbs in the right circumstances because I could have used the background. I figured out it was Afghani people in Iran because they made that clear, but I was absolutely not aware this was what horror people would call an anthology film and what fancy people just call drama. So midway through the first chapter, there started to be some gay vibes between an Iranian guard and the protagonist, and I thought—wow! Okay! This must be an Iranian LGBTQ+ film, like Call Me by Your Name but with child labor and the risk of deportation.

As it turns out, that is not what this film is at all, although it has made me want to see the film I accidentally wrote in my head trying to figure out what was going on.

In the Land of Brothers is a great film as it exists not in my head. It is divided into three parts, and apparently it tracks a loosely connected family through multiple generations. I only learned this in the third act when I gave up on the blind watch idea and checked. What it represents will be familiar to anyone who has been an immigrant—how inhumane and restrictive the paperwork process is, how tenuous your rights are as a documented migrant versus a resident or citizen, and the quiet everyday othering performed at you by a state apparatus that is incentivized to take advantage of a second class of residents.

The three stories in this film each look at a family member presented with a crisis that they are disadvantaged to manage based on their immigration status. This is a fairly dry way to put it, and when you actually watch the film, you will find it more touching and poetic. A lot of this has to do with the sensitivity and quiet attentiveness of the writing and filmmaking. Each of the stories has the same intensity and scope as it would in reality.

This is something that can cause culture shock between, for example, American and Iranian cinema. The first time I watched Khane-ye dust kojast (the anglicization is very bizarre—“Where is the Friend’s Home?”—so I pretend I remember Farsi whenever I discuss it), I’d never seen anything like it. The films in the Koker trilogy are as much poetry as film. Watching the child in the first film walk up and down that empty path over and over, or wandering through the streets of a nearly empty Iranian town, Kairostami’s films convinced me that I could, in the right context, love cinema as much as literature. And there’s absolutely an echo of that pacing here: the first segment has a similar windy shot up a snow covered hill, and the timescale of each story is minute and human. Each segment picks a moment in a life for a reason.

Of these segments, my favorite was the second, and the filmmakers say this was the story that they first intended as a full feature before discovering other immigrant stories to include. It feels that way, because it is the most eventful and intense of the three, or at least it was to me. The first story I mostly enjoyed visually, although of course I came to care about the protagonist and first wanted him to have gay love and then wanted him to not have that when I realized this wasn’t a gay movie but a rapey scene. The last one is powerful, simple, and somewhat dour.

If you believe this film can have spoilers about it, probably skip the blockquote, but you’re better off not worrying. It’s better to get the plot first.

But this middle segment was full of intrigue and nearly an action film compared to the others: why is she lying about finding her father’s corpse? Is she poisoning that dog for a good reason or she has just gone in for a stint of dog murder? Why can she tell no one her father died? Is this normal? These questions are answered, and it’s pretty fucking sad. But it is so beautiful. It looks like a painting half the time. So… I don’t entirely know what to do about that contrast, because it’s not as if the aesthetic beauty logically relates to the narrative content or moral and political points, but it sure makes this film more touching and memorable and palatable.

If I had to give some thoughts about what would have worked better for me, I suppose I would suggest asking why two of the three stories are about lying to everyone about your family member being dead. If every family keeps doing this it’s really not okay in Iran so I hope this is not representative. Segment two: a girl lies about her father dying, poisons a dog, and sneak-buries his corpse. Segment three: a father finds out his son died in a war and he hides this from the mother.

But the thing is it’s so pretty at the same time to stare at. Honestly, beautifully filmed. And bleak. But still beautiful.

This film did a few things for me that I really appreciate. It brought me back to Iran and reminded me of the cinema from there that I love. It introduced me to an immigration pain that is so similar within migrant communities around the world, and, if they allow it to be shown in Iran, it will raise this awareness among Iranians and this will matter. And it made me think a lot about pacing and plot and scope, and also about the effect of generic expectations.

Because, while watching this, as mentioned, I thought about the disourse on Veni Vidi Vici and Handling the Undead. The former was called unthrilling and low impact and similar because it wasn’t an intense thriller, but I loved it as it was. The latter was frequently called mortally slow. But I would like to propose that if you think nothing happened in Handling the Undead you may find this deadly slow. And if I had been told before watching this that it was going to be a horror movie, it would have spoiled the whole experience. I would have fretted that it wasn’t scary yet and would have missed everything.

That loops back to the blind-watch thing: I don’t know if a film should be self-contained. I would have liked it if this film gave a bit more context because it took a while to get my bearings, but it’s probably on me.

So—should you watch it? Probably it’s worth watching. If you’re going to enjoy it aesthetically, it’s worth it for that, and the stories themselves are worthwhile too. The social message is important, and honestly, can’t we just stop acting like shit to immigrants? This sort of thing traps people and creates power structures that destroy lives. And, while the lives in this film aren’t destroyed, they are always one step away from deportation.

This will likely not work for my horror readers. If you don’t like slow drama and Iranian cinema, and if a tomato plant captured beautifully is not going to fascinate you, In the Land of Brothers may not be your best entrance into this sort of film.

Recommended if it’s your thing.

☀️ Sundance 2024 Viewing Schedule:

25th Veni Vidi Vici 🎟️
25th Handling the Undead 🎟️
25th: Black Box Diaries review in progress
26th: In the Land of Brothers 🎟️
Porcelain War
Nocturnes
Girls Will be Girls
A New Kind of Wilderness
Didi
Short Films

Awards:
Directing Award: U.S. Dramatic
U.S. Grand Jury Prize: Documentary
World Cinema Grand Jury Prize, Dramatic

🗂️ Index of Lists:

📽️ Viewing Next | 🌍 New Horror Daily | 💎 Slightly Hidden Horror Gems and 🌱 Candidates✈️ World Cinema Master List
🎭 Drama Ranked
🇮🇷 Iran
🖌️ Every Frame Exquisite
2️⃣ 2020–2029 📆 2024