‘Sima’s Song’: Red Sea Review

Dir: Roya Sadat. Spain/Netherlands/France/Taiwan/Greece/Afghanistan. 2024. 97min

Kabul, 1978. The friendship between two faculty college students – Suraya (Mozhdah Jamalzadah), a rich socialist from a outstanding household, and Sima (Niloufar Koukhani), a gifted musician from a extra conventional Muslim background – is examined when their paths diverge. Roya Sadat’s drama explores a very turbulent interval in Afghanistan’s historical past (the Russian invasion, tensions between numerous factions in Afghan’s ruling celebration and the revolt of the militant mujahideen) by means of the experiences of girls. And she or he deftly ties collectively this era of the nation’s historical past with the present plight of Afghan girls underneath the rule of the Taliban.

The movie’s use of music eases us over among the extra dislocated plotting

That is the fourth characteristic by Herat-born Sadat, who, with Three Dots in 2003, was the primary feminine Afghan director energetic within the post-Taliban interval of the early noughties. She adopted this with A Letter To The President in 2017, which generated competition curiosity. Sima’s Tune, which continues the director’s give attention to female-led tales, involves Crimson Sea after premiering at Tokyo and screening in Seville. Additional competition bookings are actually attainable for this movie which shot in Athens and rural Greece, doubling for Kabul and its outskirts.

That appears incongruous at first. With its verdant vegetation and grand structure, it’s a world away from the battle-scarred metropolis acquainted from newer movies (there’s a quick thematic overlap with Sahra Mani’s feminist protest documentary Bread & Roses). However presumably that’s the purpose. Within the window of peace and progress earlier than the strain cooker tensions and worldwide meddling took its toll, Afghanistan was a unique world, significantly for ladies.

The image opens within the current day, monitoring a small however vocal protest of girls petitioning for “bread, work and freedom”, a chant that will probably be acquainted to anybody who watched Mani’s movie. When the Taliban try and disperse them with gunfire, the ladies elevate their voices in track, led by an older lady. That is Suraya, now a grandmother marching alongside her granddaughter. She sings the track to honour her pal, Sima, her granddaughter’s namesake.

The principle physique of the story then unfolds within the late Seventies, a time of optimism and perception in social change for ladies like Suraya and Sima. Wearing western fashions and embracing the alternatives afforded by schooling, each ladies have a lot to look ahead to. A gala reception, to commemorate Suraya’s late father – a professor and political heavyweight within the ruling celebration, the Individuals’s Democratic Social gathering of Afghanistan – is a pivotal second for each. Suraya is honoured with a prestigious authorities place overseeing the reason for schooling for ladies; Sima performs her rubab (a stringed lute-like instrument) and sings for the appreciative friends.

Sima’s father, who works for Suraya’s household, is disturbed by the “lustful” seems that his daughter receives in the course of the efficiency and means that it’s excessive time that she have been married. Sima obligingly agrees; Suraya is appalled. However this isn’t the one space of disagreement between them. Suraya, who speaks Russian, is allied with the reasonable, Socialist Parcham wing of the celebration, whereas Sima, who distrusts all politics, is drawn to Muslim militant conferences and, finally, opts to affix the mujahideen.

Of the 2, it’s Suraya’s story that’s extra satisfyingly developed. Sima, in the meantime, appears to lurch abruptly into extremism and fundamentalism. The movie’s use of music eases us over among the extra dislocated plotting. Sima’s track, a standard Afghan melody, is an affecting recurring motif. Equally highly effective is an excerpt from Shostakovich’s Leningrad symphony, performed in a music class to a visibly transported Sima, minimize along with one other, darker sequence which reveals authorities forces executing Sima’s father and arresting Suraya’s mom. However the movie’s handiest system can also be its easiest: a montage of archive images of Afghan girls from the liberated ’70s till the current day. Every thing modifications, and on the similar time, every little thing stays the identical.