A good movie

To be honest, I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this flick but, since it was directed by Ben Sombogaart and since it was available on Disney+, I thought I might as well check it out. First of all, you probably have never heard of Sombogaart but he actually has a pretty solid reputation in the Netherlands.  However, except for ‘De tweeling’, everything he made was actually rather underwhelming, at least, to me. Fortunately, even though this movie was rather obscure, it turned out to be actually one of his best directorial efforts. It probably had to do with the fact that the story reminded me of several experiences I had. Indeed, recently, I spent 5 months trying to get a young woman from Africa to visit me and, if everything would have worked out, the plan was to have her come live me in the Netherlands. Naively, pretty much like the couple displayed in this movie, I thought that, if you are in a couple, meaning that you vouch for your partner, it shouldn’t be so difficult to get your partner in Europe. Well, I was wrong as the whole system is actually built up to make it borderline impossible. After this relationship didn’t work out, I actually got back with my ex-girlfriend who was/is a refugee from Eritrea and I was wondering if her travel to go from there to the Netherlands was at nightmarish for her as it was for Nazir. She is actually a massive survivor who doesn’t dwell on the past and she did tell how it went down for me but I always wonder if she doesn’t tone it down when she (rarely) talks about it. So, as you can imagine, this story really touched me on a personal level and, all in all, I thought it was rather well made. I was actually rather surprised to learn that, according to this movie, Tunisia was seemingly in a state-of-war back in the 2010’s. However, what the movie failed to display was that the revolts at the time were actually some pro-democracy anti-government protests, not some radical Muslim take-over, which was what I thought it was when I was watching this movie. Indeed, the complete lack of political commitment from either Kimmy or Nazir made them look like rather egoistical after all. However, you could argue that the real issue was how the movie tried to avoid as much as possible the political angle which was rather ridiculous concerning this material and, instead, focused on turn it into some doomed romance. Anyway, to conclude, in spite of its flaws, I still think it was a decent watch and I think it is worth a look, especially if you are interested in this topic.