Letter to the King

Saw this one at the Noordelijk film festival 2014 in Leeuwarden (NL). The stories are very loosely tied together by means of a one-day bus ride to Oslo, all passengers coming from a refugee camp where rarely something happens, and the city trip is a welcome change. After arrival we follow five participants on their respective journeys through the city.

The frame story, as well as the title, comes from elderly Mirza who prepared a letter to the king. He is planning to deliver that letter in an attempt to get a passport, so that he can return home to bury family members. We see Mirza on his way to the palace, while a voice-over reads part of the letter from time to time. This serves very well to provide the necessary context of what these people binds together, and indirectly gives an overview of what separates them from the people in Norway.

Mirza's purpose may be clear from the outset, contrary to the others we follow that day. Each of them has a hidden agenda, as we shall see when each of the stories progresses. What they are up to seems benign initially, but later on it escalates to something less benign or even involving violence. Each finds his or her own way through the city, meets old acquaintances and other referred to, eventually making up a colorful portrait of these immigrants.

From the same film maker I had seen Before The Snowfall a few days before. I could not resist some comparison. Both are carried by a frame story that serves to bind a series of short stories running in parallel. The binding element for Before The Snowfall may seem more artificial, merely thrown in to sight-see us along a series of unconnected people and cities (as shamelessly confessed by the director). Nevertheless, in that case it worked very well for me. Alas, it failed for me in Letter To The King, where the parallel story lines are only connected via the initial bus ride and the common origin of the passengers. But the stories scatter around when progressing through the running time of the movie. The respective passengers show neither a common purpose nor any similarity in behavior.

All in all, I can imagine that some people find it a refreshing approach to let these people speak and act, if only to make us aware of their background and history, fundamentally different from ours. The frame story is artificial, and I dearly missed a common binding element in the respective story lines. Maybe I was expecting too much after having seen Before The Snowfall of the same film maker some days earlier, where the frame story worked very well in comparison with Letter To The King. Anyway, the festival visitors disagree with my conclusion. This movie ranked 16th (out of 64) with an above average score of 8.3.

After having been noticed as a capable short film maker, and having immense success with his short film "Bawke" Kurdish/Norwegian Hisham Zaman has went on to make the critically acclaimed "Winterland" (Vinterland) and then the feature "Before snowfall" (Før snøen faller). The latter won the prestigious Dragon Award in Stockholm International Film Festival, with the price money of 1 million Swedish Crowns, as so did this new film "Letter to the King" the year later.

It's no wonder that Zaman wins prices for his films, as he manages to get to the core of the persons featured. He is, no wonder, very occupied with the challenges his fellow countrymen from Kurdistan goes through when being refugees in foreign countries. This film is about a one day trip to Norwegian capitol Oslo, a bus full of refugees experience after having spent some time in their camp site. We follow fire of them, with the main story springing out of 83 year old patron Mirza, which feel he has to get back home to bury his dead sons, and writes a letter to the Norwegain king, with a little help from a young nephew which has learned enough Norwewgian to translate. He, of course, doesn't know that the Norwegian king is merely a patron himself, with no real power to do something for the old man.

We also follow four others, which all have their hope and dreams of getting something more out of their few hours in Oslo. More or less desperate, most of them fail on their missions. However, the stories tell a sad reality of how it is to be a refugee in a foreign country, and not really either happy or with a clear future. Desperate situations calls for desperate solutions. It's a difficult world.

The film manages to set a trace in your soul after the mere 75 minutes of storytelling, with both drama, excitement, despair and a little bit of humor is well. Well done, and very interesting.

In just a few years after film school Zaman has managed to become one of Norways most critically acclaimed film makers. His take on the refugee situation is bound to make a difference in some way or another.