Another Birth is poetic in every sense of the word. Iranian writer-filmmaker Farouk Farrokhzad’s verses resonate throughout, while the images offer a concerto of light, shadows, close-ups, and wide vistas to magnificent and mesmerising effect. Revolving around the coming of age of an impressively sensitive child, who observes the harsh cycles of nature and even harsher aspects of human existence — from her spurned mother and abandoned grandfather to the alienated elderly — in rural Tajikistan, Isabelle Kalandar’s first feature is at once enigmatic and evocative. The film heralds the birth of a star in Shukrona Navruzbekova, an on-screen paragon for change in a society where nothing ever seems to change. But herein also lies the birth of a new voice in Tajik-language cinema, with the US-educated Kalandar offering a more magical alternative to the bleak realism of the (male) Tajik auteurs of the recent past.
Clarence Tsui
