Coming to VOD tomorrow, Tuesday, September 2: BARZAN
Bradley Hutchinson and Alex Stonehill’s investigation of a family’s battle with a terrorism accusation had its premiere at Sarasota last year. It went on to Seattle, Woodstock, Warsaw, Heartland, and Tallgrass. It now comes to iTunes, Amazon Prime, Amazon Instant Play, and Vimeo on Demand.
Sam Malkandi, a Kurd who emigrated to Seattle with his family, finds himself caught in a Kafka-esque purgatory of detention without trial after a mention of his childhood nickname, Barzan, links him to al Qaeda. While he denies any involvement with the terrorist organization, offering an unusual but not wholly unbelievable explanation, his case is hopeless when it’s discovered that he falsified information to gain asylum status in the US, and he is eventually deported back to Kurdistan, leaving his wife and children behind. Malkandi is a curious figure, sympathetic but at the same time never fully convincing, a former actor and theatre director whose past willingness to shape his background casts doubt on the testimonials provided by devoted family and friends. This is something the filmmakers perhaps could have teased out a bit more to render this otherwise fairly conventionally approached, interview-driven film with more complexity. Still, they succeed in revealing an intimate portrait of the human cost of the unforgiving War on Terror – something not unique to Malkandi and his family.
what (not) to doc 