Hit The Road (Jaddeh Khaki)
directed by Panah Panahi
starring Pantea Panahiha, Hassan Madjooni, and Rayan Sarlak
You get in a car and drive and drive and drive. That’s what tourism looks like to precocious five-year-old Little Brother (Sarlak). When mom takes away his SIM card, he tries to charm one out of a shop owner. No luck for him, but there’s better luck for somber Older Brother (Amin Siriar). The family meets interesting and uninterested people as they travel to a vast, empty space high in the mountains. There, Big Brother meets some smugglers who spirit him away, possibly to avoid certain death in the army. While the settings are beautiful and the story packed with small bits of charm, it could use a better way of flagging what the stakes are here. Maybe it’s all implied in the Farsi text, but I couldn’t decode it until I debated with a fellow viewer. There was plenty of time to drop a few more hints about motivation. But kudos for the cinematography, there’s not a bad shot in this project.
Persian with subtitles.
This film is part of the 2022 Florida Film Festival.
