Adnan Zandi was born in 1985 in Iranian Kurdistan. He holds a Master’s degree in cinema, has directed several documentary films and has won awards at numerous festivals. He is the founder and director of the Riga Student Film Festival. “Habibulah” is one of his latest works.
Habibulah is screening at Vesoul International Film Festival of Asian Cinemas
The titular character is an 80-years-old Kurdish folk singer and poet, Habibullah Zandi. For decades, he has been a beacon of joy in his village, performing at weddings and gatherings and entertaining people with his songs about love. Currently, though, his passion faces opposition when local mullahs and radical religious figures demand he ceases singing, accusing him of promoting immorality and undermining religious values. Things get worse when one of his performances is recorded and posted on TikTok, mostly by youths who mock his performances, bringing his son to also criticize his continuing performances. He, however, with the support of his wife, remains unwavering in his belief that his devotion to music is intertwined with his faith, asserting that singing is as vital to him as breathing.
The comment Adnan Zandi tries to communicate here is as pointed as it is accurate. With the continuous rise of fundamentalism all around the world, values, and the lives for that matter, of various people who used to be celebrated, are under intense and essentially unfair scrutiny. As we see an 80-year-old man being persecuted for a way of life he has followed for decades, the injustice of it all is as angering as it is indicative of the current sociopolitical climate. It is also a weird parallel between the Middle East and the rest of the ‘developed’ world, where people of Habibulah’s age find themselves ostracized due to their inability to follow (technological) progress, and due to the lack of care from the state’s side.
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At the same time, the movie also promotes the value of resistance, with the way the protagonist and his wife refuse to take the easy way out and just give up, instead continuing against all odds, appearing nothing short of heroic. That Habibbulah even retains his sense of humor, which repeatedly appears in his interactions with various religious figures, both intensifies the portrayal of his overall mentality and adds a sense of amusement to the short. Lastly, that there are people who still invite him to sing in various occasions, showcases that there is life beyond fundamentalism, in a rather important message that tends to be forgotten, particularly in the cinematic approach to life in the area.
For the overall presentation, Adnan Zandi mixes the dialogues between him and religious figures, with his performances, either in front of an audience or on his own, and interviews with him and the people around him, including his wife. The approach, also due to the competent editing by Tofigh Amani, works quite well, both in terms of analysis and for entertaining reasons, with the documentary being quite easy to watch.
Parviz Rostami’s camera follows Habibulah in all of the aforementioned instances quite closely, with the focus being on realism, although some scenes that aim at beauty, as in the ones where he is singing on his own, are not missing.
Equally for the comments communicated here and the overall presentation, “Habibulah” emerges as a great documentary.
