Behind the Mountains – Muslim International Film Festival

Writer and Director: Mohamed Ben Attia

Some days the grind of office work can make you want to smash everything up but Rafik takes that all too literally and ends up in prison for vandalising his workplace in Tunis. A redemption narrative following his release from jail, Behind the Mountains, screening at the Muslim International Film Festival is a very personal story about what happens when the justice system pushes a man already on the edge to further extremes when he kidnaps his son Yassine.

A knotty father-son drama, Mohamed Ben Attia’s film is initially full of rage as Rafik tries to reclaim some of the life stolen from him, including seeing his young son grow up, and seeking solace in the natural world where he tries to build a relationship with the child. Ultimately strangers, the sparseness of the mountain landscape becomes an allegory for the scale of Rafik’s problem as well as a reaction against the confinement he has experienced with Attia capturing expansive shots of lakes and sky-filled vistas that reinforces the central characters new found freedom.

Attia’s film becomes a complicated journey across this landscape which blends the perspective of young Yassine terrified by the sounds of the mountain and the intense stranger who refuses to take him home, with Rafik’s quest to find something. But the latter’s behaviour is often so unsympathetic that his unlikely decision making and sometimes violent choices prove more frustrating than explicable, alienating the viewer from the consequences of his suffering.

The film ultimately tries to do too many things, starting off on one track and sending its characters in another direction entirely, only few of these decisions are convincing or offer any insight into the central themes. Sometimes, this is a film about fathers and sons, sometimes a crime story, sometimes an examination of troubled mental health exacerbated by the restrictions placed on Rafik, yet the strands never fully cohere as Rafik’s increasingly extreme decisions perplex rather than illuminate.

Majd Mastoura is a ball of anger as Rafik, a man tightly wound at all times and never lets anyone in, not even the audience but there are moments of tenderness for his son and occasional sensitivity for others that add nuance to the performance. Walid Bouchhioua’s Yassine is a scene-stealer though, conveying the credulous fear that allows him to go with Rafik and, while reserved in front of the father he doesn’t know at all, still have to rely on the adult to navigate through the dangerous situations he creates for them.

A strange film built around Rafik’s obsession with being able to fly, Behind the Mountains gets a bit stuck once the central party – who pick up a shepherd along the way – decide to go on the run and struggles to navigate itself out of its plot corners. Ultimately, Attia misses the opportunity to investigate Rafik’s experience with some silly plot twists that take time away from the relationship with Yassine and understand how his urban rage is calmed by the mountains.

Behind the Mountains is screening at the Muslim International Film Festival from 31 May – 1 June.