"Bekas" is the newest movie from writer-director Karzan Kader and it took quite a while till it came to Germany, but it was worth the wait. It is his second full feature film and judging from how young he looks on his profile picture, he may have a bright future ahead of him. Anyway, this film plays in Kurdistan in the early 1990s. Despite what you could think now, it is not all about the political background. Not at all. Actually, most of it is not even included and that is a good thing as this is really more of a road movie centered on two orphan boys, who want to see the newest Superman movie, when it opens in cinemas in Iraq. They get to watch it illegally. No I'm not talking about file-sharing, just about finding a way to watch without paying. That's how things worked 20 years ago.

Anyway, from that moment on, they plan on going to America to find Superman, so he can bring back their parents. My theater classified it as a children's movie and I can see why, although there are some heavier scenes like the one near the end with the mine. The heart and soul of the film really is (apart from Michael Jackson obviously) the younger boy and how he likes being called "my boy", but the older was good too and so were pretty much all the supporting characters that were written in an interesting fashion. The only part I wasn't too fond of was the story with the girl who played the love interest to the older boy. However, it was not so bad that it destroyed everything else. They just could have done without it.

Kader did a nice job with the ending too. It was clear there's no way they could manage to get to America, so he had to find another way to make it a true happy ending despite the main goal remaining unachieved and he succeeded. The many references to America (Superman, Michael Jackson...) could have turned ridiculous at some point, but it all works out well thanks to clever writing. This film has humor, heart and also some nice music. I really liked the scene were the two main characters meet again that involves Coca Cola. Definitely worth a watch.

I have watched Bekas during Stockholm festival and must admit it has certainly delivered something. Each of the kids' story, their surroundings, Iraq landscape under Saddam's regime along with the Kurds conflict can be a tempting subject for a heartfelt depressing drama. Bekas has managed to combine all and make us laugh. With all the empathy and the connection we made with the 2 kids, we still laughed. Perhaps how intact their innocence and spontaneity were portrayed was the secret behind such a good movie. Bekas is certainly not meant to be a comedy thou (in the classic sense); I think it is a real fantasy and an opportunity for a lot of us to reflect on what we had throughout our childhood.

Nowadays its a customary to take the acclaimed short movies to stretch for the feature films by the incoming directors. All they need is a good producer and the distributors, the actors can be managed with the new faces. Yep, this movie was inspired by the short film of the same name like 'Short Term 12', 'District 9' et cetera. Most importantly, these films met a great success because of the beautiful story, characters and narration.

This movie was directed by the Iraq born filmmaker who is now residing in Sweden. Most of the recent movies, in fact, all of them outlines Iraq as a war field. But this film was such a poetic, shot in the real locations, brings a calm and beautiful 90s Iraq on the screen that you have probably never seen in a decade. The main two characters were inspired by the director and his elder brother, when they were kids and lived in the Kurdish part of Iraq. But the story was marginally fictional except the dreams of the children from the third world.

I must agree, this movie practically describes how the influence of American products, films and culture affects the young kids from a country like Iraq. Their over obsession leads to dream bigger without knowing that's impossible to make it true. If you are a non-American you would have had such obsession in your childhood on soft drinks like Cola, Pepsi, or fast foods like from KFC, McDonald, or TV cartoons and Marvel Comic books et cetera. So, in some way, somewhat it's a tiny part of your story as well.

"If a family is united, they will be strong."

There is no exact one word translation for 'Bekas'. It means 'homeless orphans' according to the director's explanation during an interview at one of the film festivals. This movie is all about two young Kurdish boys, Dana and Zana, and Superman, Michael Jackson and Coca Cola. If we talk about the story, it's when 'Slumdog Millionaire' meets 'In This World'. The movie begins similar fashion to SDM where kids are playing football and after that go straight to their business, instead school. In fact many scenes resemble above two films I mentioned and also other films. When the brothers get separates, that kind of reminded me 'The Gods Must Be Crazy 2'. Thus the screenplay originality lacks, other than that it is nothing less than to consider a wonderful film.

There are some scenes that make you go edge of your seat. Grabs our attention, creating tensions and thrills in the scenes like check- post and landmines. Emotions did not strike well because it's seemed more like a dark comedy. A bit commercialised than being realistic. The music was so good, awesome blend to portray the adventures, along with the two great performances, ignited the movie to emerge as a pleasant family entertainer. There might be millions of reasons to blame this movie because of similarity with other films and other stuffs, but overall I felt happy. Criticisers still going to criticize it, despite those flaws definitely worth to check it out.

8/10