You Will Die at Twenty
A prediction of death transforms the life of a young man growing up in a village in Sudan.
Made in 2019, You Will Die at Twenty was Sudan’s first ever Oscar submission and in addition to that its director Amjad Abu Alala won the Lion of the Future award at Venice, the festival’s prize for best feature debut. That certainly amounts to an achievement and technically the film is made with an assurance that impresses. But, while it is worth seeking out (as an insight into life in a Sudanese village it is most welcome), one is ultimately left with the feeling that the tale told here fails to come fully into focus. This adaptation of a short story could have been a powerful and compelling narrative but makes a much slighter impression than it should.
Filmed in Sudan, this is the story of how a youth named Muzamil (Mustafa Shehata) finds his life shaped by an incident that occurred not long after his birth. His mother, Sakina (Islam Mubarak) seeks to have her son blessed by the local sheikh but instead a chance event intervenes and seems to indicate that the child is destined to die when he reaches the age of twenty. The whole village is aware of this and accepts it as valid. Once he is of school age he is teased and bullied by the other boys who refer to him as the ‘son of death’ and Sakina, being a woman with deep faith, fully believes in this prediction. Consequently, as Muzamil grows up his whole life is coloured by this one incident.
Sakina is portrayed as a strong woman and she needs to be since her husband (Talal Afifi) is a weak man who leaves for Addis Ababa and then travels even further afield leaving Sakina to bring up their son. However, her strength existing alongside her beliefs leads her to arrange for a post for Muzamil assisting an imam (Adil Kebida) and religion comes to dominate his youthful life. Indeed, the boy’s major accomplishment is to learn the Quran by heart and, although a village girl, Naima (Bonna Khalid), is attracted to him, he holds back from any close involvement with her. This could be put down to his religious outlook or to his expectation of an early death, but his attitude starts to change, albeit very slowly, when he encounters Sulaiman (Mahmoud Maysara Elsaraj). The latter, an outsider with a bohemian outlook despite earlier links with the village, becomes a father figure to him and in so doing makes him aware of a different way of life. Muzamil knows that Sulaiman is living with a woman (Amal Mustafa) who is scorned by the villagers as a prostitute.
Although I have seen You Will Die at Twenty described as a fable, I felt that it played convincingly as a believable portrait of a youth growing up in a community rooted in religion who, seeking initially to suppress his sexual urges, then came to challenge the attitudes prevailing in his village. If the setting in which this tale unfolds is rewardingly unfamiliar, such a tale is not, but it can still be effective. Here, however, we encounter two drawbacks. While it seems clear that Alala wants the audience to endorse Muzamil’s rebellion, he does not make it clear to what extent his film is attacking the beliefs of the villagers: is it hostile in a broad sense or is it just questioning the impact of particular superstitions? Equally uncertain is whether or not Muzamil should be seen as a youngster who falls into line to please his mother by outwardly accepting her beliefs or instead is someone with a deeply sincere faith that eventually leads to his undergoing a real inner conflict. Mustafa Shehata looks right playing Muzamil but, under Alala’s direction, he seems a passive figure and the tensions under the surface which should be at the heart of the drama are scarcely felt (as it happens Bonna Khalid as Naima makes a much stronger impact). The potential for a potent and involving film certainly exists here, but it comes to feel underpowered and one is left unclear as to what Alala, co-writer as well as director, really saw as his target.
Original title: Satamoto Fel Eshreen.
MANSEL STIMPSON
Cast: Mustafa Shehata, Islam Mubarak, Mahmoud Maysara Elsaraj, Bonna Khalid, Talal Afifi, Amal Mustafa, Nahid Hassan, Rabeha Mahmoud, Abdulrahman Alshibly, Moatasem Rashed, Asjad Mohamed, Adil Kebida, Mohammed Ahmad Alshaer, Mohamed Hussain Khalil, Ahmed Alkarib.
Dir Amjad Abu Alala, Pro Arnaud Dommerc, Michael Henrichs and Ingrid Lill Høgtun Screenplay Amjad Abu Alala, Yousef Ibrahim and Hammour Ziada, from the latter’s short story Sleeping at the Foot of the Mountain, Ph Sébastien Goepfert, Pro Des Rasha Fares, Ed Heba Othman, Music Amin Bouhafa, Costumes Mohamed Elmur.
Andolfi/Canal+ International/Duofilm/Station Films/Transit Films/Sunnyland Film-New Wave Films.
103 mins. Sudan/France/Egypt/Germany/Norway/Qatar. 2019. Rel: 12 November 2021. Cert. 12A .