Name Me Lawand
Edward Lovelace’s documentary is an unforgettable and inspiring portrait of a Kurdish deaf boy who seeks asylum in England.
Although Ealing Studios are famous for their comedies, they did from time to time score huge hits with dramas. One such was Alexander Mackendrick’s Mandy made in 1952 in which Mandy Miller won the hearts of millions by playing a child who was deaf and dumb. Now comes a new British film about a young boy born deaf, but this time the film is a documentary and the child in question is Lawand who was born in Iraq. He arrived in England as a refugee at the age of five together with his parents and his older brother Rawa and was thus able to attend a school in this country. That school is the Royal School for the Deaf in Derby and Name Me Lawand pays tribute to its work by concentrating on what it has been able to do for this particular child. Two teachers are also strongly featured here and what we see of Lawand and of them makes this film a truly inspiring experience.
The director here is Edward Lovelace who, having made two documentary features with James Hill, now takes sole billing as both writer and director. This project has taken some four years to bring to fruition and has yielded a film that divides into seven titled chapters. In telling Lawand's story Lovelace has made a number of decisions which pay off handsomely. Lawand himself proves to be immensely beguiling and entirely natural appearing wholly at ease in front of the camera. Taking advantage of that, Lovelace has chosen to handle the scenes featuring Lawand and his teachers in close camera shots that could not be more involving. Background information is supplied in two contrasted ways both designed to enhance the directness of this footage. First, the informative comments from Rawa and from Lawand’s parents are mostly heard in voice-over so that the school images are not interrupted. Secondly, brief exterior shots are intercut into these early scenes suggesting Lawand’s time in Kurdistan and the impact on him of the journey which brought him to England. Because these experiences had been traumatic ones the brief visualising of particular moments play out not as some arty contrivance but as an indication of the memories still vivid in Lawand’s mind at this time. Thus instead of disrupting the flow they add to the impact of these scenes in the school.
It is, perhaps, something of a paradox that Lovelace, despite frequently using shots of eyes and faces to capture the intimacy of Lawand’s growing interaction with his teachers, is able to combine that with a tone which, never weighed down and limited by naturalism, extends into something more imaginative and poetic. There’s a preface seen ahead of the titled chapters and here Rawa when talking of his brother describes Lawand’s longing as a deaf person to be on another planet, one where he didn't feel that he was different from others. Taking his cue from that, Lovelace gives us opening images which include views of outer space and, because such touches are not overdone, this adds an impressionistic quality to the film without ever destabilising the absolutely authentic portrayal of Lawand’s progress in mastering sign language. No less adroit are the later scenes which find Lawand starting to make friends among the other deaf pupils and thus overcoming his initial sense of being one of a kind (unlike some deaf children he had no parents or siblings similarly placed).
The first five chapters are captivating and all the more so because they chart how well Lawand is able to respond to what the school can provide. At the same time the film is honest enough to face up to more problematic issues. We learn, for example, that Lawand’s parents would like him to develop his ability to speak whereas Lawand himself, having now become expressive using British Sign Language, feels more at ease making that his main means of communication. There is too the fact that because the family are immigrants their right to remain in the UK can be questioned and this is very much a concern movingly conveyed by the film.
Name Me Lawand is so deeply felt and so strongly expressive that I would have hoped to praise it as a film without a flaw. Indeed, in the early stages it did strike me as being beyond criticism save for a slightly longer memory sequence which too obviously resembles a re-enactment. However, I did come to have reservations about the film’s last third. Partly because the fifth chapter is very much built-up to provide a big climax, some of the detail in the sixth chapter did seem anticlimactic and rather unnecessary. Furthermore, there are times in the film’s later stages when it seems to be repeating itself and it then goes on to express the hope that Lawand can find his perfect planet here on Earth. This late sequence briefly takes on an inappropriately grandiose tone in contrast to all that has gone before. Nevertheless, these questionable moments are insignificant compared to the many scenes which make Name Me Lawand a work so deeply humane and so emotionally engaging. Flawed or not, it must count as one of the outstanding documentaries of the year - and quite possibly the most outstanding of all.
MANSEL STIMPSON
Featuring Lawand Hamad Amin, Rawa Hamad Amin, Sophie Stone, Lucy Feyi-Sobanjo, Hudayfah Al Mujahid, Rudolfs Kunickis, Gulbamar Abbas Hussein, Rebwar Hamad Amin, Lawi Hamad Amin, Helen Shepherd, Louise White.
Dir Edward Lovelace, Pro Fleur Nieddu, Sam Arnold, Beyan Taher, Neil Andrews, Edward Lovelace and Marisa Clifford, Screenplay Edward Lovelace, Ph Ben Fordesman, Ed David Charap, Shahnaz Dulaimy, Michael Nollet and David Whitakker, Music Tom Hodge.
Pulse Films/The Electric Shadow Company-BFI.
90 mins. UK. 2022. UK Rel: 7 July 2023. Cert. PG.
