While other films in this series, such as
Foreign and
Qu’ils reposent en révolte focus on the lives of young migrants and refugees,
A Walnut Tree places an old man at its centre. Baba, a Pashtun poet and teacher, lives in the Jalozai refugee camp in Pakistan together with his son, his daughter-in-law and their children. The Jalozai camp was founded in the 1980s for refugees from the war in Afghanistan, but in recent years it has also received many internally displaced people. Baba and his family used to live in the Tirah Valley in Northern Pakistan near the border to Afghanistan, but were forced to leave their home because of ongoing fighting between the Pakistani military and various insurgent Taliban groups. While the son is trying to eke out a living from selling balloons and displaying a bioscope, the old man, longing for his old life, cannot come to terms with his new one in the refugee camp where he has no meaningful tasks. When the family is told that they have to relocate to another site, Baba insists that he cannot move again and, resisting all appeals to his reason, pushes for the family to return home. One morning he is gone.
Pakistani director Ammar Aziz, who grew up listening to his grandmother remembering her life in India before her migration to Pakistan as a result of the partition between the two countries, has created an unsentimental yet highly moving documentary about what it means to be uprooted.
Fipresci Prize at Documentarist Istanbul 2016, Grand Prix at Doker FF in Moscow 2016, Best Documentary at Sole Luna Palermo and special mention at Sole Luna Festival Milan 2016, The Ram Bahadur Trophy For Best Film at Film Southasia 2015.
Pakistan 2015, colour, 81 mins. With English subtitles.
Directed by Ammar Aziz.
The screening will be followed by a Q & A with the director Ammar Aziz via Skype.
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