Shawkat Amin Korki cranks up the tension in this exploration of the desperate lengths people will go to when they are given few choices.
The premise of this story seems simple – a young Kurdish-Iraqi woman, Rojin (Vania Salar), needs to pass the university entrance exams in order to avoid a forced marriage and that means being prepared to cheat. Aided by her sister Shilan (Avan Jamal), they become entangled in a black market scheme involving bluetooth devices, secret meetings and increasingly higher risks.
A dogged invigilator Jamal (Shwan Attoof) is intent on exposing the cheaters and he is not the only man that the sisters have to contend with. Shilan’s husband Sardar (Hussein Hassan Ali) can’t understand why a forced marriage is such a problem and tries to control Shilan through violence. The sister’s father is a traffic policeman only interested in his own needs and sense of honour.
Both Shilan and Rojin are caught in lives where they have no independence. For Rojin, this has meant a suicide attempt and increasing desperation as she has to act against her common sense and personal values. As Jamal says when confronted, why is getting married such a problem, all girls must get married.
Korki keeps the tension up as we follow Rojin through each exam and see how Jamal is changing the goal posts to try and uncover the cheaters. He also adds complexity by exposing the toxicity of patriarchy that affects so much of the women’s lives and refraining from villainising any particular person. We can see that cheating is not the best choice – how will the person cope at university if they can’t pass the exam – but also that the playing field is not level and helping people succeed against an unfair system is not essentially bad.
Although the trajectory of the story is somewhat bleak, it felt real and bigger than just the story of two women. We hear occasional news footage of conflict in Mosul and as teacher Shamal (Kawa Qadir) says, individuals have endured years of conflict and deprivation and there is nothing heroic about trying to punish those who are desperate. Whoever is right or wrong, we know who will suffer most.
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